© (Photo by Paul Kane/Getty Images)Passengers from Qantas flight QF583 are escorted to waiting Transperth buses by Police Officers after being processed following their arrival at Perth Airport from Sydney, before being driven to a CBD hotel for quarantining on October 19, 2020 in Perth, Australia.
Senior Government Ministers are standing by the international border closures, amid criticism from some backbenchers that Australia could soon become a "hermit nation".
Tens of thousands of Australians are still trying to get home and the backlog is growing due to the weekly cap on arrivals.
A number of those people are stranded in India, and dozens were kicked off a repatriation flight bound for Darwin on Saturday after testing positive for coronavirus.
Labor has accused the Government of failing to protect Australians overseas but Finance Minister Simon Birmingham said the safety of Australians here, in the country, came first.
"We are working to make sure that we can continue the repatriation of Australians from India, but we're doing so in a way that doesn't jeopardise the health outcomes and the economic outcomes that Australia has enjoyed throughout this pandemic," he told Sky News.
Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese argued there were measures the government could address right now to get the border open sooner.
"We've got to get the vaccine [rollout] right, and we've got to get quarantine right before we can open up the economy, and we do need to open up the economy because the rest of the world is opening up now," he said.
Jobs vs Australians overseas
The federal budget assumes the international border will reopen by the middle of next year but the Government isn't putting a date on it.
That has frustrated some Liberal MPs who are pushing for a faster vaccine rollout to ensure freedom of travel.
Backbenchers Dave Sharma, Jason Falinksi and Tim Wilson told Nine newspapers that the international border should open up before the middle of next year, with Mr Wilson saying if it didn't happen soon enough, Australia would turn into "a hermit outpost".
Pushed about the government's border policy on Insiders, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg insisted the Government's focus was to protect jobs and their health.
"We will follow the medical advice that has served us very well through this crisis," he said.
"Don't forget the Prime Minister acted very quickly ahead of the rest of the world, to close our international borders, at the time starting with China and then more broadly.
"He was criticised for it, but the net result has been that Australia has been a lot more safe as a result."
Mr Birmingham also stressed that the border closures have kept people in work.
"They [border closures] remain a very important ongoing factor in how we don't just save Australians' lives but also how we save Australian jobs and businesses and secure our economic future," he said.
Jobs vs tax
The government's focus to put more people into work and rebuild the economy goes beyond relying on international border closures.
This year's budget again included the government's long-running policy to introduce additional tax cuts in 2024.
Budget tax calculator
[Tax calculator]Once someone earns $45,000, every additional dollar over that amount will be taxed at the same rate of 30 per cent and that new tax rule is the same for anyone earning up to $200,000.
There have been calls for the stage-three tax cuts to be scrapped, with welfare advocates saying they benefit the wealthy.
Mr Frydenberg was pushed on who benefits the most but was unable to provide a clear answer and instead defended the decision to make structural reform to the tax system.
"What you are doing is you are rewarding effort, you are encouraging aspiration, you are returning more people's hard-earned money back to them," he told Insiders.
Labor is yet to confirm whether they would keep or scrap the stage-three tax cuts if it wins the next election.