An Aussie government minister refuses to rule out electronic ankle bracelets as means to enforce home quarantine orders.
The suggestion was made by journalist David Speers during an interview with Employment Minister Stuart Robert, reports Summit News. Speers wanted to know how authorities can ensure that returning travelers would stay at home.
"What sort of ideas would there be for this? Regular visits, inspections to make sure they're home, ankle bracelets, some sort of monitoring, how do you do it?" Speers asked.
In response, NCA NewsWire reports that the minister did not rule out those prospects.
"He said fully-vaccinated Australians travelling abroad would be a 'logical first step' as the country reopened, but conceded challenges in home quarantine would need to be ironed out," explained the report.
"All of that will need to be worked through before a policy prescription goes live," Robert reportedly said.
The minister also mentioned a number of measures implemented last year which he said would be kept in place. He reportedly went through these measures during his three of four months in quarantine.
"The police would turn up at random times to our house, they would call. The Department of Health from various jurisdictions would call. They were some of the things put in place to deal with that exact issue," he said.
Deliberation on how to enforce quarantine continues as Australia is set to open their borders again. Home quarantines will remain mandatory for returning travelers even after they got vaccinated.
Summit News noted that this is not the first that the use of electronic ankle bracelets was brought up. These bracelets were normally used to track and to keep tabs on suspected outlaws.
In another report by GRIPT, it states that the suggestion was first made last October when Prime Minister Scott Morrison was interviewed about the plan to allow the return of the 30,000 Australian citizens who were stranded abroad due to the country's strict border measures.
The Prime Minister simply stated that he would leave it to the experts to think of innovative solutions.
But when asked specifically about the idea of ankle bracelets, Morrison again pointed to the experts.
"Let those experts who are going to work on these options do their job," he said. "Let them work out what will be most effective and can best facilitate us getting back to a Covid-normal in the future but I expect them to be innovative and think about new ways of doing things."
Meanwhile...
Last year, the Irish government was blasted for making the mobile network "Three" share anonymous movement data of its customers with the Department of Health to monitor compliance with coronavirus restrictions, reports News Talk.
In January, Conservative MP Jeremy Hunt reportedly told the government to consider using GPS tracking technology "to ensure Brits are complying with COVID quarantine measures."
"Daily contact with those asked to self-isolate - using GPS tracking to monitor compliance if necessary as happens in Taiwan and Poland," wrote Hunt in his tweet.
"People need to know how much this matters and if we cannot persuade them to comply at the outset, we should keep trying," he added.
