Out Of Luck - Overseas !

Perhaps the most terrifying nightmare that it is possible to imagine is to be stranded somewhere overseas with the money you have set aside for your trip rapidly running out. It becomes even worse if you imagine yourself in a country where English is not the spoken language.

There are twenty-seven thousand Australians experiencing that nightmare, with no end in sight.  They are people who planned an overseas holiday early in the new year and took advantage of the cheap air fares that were common at that time.   Many booked and paid for their return journey, except the coronavirus roared out of China and those airlines are no longer flying.

That was a pandemic that the world last experienced in 1918 when what was called the " Spanish Flu " closed borders and killed thousands.  World governments closed their borders to contain the spread of the virus and a similar procedure this time shut the business world and sent employees on furlough.  We are now slowly emerging from that lockdown.

Typical is the experience of an Australian family and their five children stranded in the United Kingdom. The brief holiday these seven people planned has extended to six months and they are now reliant on the charity and goodwill of the people of England for their survival.  They feel abandoned by their Australian government.

The world air fleet is virtually grounded and many airlines are unlikely to resume flying.  There are laws in place that limit the number allowed to disembark at Australian airports and the few planes still flying are charging ten thousand dollars for one of those seats.  The need for seating isolation limits the numbers on each flight and the seats available are at first class prices.   It would cost that family of seven seventy thousand dollars to fly home, if they could book seats.

The problem is that they do not have that seventy thousand dollars, and relatives at home do not have the ability to raise that amount of money.. They face the prospect of being penniless in the northern hemisphere with winter fast approaching. Their needs are becoming desperate.

Australia has a fleet of VIP aircraft based in Canberra.  Their main purpose seems to be to transport members of parliament and important government officials to where they are needed and they spend much of their time idle.   It would he a humanitarian gesture if the government deployed this fleet to bring stranded Australians home.  At least it would resolve the problem in areas where they are concentrated which seems to be Britain, Europe and North America.

Despite the cessation of airlines flying world routes, law enforcement in most countries will eventually need to treat these stranded Australians as illegal immigrants if they continue to remain after their visas expire.   They face the prospect of being locked away in immigration centres through no faulty of their own and that is a prospect that should shame the Australian government.

All the attention has been concentrated on saving the economy and getting people back to work.  It is time the government extended a helping hand to those stuck overseas and those idle government aircraft would be a welcome solution to their problem.