You raise a good point and got me thinking - how is any Gov supposed to contact you if a disaster were to strike in that region? I mean even if you register with smart traveller and they know Pineapple is in XX country. What would the AU Gov do? I'm about 99% sure they don't send a search and rescue team. Even if they did, where to start? Would those people be allowed in the country (assuming it would be military). I could be wrong, but if AU flags a country as 'do not travel' it may mean they don't have sufficient means to help Australians in that country should things go wrong.
How would you fix the system?
I wouldn't have changed the pre-registration system. I know I travel at my own risk, and I take all reasonable precautions, but if the poo hits the fan I do expect my government to make reasonable efforts to see that I'm OK. I have always filled out the bloody Smarttraveller rego form, in all its gory detail.
What
@RooFlyer said!
No, AU won’t usually send a search and rescue team, but we and other countries go to remarkable lengths to extract their nationals in dire situations, despite all the disclaimers. The victims usually aren’t tourists, because only rare and foolhardy tourists come to such places, A couple of examples from my favourite stan
Taliban-professor swap
Australian aid worker freed
What can be done depends on the circumstances, but I have no doubt that there will be plans in place for the usual suss locations. If Australia is not in the relevant country, and often it isn’t, someone else will be representing us, but we’ll have input. People are mostly in ’do not travel’ places to support the efforts of the ‘good guys’ governments to instil sanity in insane places. When things go to cough, being in place, helping such governments will help get you out, and I’d be reasonably confident we’d be in the choppers along with the precious diplomats. Or more likely behind them
Suspect the system is being changed because the data was cough anyway, people who fail to register, people who change their plans but not their registration, and so on. Ironically, the data is likely a lot better in the wonderful world of ‘do not travel’ where people routinely register (it’s a contract requirement for moi) and bad things are more likely.
How to fix the system? Dunno, don’t have the data. Abandoning it seems a cheapjack, failure solution. The big advantage of the old system was existing data in place, meaning responsiveness, and a more immediate handle on who needed to be accounted for.
Oh, and totally agree about the Americans in particular having an excellent handle on who is where in suspect countries, but their data is collected for different reasons, and I wouldn’t expect it to necessarily get to consular staff in other countries. Governments impose endless restrictions on their own agencies about data sharing, doubly so for classified data.
(Sorry about delay in responding, last minute third world cough)
Cheers skip