Results for Australia

New York Times reporting: When Australian officials announced last week that the country was unlikely to fully reopen its borders until mid-2022 because of the coronavirus, the backlash immediately began building. Critics warned that Australia risked becoming a “hermit nation.” Members of the Australian diaspora who had been struggling to return home for months saw it as another blow. The announcement drew dire warnings from business, legal and academic leaders. But polls show that keeping the borders shut is a popular idea.

A new partnership between the University of the South Pacific (USP) and Australia Pacific Training Coalition (APTC) was signed to further support Pacific Island skills training needs for labour market demands.

A total of 213 seasonal workers left Tonga last Friday, 9 April, to work in Adelaide, Australia.

Three repatriation flights to Tonga are now expected to arrive on March 31 and April 1. The flights will be from Auckland, Brisbane and Fiji.

Repatriation flights from Australia and Fiji arrived this afternoon with 167 passengers, confirmed Deputy Police Commissioner ‘Atunaisa Taumoepeau.

More than 100 seasonal workers left Tonga on a chartered flight for Australia this afternoon, February 25. Tonga has since last year been sending seasonal workers to Australia, despite the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions and border closures.

Australia plans to start the roll out of the Pfizer/BioNTech CoViD-19 vaccine next week to the first and most vulnerable Australians from 22 February.

A new classroom building for Holonga Government Primary School was commissioned on February 11, under a recovery program for schools damaged by Tropical Cyclone Gita in 2018.

Eight hundred and fifteen additional seasonal workers from the Pacific Islands, including Tonga, have been approved to help fill jobs in horticulture and meat processing industries in New South Wales, Australia.