Some had gone over to help sick family. We do have a large percentage of our population that are Australian, but their parents are not.
And we have had a number of quirks - like children who travelled with grandparents who are not citizens. The kids arent allowed to travel alone (a covid rule) and the parents are not allowed to leave the country. Other had jobs that ended or other reasons to not return to Australia immediately.
The thing that annoys me is that we have these rules and are trying to keep people here safe, but the last few covid outbreaks all seem to have come from rich people who were allowed to bypass the quarantine system.
Our last outbreak was from "mr bbq", a guy who went into several bbq stores. Sounds like the most aussie thing ever - go buy a bbq on the weekend. Well it turns out he wasnt just buying a bbq, he was buying the chain of bbq stores!!!
And officials said they are looking for the missing link between him and a case that is in quarantine. Well... supposedly a very powerful US businessman came here and ended up in medical quarantine with covid. This man has dealings with mr bbq. Its extremely likely (but not confirmed) that the US guy was granted a home quarantine, met with mr bbq, then developed symptoms got tested and quarantined. Mr bbq also was very quick to get tested, probably because he knew he had met with someone who had covid.
All very shady and the public were kept in the dark about some "missing link", which meant we had restrictions for a week. It seems all the while someone up higher must have known the connection and the story.
https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/he...9f3a9da64c5193
So while I generally agree with our hard stand on border controls, we could relax some things for people in tough situations (separated families) and toughen it on other things (rich, famous getting excemptions)