Controversial radio presenter Alan Jones has slammed the Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne in an interview for not grounding all flights from China and has claimed the government is too afraid of offending China as our country’s biggest trading partner.
The 2GB radio and Sky News host criticised Senator Payne on Friday for allowing a number of flight from China into Australia despite the coronavirus taking a turn for the worst throughout the country and especially in the city of Wuhan in Hubei province.
Up to 49,000 people are landing in on flights from China each week – and Jones was not shy to point out to Senator Payne there were nine flights arriving in Sydney on Friday alone.
“That’s just into Sydney alone and there are direct flights from China to Melbourneand Brisbane when every region of mainland china now has confirmed cases of the virus,” he said.
“Why haven’t you grounded every flight?”
The death toll from the virus has hit 170 – with nine confirmed cases in Australia – with the World Health Organisation declaring a global health emergency.
170 lives have already been claimed by the deadly virus and nine cases have been confirmed in Australia.
The World Health Organisation has declared a global health emergency in light of the deaths.
Ms Payne did not back down from the criticism however and defended the government’s actions so far by saying they are working “step by step with authorities”, who have assured the public it is still safe for flights to arrive in Australia from China.
“They have repeatedly told us that stopping all flights from China is not recommended at this stage and in fact no other country has stopped all flights from China,” the politician said.
“So we review that every single day and we will continue to do that.”
Jones harshly responded further by pushing his claim that the “public mood” was against Ms Payne.
“At the end of the day I don’t think anyone believes that China is telling the international communities the truth,” Jones said.
“I’m just saying if every region in mainland China has confirmed cases – we are flying people out here from all of those regions.”
Ms Payne told Jones that her department has taken steps “way ahead” of the World Health Organisation and have continued to work quickly to install more biosecurity at airports.
“We have acted to advise the 14 days of isolation for anyone who has come out of Hubei province as an extra step,” she said.
Jones interrupted the Foreign Minister to question why her department is still allowing flights to come in that have hundreds of people from China arriving to Australia when people are still testing positive to the virus, despite showing no symptoms.
“A person can infect two or three others. we’re just letting people into the country. You can’t bring a nail file in but you can bring a virus,” he explained and claimed people with little to no symptoms could still be carrying the virus.
The radio host further alleged “political sensitivities” were at play.
“People are saying there are political sensitivities at play here about China that didn’t exist with other epidemics like Ebola in West Africa, and we are frightened of China,” Jones said.
“We’re frightened of offending China. We know that the Chinese students most probably keep our universities financial.”
“We know that we’ve got massive indebtedness to China we’ve got massive exports to China. So the money is coming ahead of the public health.”
Ms Payne categorically denied the claims Jones alleged were the reason Australia was not grounding flights out of China, and said the government is placing all priority on the health of Australians.
She said her department took steps ahead of the WHO to advise Australians not to travel to the Hubei province and to reconsider all travel to China.
Up to 49,000 people are landing on flights from China per week and a global health emergency has now been declared over the virus.
Four people in Sydney, three in Melbourne, and two on the Gold Coast have been diagnosed with coronavirus in recent weeks.
