Early February, Victoria announced that all (including travellers) may be required to show proof of a third vaccine dose to enter some public sites in coming months to protect the country against future waves of infections.
Many experts feared that it was too soon to mandate third-jab saying that many parts of the world they haven’t had access even to the first dose, let alone the booster, so it would be a very restrictive thing to bring in if we made that booster mandatory for travellers right now. Businesses agreed as they believed more arrivals could help ease the current understaffing crisis.
There needs to be a consistent Federal supported by the States. At the moment, international arrivals need to be double jabbed with their last jab only 7 days previously (some countries require 14 days). https://covid19.homeaffairs.gov.au/vaccinated-travellers#toc-0 Unless there are consistent policies, Australia might see tourists, international workers and international students arriving into Australia, but being restricted from entering health care centres, restaurants, education institutions, office places, etc.
Due to the public pressure and recognition of the incongruent situation, the Premier walked back on his proposal late February. “There comes a point where things become impractical and you’ve got so many systems operating at once that it doesn’t really work…”
Though international travellers are now safe from the booster mandatory, they become more discourage to come to Australia. The constant changing in vaccination status, the variations of booster policy in different states, etc have been making it hard for travellers to keep up hence scaring many away.
That said, businesses should not rely solely on migrants to overcome labour shortage. Instead, the focus for firm owners, especially accounting firm owners, should be on converting their business model into a fully digital online business, and make use of all remote workers – both Australian based and Internationally based.
If you’d like to talk about how Odyssey can assist with your short term ad hoc Australian accounting compliance then drop us a line.
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