HAMISH MACDONALD: Well, the quarantine ordeal for Australian passengers of the doomed Diamond Princess cruise is finally over. Yesterday, 150 people were allowed to leave Darwin’s Howard Springs mining camp after spending 14 days in isolation. This comes as Australia once again extends its travel ban on arrivals from China and Iran and adds South Korea to the list. There will also be enhanced screening measures for travellers from Italy. The Australian Border Force is responsible for enforcing these tests and Michael Outram is ABF Commissioner, he joins us this morning from our Parliament House studios. Good morning to you.
MICHAEL OUTRAM: Good morning Hamish.
HAMISH MACDONALD: A travel ban for South Korea, tough new screening measures for passenger for Italy. Given the incubation period for COVID-19 what’s the point of this?
MICHAEL OUTRAM: Well you’re right, I mean it’s not a 100 per cent failsafe mechanism. What it does do is it helps us to slow down the rate of which infected people are able to come into Australia – so, we’re trying to prevent here the- and slow down the rate of infections. And of course these two areas overseas have been identified as hotspots.
So we’ve put in place different mechanisms for both- for people who’ve been in all three of those countries to try and reduce, as far as we possibly can, the number of people getting here with infections. But you’re right, I mean some people could be pre-symptomatic and we might not pick them all up.
HAMISH MACDONALD: I mean, when you say it’s not 100 per cent effective, do you have any idea of how effective it actually is? Because it would seem that there would be a lot of opportunities for people to get through, even though you’ve got all of these measures in place.
MICHAEL OUTRAM: Yeah that’s a very good question and of course I don’t have any scientific data for you. But if you look back to when we first started implementing border measures back in late January really – well, 2 February – it’s been highly effective as a means by which to prevent, deter, slow down the rate of, and spread of coronavirus to Australia. And what I would say is that we’ve actually found very few people in the system deliberately gaming out the system, you know. So I’d say that you should look at the last three of four weeks to see how effective the border measures have been so far.
HAMISH MACDONALD: When you say very few, I mean obviously there’s been a lot of reporting of- around individuals, particularly students trying to get to Australia from China that have gone to third-party countries and then arrived here anyway. Any figures on that?
MICHAEL OUTRAM: Yeah I do, but first of all I’ll say that the Chinese students who went into other countries in fact did what we wanted them to do. They got themselves out of mainland China, went into a country where the- obviously the coronavirus was far less prevalent, if not present at all – quarantined themselves for two weeks before coming here. So they were fully compliant with our policy intent, so we’re delighted that those students were able to actually get here and since 2 February we’ve had about 25,000 Chinese students arrive back in Australia – people who’ve been into other countries for a couple of weeks and have arrived here. So again, that’s quite a successful outcome from our university sector but also from a health point of view.
HAMISH MACDONALD: There’s obviously a whole range of contingency planning going on right now at every level of government. As far as our borders are concerned, what does the worst case scenario look like.
MICHAEL OUTRAM: Well I think, rather than a worst case scenario what I would is that as the community in Australia, as we get more person to person infections, then of course the utility of the border as a policy mechanism to prevent further infection in Australia becomes less useful over time, and that’s recognised globally. So the border controls are the first line of defence, if you like, and then as the virus becomes more prevalent in our own country or with any country, then the border measures become really second order because you really are looking at your more domestic and localised arrangements.
HAMISH MACDONALD: So, at what point does the border become less of a- less helpful? I mean is there a point at which you say: look, we’re not going to try and prevent people coming in because there’s already such a big problem here?
MICHAEL OUTRAM: Well yeah, I’d rely actually on Professor Murphy for that sort of advice and of course Professor Murphy and his team – that’s Brendan Murphy, the Chief Medical Officer for Australia, the Commonwealth’s Chief Medical Officer. He and his team are obviously very expert in this field, in virology and obviously in producing those sorts of projections. So I rely very much on their advice, and so would the Government, in relation to when the border measures will become less effective and at what point we may dial them up or dial them down. You know, we can do either.
HAMISH MACDONALD: Because he has in fact sort of raised concerns about the resourcing capability of Border Force to do much more than it already is in that regard. Is that a fair observation?
