An Australian stranded abroad says he is "gutted" by the decision to halve the international arrival cap, with his family fearing homelessness or living illegally on expired visas because they won’t be able to come home.
Gene Crowe is stuck in Singapore with his wife and two children and had been booked on flights to return home in a month’s time.
He now expects those flights to be cancelled with the reduced numbers allowed to come home.
The cap has been slashed from around 6000 to 3000 per week and will commence by 14 July. It's likely to remain in place until at least the start of 2022.
Mr Crowe says the cut will have “dire” consequences for his family.
“I'm gutted. I really feel betrayed,” he told SBS News.
“I've got my wife and my children in tears. The people that I know that are also trying to get home, are just devastated.”
Mr Crowe was due to start a job in Australia which has taken him a year to find, but fears he could lose that too. He says his family is also at risk of being homeless because their lease expires when they were booked to leave Singapore.
Gene Crowe with his family Source: Supplied
“We are at risk of overstaying our visas here so we're in legal jeopardy as well in Singapore because you have four weeks to leave the country once your work pass is canceled,” he said.
“We're now at risk of homelessness or unemployment or being in legal jeopardy in Singapore, and we want people to just understand we're just Australians, we're citizens like they are.”
Australian Stephen Burton, who has had flights cancelled four times already, says his next flight scheduled in October is also likely to be cut now.
He’s been forced to survive on his superannuation savings while stranded in Finland.
“The endless anxiety this has caused me for 1.5 years is unbelievable,” Mr Burton said.
Hong Kong-based Jacinta Reddan from the Alliance of Australians Abroad, said many Australians around the world would be waking up to the “devastating” news.
“They're angry and they're despairing, and they're really feeling like they've been forgotten in many ways,” she told SBS News.
“They’re worried that they're going to be stuck without visas without anywhere to live and with nowhere to go, so it's really alarming news.”
There are around 34,000 Australians who remain stuck abroad.
Ms Reddan said many more could join the list of those classified vulnerable.
She also criticised Australia’s slow vaccination rollout.
“Australia was the envy of the world last year with such low COVID case numbers, but now we seem to have squandered that lead, and instead we're lagging miserably on the vaccine rollout,” she said.
“Where is the plan, where is the urgency and where is the public relations campaign to urge Australians to get vaccinated because it is the only way we're going to return to normality.”
Announcing the cut to the international arrival cap on Friday, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the decision would reduce pressure on quarantine facilities.
"While the reduction of those caps will certainly, right across the system, obviously take some pressure off, as we have observed over the course of these past 18 months, that alone does not provide any fail-safe regarding any potential breaches," he told reporters.
The prime minister said the government would mitigate the impacts of the cap reduction by increasing repatriation flights - though he did not say by how much.
“We will be enhancing that, increasing that for major ports, to ensure we can keep the pace of bringing Australians home,” he said.
