this is a first, prior to this I have only heard of such exit controls in the USSR and similar totalitarian regimes.
One alternative is preventing citizens who've traveled to other countries from returning home to Australia. Presumably this isn't legally/politically feasible because it violates a citizen's right to return home. Hence the government's decision to restrict people's ability to leave instead.
I would hope tat getting an exemption is as simple and easy as "here's my lease and paystub in {COUNTRY}", but it remains to be seen how smooth and painless the process is.
That was already restricted. This change targets citizens living abroad and prevents them from going back home. Who could leave by demonstrating that they are residents of an other country.
My reading of the above was that citizens living abroad would still be allowed to leave Australia and return to their home. They just need to go through a centralized exemption process in order to demonstrate that they are residing abroad
Which might be a defensible stanve if there weren’t various incoherent and knee jerk policies and exceptions all around.
I’d like to say, “well look, they’re simply doing the best one could given all the known and unknown unknowns”. But they aren’t even doing that.
Sad to think they might be doing the best they can. Australia’s gone from a strong sensible start to utter incompetence.