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Foreign Minister Marise Payne defended the temporary ban on Australians returning from India.Credit:Dominic Lorrimer

“Australia has obligations to our citizens,to people who are Australians - not just to abandon them overseas,but then to threaten them is quite extraordinary action,” Mr Albanese said on Sunday.

“The government’s got to justify how it is that the figures from India are similar to what they’ve been in the past from the UK and the US,but we haven’t seen these sort of measures.”

Foreign Minister Marise Payne said the decision was “absolutely not” racist or immoral,and was made on the advice of Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly due to a high concentration of positive cases among arrivals from India in hotel quarantine.

“The experience we had in the month preceding this decision was that 57 per cent of the positive cases in quarantine had been in arrivals from India,that was up from 10 per cent in the previous month. It was placing a very,very significant burden on health and medical services in the states and territories,” Ms Payne said.

The measure will be reviewed by the federal government on May 15.

Independent MP Zali Steggall said the travel ban and penalties set an “incredibly dangerous precedent” and should not go unchallenged.

“It is India now and can be any country in the future. This is the first step to a totalitarian state. Government has proportional power to deal with biosecurity risks via quarantine,” Ms Steggall tweeted.

There are at least 36,000 Australians stuck abroad who are trying to get home but cannot because of the strict quarantine limits on how many people can enter the country per week. At least 9000 of those are in India andmore than 600 are classified as vulnerable.

Dr Jagvinder Singh Virk,chairman of the India Australia Strategic Alliance and a long-term Liberal Party member,said he had spoken to NSW Liberal MPs Julian Lesser and Dave Sharma about his concerns.

“Our community is very upset with the ban. If Australian citizens die in India,who will be responsible?” Dr Virk said.

The Australian Human Rights Commission has also raised concerns.

“The need for such restrictions must be publicly justified. The government must show that these measures are not discriminatory and the only suitable way of dealing with the threat to public health,” it said in a statement.

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