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 The decision comes as New South Wales state, of which Sydney is
capital, is expected to reach an 80% first-vaccination dose rate on
Saturday, well ahead of the rest of Australia, which will enable it
to bring forward the entry of overseas arrivals by several weeks.
"We need to rejoin the world. We can't live here in a hermit
kingdom. We've got to open up," New South Wales Premier Dominic
Perrottet said.
Australia closed its borders in March 2020 in response to the
coronavirus pandemic, allowing entry almost exclusively only to
citizens and permanent residents, who have to spend two weeks in
hotel quarantine at their expense.
As well as ditching plans for home quarantine, which had been
expected to replace hotel stays, Perrottet said New South Wales
would welcome all overseas arrivals.
But he was quickly overruled by Prime Minister Scott Morrison who
said the government would stick with plans to first open the border
to citizens and permanent residents.
"This is about Australian residents and citizens first," Morrison
told reporters in Sydney.
"The (federal) government has made no decision to allow other visa
holders ... to come into Australia under these arrangements," he
said.
Unvaccinated travellers from overseas will also be allowed back into
New South Wales, but only 210 each week and they will have to
undergo hotel quarantine upon arrival.
ECONOMIC REVIVAL
Australians have been unable to travel internationally for more than
18 months without a government waiver, and thousands of citizens and
permanent residents in other countries have been unable to return
after Canberra imposed a strict cap on arrivals to slow the spread
of COVID-19.
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 Many of these are now expected
to return via Sydney, even though some COVID-19
free states in Australia have closed their
borders to New South Wales.
Qantas Airways said it would bring forward the restart of
international flights from Sydney to London and Los Angeles by two
weeks to Nov. 1 and would consider bringing forward the resumption
of flights from some other places that had been expected in
December. Major airlines like Singapore Airlines,
Emirates and United Airlines have continued to fly to Sydney
throughout the pandemic but due to strict passenger caps, most of
their revenue has been from cargo.
Singapore Airlines said it would open seats on all 17 of its weekly
flights to Sydney for sales to eligible travellers. Previously, 10
of the flights had been cargo only.
New South Wales, meanwhile, reported 399 COVID-19 cases on Friday,
well down from the state's pandemic high of 1,599 in early
September.
Neighbouring Victoria state, where vaccination rates are lower,
reported 2,179 new locally acquired cases, down from a record 2,297
a day earlier.
The capital Canberra on Friday exited a more than two-month
lockdown, allowing cafes, pubs and gyms to reopen with strict social
distancing rules.
Australia's overall coronavirus numbers are relatively low, with
some 139,000 cases and 1,506 deaths.
(Reporting by Renju Jose and Colin Packham; additional reporting by
Jamie Freed; Editing by Richard Pullin, Robert Birsel and Edwina
Gibbs)
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