The media jumped on the new information, assuming it to be a new policy. As a result, media worldwide now have reported that the India ban was the first time that the government had threatened to jail any citizens returning home.
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On the defensive, Morrison has implied that the government will avoid prosecuting: “We’ve had the Biosecurity Act in place now for over a year and no one’s gone to jail, there hasn’t been any irresponsible use of those powers.”
But too late. The government has managed to unite in outrage many civil society groups, Labor, some Nationals, plus the Greens, independents and even some Liberals, as well as the three-quarter million people of the Indian Australian community.
Elaine Pearson of Human Rights Watch captures the common theme: “The government should be looking to safely quarantine Australians returning from India, instead of focusing their efforts on prison sentences.”
Australia isn’t seeking to damage community cohesion by inflaming race relations, but this the sort of thing it might do if it were. Morrison has taken up one of Malcolm Turnbull’s catchcries: “Australia is the most successful multicultural nation on Earth.” And they are probably right. When the COVID pandemic produced a flare-up of racist incidents against Chinese people in Australia, Morrison didn’t play up the division but sought to unify. He repeatedly praised the Chinese Australian community for its responsible conduct in containing the virus.
And during the great Hindu festival of lights, Diwali, Morrison last year sent his best wishes to India and boasted that “Australia is the most successful multicultural nation in the world”. If he repeats the message this year, he risks being howled down.
India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi.Credit:AP
Australia is in a serious confrontation with China and doesn’t want to alienate the next rising great power as well, but this is the sort of thing it would do if it did.
Morrison has embraced Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi as the leader of one of the world’s great democracies: “My dear friend Narendra Modi, greetings on your birthday,” he tweeted last year. “I’m sure our Australia-India relations will reach new heights in the coming year. May you have a delightful birthday. See you soon!”
And he did. In March, Morrison and Modi joined US President Joe Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga by video in the inaugural summit of the Quad group. This is an attempt by the four democracies to balance against China’s increasing power and to manage its mounting aggression.
But if the impression takes hold in India that Australia is a hotbed of anti-India racists, it will make it politically awkward for Modi to appear supportive.
The leaders of the Quad – Australia, the US, India and Japan – Scott Morrison, Joe Biden, Narendra Modi and Yoshihide Suga.Credit:AP
Australia is thirsty for global talent in key technologies and wants to attract brilliant minds to immigrate. It doesn’t want to deter Indians, on the cutting edge of research and entrepreneurship, but this sort of border controversy is what it might do if it intended to. A country’s reputation – even an undeserved one – matters. Many of the world’s brightest tech talents who were planning to move to the US changed course as a result of Trump’s racist flourishes.
The truth is that there was no malice in the Morrison government’s handling of the India ban, just ham-fistedness. The ban was the culminating point of other failures by the government – the failure to build a robust national quarantine system with cabin-based accommodation, the failure to set up a local capacity to make mRNA vaccines, the type that can be edited quickly to prevent new variants of COVID.
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These failures grew from Australia’s permanent enemy – complacency. The Morrison government needs to understand that its early success is unravelling. It it needs to mobilise anew. To build sustainable defences against a pandemic, which is only growing and mutating. To protect all its citizens.
Peter Hartcher is international editor.