MICHAEL OUTRAM: It would be if all things were equal and it is a fair observation. But what I would say is, of course, we’re seeing a significant downturn in global travel generally. So for example we’ve had 160- sorry about 406 passengers yesterday arrive from China – that’s a lot less than we would have been getting four months ago. So we actually are at the same time – ironically – freeing up some capacity, because there’s a lot less people travelling. So at the moment we’re managing pretty well, I have to say. We’ve got officers at overseas airports. We have a lot of officers here in Canberra in our 24/7 centres engaging with airlines and engaging with other agencies. And we have that [indistinct]- I was in Sydney Airport just two days ago talking to our offices at frontline. That’s obviously where most of our offices are based, and they’re doing a tremendous job, but they are coping quite well at the moment with volume.
HAMISH MACDONALD: Is there much fear amongst your workers?
MICHAEL OUTRAM: No, they’ve been magnificent. In fact, I was down there. They’re all wearing their personal protective equipment, their masks. They’ve got the hand sanitiser. They’re very well-rehearsed now in terms of how to keep themselves safe. So no, I didn’t detect fear at all. There’s certainly recognition of the great importance of their mission. They know how important the job is that they’re doing, and they’re very focused on that. But of course they are keen to understand and to know more about is there anything further we can do to prevent infections. They’re keen to know information about the prevalence of the virus. But no, there’s no fear. They’re just really focussed on the job.
HAMISH MACDONALD: You’re relying, as I understand it, pretty heavily on pre-arrival intelligence. So information that you can glean from the individual traveller before they actually travel. How reliable is that?
MICHAEL OUTRAM: Well most people are pretty honest, and so of course we have passports and we can look at stamps in passports and those sorts of things. The airlines have been mandated to ask questions of passengers to where they’ve been, and all airlines internationally of course, if anyone looks ill, they’re not uplifting them, they’re not allowing them onto the airplane. So that’s the first sort of line of defence. We do get access to data so we can- apart from checking passports mainly to look for stamps, we can actually get some forms of data that can give us an indication as to where passengers might have been. And they’re asked questions again on arrival in Australia, at both the Smartgate kiosks and by our Border Force officers at the primary line, as to where they’d been. So but there’s lots of opportunities for passengers to declare that they’ve been in or through one of the countries of interest, but this- it’s not- as I said earlier on, we’ll capture most of them. Most people are being honest, but it’s not a failsafe mechanism.
HAMISH MACDONALD: Yeah, I mean, I respect you saying most people are honest, but people – as we’ve seen here in Australia with toilet paper sales – can get pretty desperate and do some pretty strange things. If we’re talking about Italy as being a significant problem, a lot of those things you’ve just mentioned like stamps in passports won’t necessarily be present. It would be very easy for someone to leave Italy, go to another European country without having a stamp in a passport and get on a flight and come straight here, and quite possibly not declare where they’ve been. I mean, you are relying on an honesty system ultimately, and that may not hold up in a desperate scenario.
MICHAEL OUTRAM: Well I think there will be desperation in that particular case, because of course, when passengers are coming to Australia, particularly from Italy now, those who’ve been in north [indistinct] Italy, not just Italians of course, that’s other nationalities too, they’ve getting a lot of information when they’re actually getting- checking in at the airport, when they’re on the airplane, about what’s going to happen if they’ve been in Italy. And it’s not that they’re going to have their visa cancelled, or they’re going to be turned around, it’s that they’re going to be given a health screen. Most people pretty want that, I think. So when they arrive in Australia, the process is that my officers will refer them to a biosecurity officer and then they’ll be screened by their local- there’s nurses and doctors onsite from the local state or territory, to do the temperature checks and to run through some questions with them, and to give them advice about what they need to do if they start to feel any symptoms. So I don’t think that’s something that will necessarily encourage people to behave dishonestly.
HAMISH MACDONALD: Alright. Infections and deaths in China now, declining, according to the figures. How will you determine when and if to lift the travel ban on China?
MICHAEL OUTRAM: Well, I am not the person to actually determine that, that’s obviously a matter for government, in terms of when or how the travel ban or restrictions – as I prefer to call them – on people that have been [indistinct] through China are lifted. That’s being reviewed weekly by Cabinet, as you would know. And primarily that’s based on advice from Professor Murphy and his team. And of course the state and territory health leaders as well are involved in a weekly meeting with Brendan. So it’s really about the global picture, the information about the rates of infections in certain countries, the data that we’re getting, the reliability of that data, that informs those decisions.
HAMISH MACDONALD: Michael Outram, thank you very much.
MICHAEL OUTRAM: Thank you, Hamish.
HAMISH MACDONALD: That’s the Australian Border Force Commissioner.
