Penny Wong - Scott Morrison should act now to help stranded Australians get home

SENATOR PENNY WONG: We have 23,000 Australians stranded overseas, 3,500 who are vulnerable. We have our missions, high commissions and embassies suggesting people crowd fund. We have people not being able to get flights. And we had airlines behaving unfairly, cancelling economy seats and only allowing people to book first class or business class. We have people who haven’t been refunded, we have people sleeping on their cars. That’s the consequence. Now what we have said is “how about you have a plan?”. The reality is, we are not even reaching the cap on current arrivals. The Government should look at what it needs to do the maintain the integrity of the quarantine system - we all agree with that - but instead of simply leaving Australians to go and fundraise to get themselves home, they should come up with a plan to assist them.

Recorded on 3 September 2020.