‘If you’re from Victoria, please don’t come to Tasmania’ — Peter Gutwein
Media release – Premier, 8 July 2020

Additional border restrictions

Our number one priority as we navigate our way through coronavirus has been the health, safety and wellbeing of Tasmanians.

Right now across the Bass Strait our fellow Australians, and for many of us, our family and friends, are facing challenges. My thoughts and best wishes for their health and safety are with them.

On Friday this week I will be providing an update on our borders and interstate travel, however, I can confirm today, due to the escalating situation in Victoria, we will not be opening our borders to Victoria on 24 July.

We will also put in place additional restrictions on Victorian travellers, and Tasmanians returning from Victoria. It gives me no pleasure to do this, but the only way to manage the virus is to respond swiftly and appropriately.

From midnight tonight the following takes effect:

  • Victorians and anyone that is not a Tasmanian resident who has spent time in Victoria in the 14 days prior to travel is not permitted to travel to Tasmania and will be turned back at their own expense in the event that they arrive in Tasmania. This applies unless they have pre-approval for travel as an essential traveller or for compassionate reasons.

  • This includes anyone transiting through Tullamarine Airport to Tasmania that leaves the airport, as they will be treated as having spent time in Victoria and will be turned back in the event that they arrive here.

  • Tasmanian residents who have spent time in Victoria in the 14 days prior to travel are able to return home to Tasmania but will be required to quarantine in a Government hotel for 14 days. This also includes fly in, fly out workers who have spent time in Victoria.

  • Tasmanians traveling from other jurisdictions who have transited through Tullamarine Airport and have not left that facility will be quarantined at home for 14 days and this will continue up until 24 July, subject to our border rules being reviewed. Any other travellers, including Tasmanians who leave Tullamarine Airport while in transit, will be quarantined in Government hotels for 14 days.

  • TT Line passengers will be managed under the same rules.

  • Biosecurity officers will be present at Tasmania’s airports and seaports and a biosecurity officer will also be present at Tullamarine airport to provide advice and guidance.

  • Businesses and organisations seeking essential workers from Victoria will need to demonstrate that the expertise cannot be recruited from any other state in the country first before an exemption is considered.

  • While Victorians can apply for a compassionate exemption to travel to Tasmania, these exemptions are unlikely to be granted.
On 24 July 2020, the Tasmanian Government announced that, starting 31 July 2020, all individuals undergoing mandatory hotel quarantine would be required to cover the entirety of the costs, with few exceptions. 

This policy forced me—and many others—to make the difficult decision to return home to Tasmania from mainland Australia. From 31 July, the cost for mandatory hotel quarantine would be approximately $3000.

It will be "strongly recommended" people staying in quarantine hotels in Tasmania have voluntary coronavirus tests at days five and twelve of the isolation period.



‘Victorians will not be allowed to travel to Tasmania. And anyone who has spent time in Victoria in the fourteen days prior to travel will not be permitted to travel either. The only exception to that will be Tasmanians returning home and they will have quarantining arrangements.’


During this time, only Tasmanian residents and essential workers were permitted entry into Tasmania. To facilitate this, the Government introduced the ‘G2G Pass,’ an app used to apply for entry. I had been living in Melbourne for over five years, but Hobart was home. Many of my friends shared a similar situation. While we no longer held Tasmanian drivers’ licenses, we still spent months back home each year, as it was only a one-hour flight away.


When else would you board a plane, be ushered off it onto a bus by police, and taken directly to a hotel room for two weeks of isolation?



This body of work was born out of a need to preserve one of the strangest two-week experiences of my life: being quarantined in a Best Western hotel in my own home town of Hobart.

The whole experience felt like an episode of Black
Mirror. 


To this day, I remember the application process well. Having converted my licence from Tasmanian to Victorian—how was I meant to prove (on paper) I was a returning Tasmanian resident? You couldn’t just ring up and say your parents and family live there, let me in. 

The passport loophole.


Now, I call this a loophole. Whether it really was is a debate I will not indulge. I was at a loss in how I could prove my ‘Tasmanian-ness’ to the ‘State Controller’. In dire straits, and with the cut-off day for subsidised quarantine looming, it came down to a passport. Lucky for me, an Australian passport ID page (for whatever reason) includes a section dedicated to your place of birth.

Hobart!