Australia's covid policy of indefinitely banning citizens from leaving was the last straw for me. I won't be back.
Police investigative powers are an example of this balancing of rights. They need investigative powers to enforce the laws which protect our freedoms. The flip side is that investigative powers can easily be twisted to become surveillance, then be used to take away our freedoms. I don't know what the solution to this conflict is. I don't think anyone knows, which is why the state automatically seeks overreaching powers and the opposition seeks prohibition rather than offering solutions.
If you need to "balance" the rights (read: take them away) of somebody to equal the scale, then rights don't exist in the first place.
Also, we’ve instituted mandatory hotel quarantine for anyone coming to Australia. But hotel quarantine only has a certain number of places; if less people leave Australia, then less people will come back and fill up hotel quarantine spaces.
You could always leave. Citizens and PRs could always come back (although if they left after a certain date they had to pay for their care if they got Covid).
Even immigrants workers could leave. You needed permission to come back, but unless Covid was raging they took in quite a lot of workers.
This is true however return for foreigners was never guaranteed. It has opened up only very recently. I've been stuck in Singapore for 2 years as of last weekend.
You are right there was no guarantee you could return if Covid cases exploded, but there was at least a decent pathway. Australia from what I gathered put up as many obstacles as possible AND requires permission to leave.
Exemptions have been granted for people who were told "if you can fly charter, not commercial, you can be exempted", and other things that are (while certainly risk reducing) very much "show me the money". i.e. exactly the people who will be engaging in tax minimization/avoidance/dodging.
Me? Best hope my elderly parents don't get unwell.
I would only support an actual ban on mobility if it were to quarantine the virus in one place, like if the Chinese had locked down Wuhan before it managed to get out.
That ship has sailed of course. It’s all over the damn place, so there is not much to be gained by travel bans.