Australians living abroad are elated at the news that their country will begin to reopen their stern borders after 18 months.
Some Australian expats have not been home or seen family in at least that timeframe.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison says vaccinated Australians would be able to return home and travel overseas "within weeks" as 80% vaccination targets are met.
International borders are set to reopen in November as Australia nears vaccination targets, with fully vaccinated Australians able to quarantine from home on their return. pic.twitter.com/1jpUyIQ7SZ
— SBS News (@SBSNews) October 1, 2021
Some Australians have expressed their joy at the prospect of seeing loved ones after so long, one such is DCU Journalism Professor Colleen Murrel who has already booked flights home.
"It's two years since I've seen my daughters and I can't wait to see them."
Not all Australians are as confident about the Prime Minister's commitment, including SPIN's Sarina Bellissimo, who is originally from Melbourne, she says says individual federal states need to change the rules, not the Prime Minister.
"We have states, and they're all governed by their own leader, and then the Prime Minister governs federally. And up to this point I never thought there was a problem with that," Sarina told SPIN's Tom Douglas, continuing, "Then you have crisis like Covid that is only seeming to hit individual states."
"Until the Premier of Melbourne says "this is going to happen" and until I actually see it happening, I'm not going to believe it."
This is especially true as the different States across Australia are at very different stages of the vaccination rollout.
New South Wales currently has 64% of those aged over 16 fully vaccinated, while West Australia (47.08%) and Queensland (47.38%) are much further off the 80% target, and have been pursuing the "Covid-zero" approach.
In terms of Irish living in Australia, how do they fare under these new rules? The short answer is, they don't.
Danny Quinn is from Wicklow, living under lockdown in the state of Victoria (50.64%). These freedom of movement rules simply don't apply to him as he isn't a permanent resident .
"There's no roadmap really to get out of [lockdown] until the end of October perhaps, so at present, international travel is just a pipe-dream."
