FRAN KELLY: Michael Outram is the Commissioner of Border Force which is in charge of the movement of people in and out of the country. Michael Outram, welcome back to Breakfast.
MICHAEL OUTRAM: Good morning, Fran.
FRAN KELLY: Two very raw examples there of how the border closure is affecting people’s lives in very serious ways. Why isn’t it more to be done- being done to help the 25000 Australians, you know, including the bells and the Fords desperate to come home but can’t get in?
MICHAEL OUTRAM: Yeah. It’s a terrible situation, Fran. And in fact, we’ve approved 25,000 – sorry, 47,000 Australians to leave Australia since the travel ban came in. That’s back in in March because and of course, that just adds to the situation. When people do leave the country, we do- we do warn them and say: look, you need to be aware there may be difficulties getting back.
Of course, the commercial airlines are making their decisions on which flights to put into the schedule whether bumping people off flights and cancelling flights – these are commercial decisions that we unfortunately don’t have any power over. What we are doing of course is we’re working to the AHPPC, that’s the Australian Health Principals Protection Committee, guidelines around 14-day quarantine in hotels and of course, the states and territories are providing the medical service and there’s a cap on the number of beds that are available and it’s capped at about 12,000 at any point in time.
So we’re working with Department of Infrastructure and the airlines to try and if we can maximise the numbers of people in those hotels. But it’s not enough, Fran, if I’m being honest and as long as the caps remain with the hotel quarantine in place, it’s going to be difficult I think to envisage a situation where the airlines will start bringing more passengers.
FRAN KELLY: Okay. But you’re the head of Border Force – let’s check the name – Border Force Australia.
MICHAEL OUTRAM: Yes.
FRAN KELLY: You seem to be there saying these problems are because of the airlines and because of the state’s numbers of hotel quarantine places. It’s as though Border Force and the Australian Government has no control over any of this, but that’s not the case, is it?
MICHAEL OUTRAM: Well it is in fact because the provision of quarantine services in each state and territories is being done slightly differently because they all have their own individual teams running that and their own individual health acts and their own individual..
FRAN KELLY: Yeah. But this is a federal quarantine act. I mean we’ve just devolved those powers to the states for this purpose, haven’t we?
MICHAEL OUTRAM: Well I wouldn’t want to get into the history but obviously, as a Border Force Commissioner, we primarily conduct immigration and customs services at the border. So we facilitate the movement of people and of goods across our border, into and out of Australia. We are of course either working with states and territories daily, literally daily, in terms of the amount of beds that are available with the Department of Infrastructure who are linking in with the commercial airlines to try and maximise as best we can the capacity within the flights coming to get as many people back as we can.
But there is Fran, there is a limit here in terms of the number of beds available for people returning because each state and territory does run its own obviously, medical services and quarantine is a public health medical service that’s been provided by states and territories. And the Commonwealth – we don’t employ those sorts of professionals to run those sorts of services.
FRAN KELLY: But we have a precedent, don’t we? When the Federal Government evacuated people from Wuhan and the Diamond Princess cruise ship at the start of this pandemic, they chartered planes and they took them to a quarantine station in the Northern Territory and then some to Christmas Island. Why isn’t that a model that could be- put in- mobilised again?
MICHAEL OUTRAM: Well since then of course, that was prior to the hotel quarantine model in place from my memory..
FRAN KELLY: Yeah. But it still remains a model, doesn’t it?
MICHAEL OUTRAM: And what happened there was that there was a facility on Christmas Island that was available and that’s now being used as a detention facility again by the way. But the actual quarantining in that facility was run by medical professionals not by the Border Force, by AUSMAT teams and AUSMAT teams are actually doctors and nurses drawn from the states and territories health services.
They were two very bespoke arrangements and Howard Springs was primarily run by Northern Territory Health whilst we put up contracts in place and we put in some arrangements to stand the facility up, we didn’t run the facility. That was Northern Territory Health with an AUSMAT team on the ground.
So quarantining facilities can’t be run without medical professionals on the ground and at the moment, the AUSMAT capability I would imagine would be pretty stretched because of the need for the states and territories to be running obviously their own health services and plus other things that are going around the pandemic.
