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Australia's pandemic travel ban brings family heartbreak

Australia's pandemic travel ban brings family heartbreak

Australia's pandemic travel ban brings family heartbreak
Oct 29, 2020 1 min, 5 secs

But the ban on overseas travel creates a heartbreaking burden on a multicultural nation such as Australia, where around half the people were born abroad or have an immigrant parent.

“I always wanted to move to Australia because it felt like a free country,” said German-born Magenau, who became an Australian citizen this year.

Still, Australia is the only member of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development — a group of 37 developed nations — that has banned its citizens from leaving during the pandemic.

Magenau, a 42-year-old cancer research scientist, was given an exemption to travel with her 5-year-old son, Hendrix, from their home in Sydney to Stuttgart, Germany.

“He lived for about five or six days and I thought I could make it out (of Australia), but that didn’t work,” Magenau said.

Sydney lawyer Adam Byrnes said by far the majority of clients who come to him to fight travel exemption refusals had applied, like Magenau, on “compassionate or humanitarian” grounds.

Applicants must persuade Australian Border Force officials that their reasons are “compelling.”.

But she said it would be easier to accept if Border Force’s decisions were more timely.

Border Force said more than 55,200 Australian citizens and permanent residents had been given exemptions to depart Australia from when the travel ban began on March 25 through the end of September.

Magenau is surprised that so many of her fellow Australians seem to accept the extraordinary travel restrictions

“And in Australia, all that decision-making seems to be taken away from you.”

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