@Sarah977
No Sarah, nobody is allowed into Australia without going into mandatory quarantine in a government approved quarantine facility.
When Australia closed its international borders there were over 200,000 Australians offshore. Obviously almost all of them wanted to get home and the country has been taking them back at the rate of 6,000 per week. There are still 45,000 Australians stranded abroad.
The 6,000 cap has been put in place because we do not have the capacity to effectively quarantine any more than 12,000 persons at a time.
Some are being quarantined in purpose built isolation centres such as Howard Springs outside of Darwin in the NT.
But where our problem is coming from Sarah, many of these returned travelers are being quarantined in hotels that have been taken over by the government for the purpose. All these hotels are in the major cities and require staffing and servicing, and no matter how well policed they are, every now and then someone will become infected from one of these facilities and bring that infection out into the community where it has to be traced and stopped.
There is essentially no local covid in Australia, 6 of the 8 states are recording no new cases in the community day after day. NSW and Qld are our only two states recording community cases and in both instances these cases have been traced back to returning travelers.
It's difficult enough just getting from one state to another here in Australia let alone get into Australia from overseas. We are a virtual Covid fortress!
Cheers........Rob