FRAN KELLY: Will you imagine – I mean have we looked at this? I only say this …
MICHAEL OUTRAM: [Talks over] Yes, we have.
FRAN KELLY: because the Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack said last week, all options are on the table. There must be, with the borders closed and a lot of airports closed, there must be a lot of ABF staff who are underemployed at the moment. So you’d think could be used to bolster our quarantine system. Have we checked whether there’s Commonwealth AUSMAT staff who could be deployed to the Northern Territory quarantine system or I mean let’s face it, the Federal Government can order the ACT and the Northern Territory, can’t they, to open up a hotel quarantine system?
MICHAEL OUTRAM: I’m not aware of that.
FRAN KELLY: Are you engaged in any of these discussions?
MICHAEL OUTRAM: I’m engaged in discussions as to what the Border Force’s role is Fran and I do know that the medical capability, the AUSMAT teams are stretched. I do know that. I’ve spoken to the Chief Medical Officer and that’s my advice is that they’re stretched and the states and territories obviously their medical capacity is stretched and particularly in the state of Victoria of course, a lot of people are going to Victoria to lend help.
And of course, we are planning – we are thinking about and planning for a reopening at some point of our border, in a bio secure way, of course, we are thinking that through.
We’re engaging with our colleagues overseas, we’re looking at what’s happening internationally and we’re engaging with AHPPC members as well about what quarantining arrangements might look like going forwards. Because we can’t imagine that whilst we’ve got a 14-day mandatory quarantine model now in place, that we’re going to have to wait until everybody in the world has been vaccinated until we start to do something different at our border, to allow more people to start moving and travelling. And so, there’s a lot of tremendous work going on across Government right now.
FRAN KELLY: Yeah. But meanwhile, there’s all these people who are stuck overseas – Australians in very difficult circumstances, some of them in countries illegally, some of them with no money to stay anywhere, it’s dangerous. I mean if – if we could find the quarantine capacity on land here, if we could get the states to put on more- open up more hotel places or we get some quarantine centre open, would the Government and is the Government with Border Force, talking about looking at commissioning flights, commissioning either airlines or, you know, Air Force or some kind of planes to get people home? And if not, why not?
MICHAEL OUTRAM: The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade have that responsibility and they’re doing that work. But your point about the quarantine – the caps on hotels is the critical point. And of course, we are working in the Border Force to the cap. I mean I don’t have the authority to direct the states and territories to do anything and of course these are all based on discussions of the AHPPC and the National Cabinet and each state and territory has set its cap.
And what we’re doing now with the Border Force and Department of Infrastructure is working to try and maximise the number of people coming back from Australia to that cap. If that cap was to double overnight, we’d be delighted, we could certainly facilitate those people through the border. I’ve got no doubt that the airlines would take up the additional capacity.
FRAN KELLY: The Burl families in Canada; Rebecca Ford stranded in the UK. Her dad and mom really need a home. Yet Tom Hanks’ entourage were allowed to enter Australia and go into some kind of hotel quarantine in Queensland. You, as a Border Force Commissioner, approve and only you, as I understand it, approve non-citizens entering the country. Why did you let a Hollywood movie star in when so many Australians are desperate to get home and go into hotel quarantine? Desperate.
MICHAEL OUTRAM: Yeah. Well firstly, I obviously don’t provide any approvals for Australians to return home. I have to …
FRAN KELLY: [Interrupts] No, no. But you do for Tom Hanks.
MICHAEL OUTRAM: But there are different categories that I’ve been provided to turn my mind to. One of which is economic activity. Obviously, stimulating our economy is really important and the Queensland Government wrote to me…
FRAN KELLY: [Interrupts] As important as reuniting families?
