• NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian has challenged other states to take on more international arrivals, with the state bearing responsibility for almost 50% of all returned travellers.
• However the Premier of Western Australia and the acting Premier of Victoria say states should have a greater say over who is allowed to leave Australia and return to hotel quarantine.
• The statements follow a recent decision by the federal government to cut arrivals from India by 30% and the revelation the recent Perth cluster was the result of a returned traveller from India.
• Visit Business Insider Australia’s homepage for more stories.

As Western Australia moves out of its snap lockdown and its Premier Mark McGowan threatens to maintain its current caps on travellers in response to soaring coronavirus cases in India, NSW has called for other states to take on more returning travellers.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian in a statement yesterday rejected the call for states to be given the power to restrict who enters hotel quarantine.

Berejiklian said it is “not a call for the states” to determine why citizens should be allowed to travel, in line with the current system in which the federal government approves exemptions.

However she said she does support a different system to calculate how many arrivals each state should be managing through hotel quarantine.

“I would be more than happy to have a system which determines how many people you can bring back … based on the population of your state,” she said, adding she had raised the idea at previous national cabinets.

Since the start of the pandemic, NSW has taken 125,856 arrivals – just under 50% of the nation’s returning travellers.

Queensland has taken 48,975, WA took 36,908, and Victoria took 31,559.

Newly-released analysis by The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age estimates that NSW can take about 37 arrivals per 100,000 residents and Western Australia can take 38 returned travellers for every 100,000 people living in the state.

However Victoria’s cap sits at 13 people per 100,000, and Queensland is even fewer at 10. In contrast, South Australia takes almost 30 arrivals for every 100,000 who live there.

The NSW Premier’s statement comes in response to Western Australian Premier Mark McGowan, who on Monday threatened to maintain lower caps on international arrivals beyond May in response to the impact of the escalating coronavirus cases in India — a call that has been backed by the Victorian government.

Speaking at a press conference, McGowan said he wants more control over who is allowed to leave Australia and return to hotel quarantine in their jurisdictions.

McGowan raised concerns that too many Australians have been granted permits to travel overseas and wants the federal government to tighten the rules for “non-essential” travel, which he says includes studying and getting married.

Victoria’s acting premier, James Merlino told Guardian Australia he agreed with Western Australia’s push to tighten exemptions.

Merlino blasted the Morrison government for allowing “thousands of people to leave every month”, which he deemed “neither safe nor logical.”

The statements follow the revelation by federal Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews that the man who sparked Perth’s Mercure Hotel cluster, and subsequent lockdown, was granted permission to travel to India in December to get married.

DFAT repatriation flights set to go ahead despite cap on Indian arrivals

Despite the government’s announcement it would reduce arrivals from India by 30% following catastrophic case numbers reported by the country, The office of Northern Territory Chief Minister said there is the potential for a planned repatriation flight on May 6 to go ahead from India to Darwin.

Of the 34,000 Australians currently registered with DFAT, 9,000 are in India.

The arrivals would spend two weeks in the Howard Springs quarantine facility.

The National Security Committee is expected to impose a ban on all commercial flights from India after an emergency meeting was convened this morning to address the nation’s escalating COVID-19 crisis.

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