Statement on International Participation

13.09.2021

It comes with a heavy heart to announce that International attendance to Apple Isle Moot has been decided to be unviable. As I’m sure you can understand this was a very difficult decision to make and has not been taken lightly.

Running an event of this size takes years of hard work and there are many difficult decisions about how the event runs that need to be decided well before the opening ceremony. To give you an understanding of the considerations that have lead to this decision the following situations were considered:

• Currently Australia has had its International borders closed for 15 months. Whilst we hope that this will not be the case in the near future so that we can reunite with our brothers and sisters in world Scouting, we cannot base event decisions on this hope.

• We have also seen just how quickly border decisions can be made, and the very real risk of putting our participants in a situation where they are isolated in Australia and unable to return home is not one we are willing to undertake.

• In this case we as Scouts Tasmania do not have the resources to provide adequate support for stranded participants which is a requirement of the host branch. Judging from the past, international participants could be stranded in Australia for months before a flight back home becomes available. This creates a massive personal and financial risk for participants.

• Insurance is essential to covering the event and must be decided and policies taken out well in advance of the opening ceremony. Whilst the risks associated with COVID-19 and International participation may decrease in the coming months, at this point in time we cannot get a policy that will cover us appropriately if we have International participants.

• There has always been a large amount of work required to run an International contingent, even before the current International climate. This workload is only increased with the pandemic and with lower chance of a positive outcome, we do not want anyone’s hard work to go to waste.

Unfortunately this applies to all international participants, regardless of their countries border restrictions with Australia, vaccination status, partnership agreements or otherwise.

We are truly sorry that we are unable to offer an International experience, we were looking forward to welcoming you all to our corner of the world. We are hoping that by making these difficult decisions we are giving ourselves the best chance of running a successful national event after the disappointments from the past 18 months.

- the AIM Team