I have never really supported Hotel quarantine, but that is not the issue I am directly concerned about. It's the way that HQ is operating (or being allowed to operate) as a system constraint on citizens returning home. If we have to have it, then let’s have it - but properly run, so that people without COVID when they enter do not leave quarantine with COVID caught from other guests as has happened in Vic, so that the poor HQ staff don’t get it and then spread it to their families and result in health issues for them and lock downs for the rest of us. While we are at it, let's run it so that it is not the limiting factor that prevents Australian citizens coming home. Surely that cannot be beyond the wit of a 'clever country' like Australia. And if hotel quarantine is for the broader community's benefit and protection, as we keep getting told, then it should be provided at the government’s (taxpayers’) expense as a community health issue - like free vaccines are being provided to everyone who is here, citizen, PR or otherwise, which isalso for the broader community benefit.
Hotel quarantine maybe was an acceptable stop gap approach in the first early days, but to be still running the same system in the same way many, many months later is pretty poor, especially as the government knows that there is a long list of people wanting to come home. And that list never seems to get any shorter- exactly the operational definition of a system constraint. And that does not even include people who haven’t listed themselves as needing DFAT’s help to get home.
So no, I guess I don't support the total stuff up of a way that HQ is being run. I accept that others feel differently, and maybe even that I am in the minority, but I am not the only person who feels like this.