MICHAEL OUTRAM: Can you just let me finish, Fran? So they wrote to me and expressed the importance in terms of their economy. Now, my decision makers have also been guided by me that anybody who needs to travel for the purposes of a funeral or attending end of life of a close member of their family, then they should generally be approved.
but Fran, if you’re asking me to ask my decision makers to compare the merits of somebody in a terrible situation where they need to go to a funeral of a close family member or end of life with somebody who needs to travel on business, we never make any decisions. We’re doing it for both. We’re not comparing the merits of those two very different scenarios. And if there are further scenarios as well where people are travelling to come to Australia to provide medical services or to provide other skills to- which benefit not just economically, but in terms of the provision of services in our country, we’re also allowing Australia to travel overseas to finish study and to take up work and to go to countries where they’re already a resident.
So to compare all the merits of all these different categories that we have and to ask my decision makers – and we’re making thousands – tens of thousands of these decisions to weigh up the relative merits between somebody who’s in a humanitarian category and somebody who’s in a business category, I think is entirely unfair.
FRAN KELLY: Well just on that, let me do that – you might think it’s unfair but let me ask you this because, as I understand it, people who want to leave must show their travel’s urgent or necessary, as you said, on compassionate grounds or in the national interest, that’s unless they have, you know, residency somewhere else. Which category did Tony Abbott fall into when he was allowed to leave to go to London recently?
MICHAEL OUTRAM: He was allowed to go because he was going to go and give evidence at a parliamentary committee in the UK as a former prime minister of Australia …
FRAN KELLY: [Interrupts] So that’s like its own special category for former ministers?
MICHAEL OUTRAM: No, no, no. It’s a category that’s general for Australian representatives to travel overseas like ministers and members of the Government and senior officials and members of the Defence Force. So he was going to give evidence at that committee and my understanding is that’s the basis on which he would have been approved.
FRAN KELLY: [Interrupts] Does it trouble you, as the Commissioner, who has to approve these things that a former prime minister is allowed to go or a rich businessman like Jost Stollmann who was able to go to Greece to pick up a new yacht, that there looks like there’s one law for the rich and powerful and another one for all- for these very many people who are being denied access to these really personally important and critical events and situations?
MICHAEL OUTRAM: Look, I’ll take that in two parts. Firstly, I provided guidance to my staff to attend very carefully to humanitarian compassionate requests particularly where a close family member is very ill, you know, end of life scenarios or for a funeral.
So they’ve been given my guidance to attend to those very carefully and quickly and we’re turning all requests around at the moment; 99 per cent plus requests in 48 hours for outbound requests.
In terms of rich people, we don’t approve people to go and get yachts. I mean there’s a lot of, frankly, frivolous reporting around some of this stuff. Nobody was approved to go and get a yacht. But people are approved to go and conduct business because they have business interests in other countries. And if in doing so, somebody went and collected a yacht then so be it. But the purpose of the authorisation, the exemption, wasn’t to go and get a yacht.
FRAN KELLY: Okay. But meanwhile, there’s 25,000 Australians who the best they’re being offered is that the Government hopes they’ll be home by Christmas. Is that good enough?
MICHAEL OUTRAM: Well I’m working really hard to make sure with the kind of infrastructure and the airlines that we try and get as many into those quarantine that are available as possible. And I certainly hope – and I feel for those people overseas. A lot of them have actually got exemptions from me to travel overseas in the first place. And whilst we advise them that there may be difficulties getting back of course, you can never foresee how long that’s going to take.
So I certainly hope that they’re back this side of Christmas and I certainly hope that the quarantine – the caps that we can see some increases in some of the states around those caps.
FRAN KELLY: And increases in getting- letting people out of country not long ago, a few months ago, it was you were approving one in four applications. I understand that has sped up. What’s the current approval rate right now for people to go? Because some people are still saying they’re waiting weeks to hear.
MICHAEL OUTRAM: Well that’s incorrect. In fact, 48- hours
FRAN KELLY: [Interrupts] Well I’ve heard that personally from people.
MICHAEL OUTRAM: No. It’s incorrect, Fran. Forty-eight – we’re doing 99 per cent plus of cases in 48 hours and we’ve had 47,000 outbound requests approved and we had 18,000 people travelling in August alone of those approvals. So the rate of approval request is significantly increasing since we put this place in March and I refused about 16,000 on top of that 47,000, to give you a sense of scale. And most those returning around 48 hours.
