Hello and welcome to the Independence Daily Podcast with me, Simon Calder, and I'm delighted to be speaking to you from an extremely sunny and warm Sydney Harbour. I'm just looking across the harbour now. There's a few ferries drifting around the handsome Iron Harbour Bridge is over to the left and to the right, of course, the Sydney Opera House.

And goodness, it's a pleasure to be here, but the place is looking so empty.

I turned up this morning. There were two flights that landed almost simultaneously. Japan

Airlines from Tokyo, which I was on having connected in the Japanese capital from Heathrow

and also the Contest flight from Los Angeles. Now, I talked to lots of people on my flight

and goodness, it was a surprise. Returning

Australians, the old business traveller, not the sort of people I'd expected to find at all,

just walking in here to the City Extra Cafe. It was, yeah, a system, a number of people who I just

thought, well, we're bound to have people who are tourists

and are going to be off to see loved ones. But no, I think I might be the only international

tourist in Sydney today, unusual position to be in. But let me tell you what it's like.

The really tricky thing is all the onerous paperwork

that you need to sort out before you even get on a plane. You've got to get your e-visitor visa,

which was actually a piece of cake. It took me about seven minutes and that's free and it's

quite straightforward. It's like the American Esther, but just much easier,

and you don't have to pay money for it, which is great.

And you get a result really quickly.

So that was straightforward, but then you've got to get your vaccination certificates.

They're not worried about boosters.

They'd like to know about all your jabs,

but from their point of view,

fully vaccinated counts as just being double-jacked. Then you need a pre-departure test. That can be

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