Over the last two months, the Australian government has been at the forefront of the global wave of travel bans purportedly implemented to contain the spread of Covid-19. By making border control a key element of his response to the pandemic, Prime Minister Scott Morrison has sought to regain the political ground lost during his disastrous handling of Australia’s bushfires during the southern summer. The pivot seems to be paying off, with Morrison’s coalition government receiving a recent bounce in public opinion polls.

What is striking is that no outright bans have been imposed on countries from the “Anglosphere” — that charming euphemism for England’s global network of white settler colonies — where the epidemic is rampant. With the government’s decision to place its heaviest restrictions on those coming from Asian countries instead, these travel bans can hardly be understood as the effective mitigation methods they purport to be; they instead reflect Australian colonial fears dating back to the nineteenth century and a xenophobia that has always been close to the surface.