Australian court docket upholds ban on most worldwide journey – KIRO 7 Information Seattle

CANBERRA, Australia – (AP) – An Australian court on Tuesday rejected a challenge to the federal government’s draconian power to prevent most citizens from leaving the country lest they bring COVID-19 home.

Australia is the only one among developed democracies that prevents its citizens and permanent residents from leaving the country except in “exceptional circumstances” where they can demonstrate a “compelling reason”.

Most Australians have been stranded in their island nation since March 2020 due to an emergency government decree under the powerful Biosecurity Act.

Libertarian group LibertyWorks argued before the entire Federal Court of Justice earlier in May that Health Secretary Greg Hunt had no legal powers to enforce the travel ban that has prevented thousands of Australians from attending weddings and funerals, caring for dying relatives, and receiving newborn babies meet babies.

LibertyWorks attorney Jason Potts argued that Australians had the right to leave their country under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which Australia had ratified.

But the three judges ruled that the bill was based on the “erroneous premise that the law is absolute”.

LibertyWorks lawyers also argued that such a biosecurity control order could only be placed on an individual and not on an entire population. The order could only be issued if that person had symptoms of a listed human disease, was exposed to such a disease, or had failed to comply with travel regulations.

The judges ruled that this interpretation of the law would undermine the clear intentions of Parliament when the legislature created the emergency powers in the Biosafety Act in 2015.

“It can be accepted that the travel restrictions are tough. It can also be accepted that they interfere with individual rights, ”said the judges in their judgment. “But Parliament was aware of that.”

LibertyWorks President Andrew Cooper did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the ruling.

He had expected that hundreds of thousands of Australians would be flying within a few weeks if he had won.

Critics of the Emergency Ordinance argue that it is the toughest for the 30% of Australians born overseas.

The government says tight border controls have played an important role in Australia’s relative success in containing the spread of COVID-19.

Polls suggest that most Australians welcome their government’s drastic border controls.

The Australian newspaper published a poll last month that found that 73% of respondents said the international border should remain closed at least until the middle of next year.

The Australian Broadcasting Corp. reported last week that their own poll found that 79% of respondents agree that the international border should remain closed until the global pandemic is under control.

Critics of Australia’s travel restrictions argue that decisions about who can travel and why are inconsistent and opaque.

Esther and Charles Baker, an ultra-Orthodox Jewish couple from Melbourne, have twice been denied special permits to fly to New Jersey to attend their youngest son’s wedding in June last year.

They appealed to the Federal Court of Justice, citing religious and cultural reasons under their exceptional circumstances. But a judge dismissed their case and ordered the couple to pay the government’s legal costs for their challenge.

A person at the center of a coronavirus cluster in Australia’s second largest city, Melbourne, was allowed to attend a wedding in India. He was not infected there, but during the required 14-day hotel quarantine after his return. Authorities say he was infected by a traveler in another room on his floor and the virus was blown into the air.

Melbourne began a seven-day lockdown on Friday as the cluster had grown to more than 50 cases by Tuesday.

Australia and New Zealand opened a quarantine-free travel bubble in April and hope to create such bubbles with other countries in time.

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