Bula from Fiji! A short note to readers
Bula, hello,
Just a note to let you know I am on a short holiday in Fiji this week and will resume posts on my return. Believe it or not my partner won a trip and lucky me, I got to come.
I can’t tell you what Fiji is actually like because our experience is the very touristy package resort kind of deal, but I can say that the weather is tropical (hot and still one day, cyclone the next), the beaches I’ve seen are stunning and the ocean water is almost as warm as a bath, the people are super friendly and it seems that they can all sing! It’s much cleaner more developed than Bali in Indonesia, the main tropical destination where West Australians like me would usually go to for this sort of holiday.
On the way here I was shocked to discover that Melbourne international airport does not allow travellers to opt out of going through the radiation machine. They say you have the right to opt out, but what they mean is, you have the right to never leave Australia on a plane unless you submit to being processed through the body scanner.
Everywhere else I’ve travelled in the world, they have an ‘opt out’ option of putting you through a manual pat down instead - which is very invasive, but has more predictable long term health outcomes than repeat exposure to the non-ionising millimeter wave (MMW) technology radiation used in Australian international airports. Other airports around the world also use backscatter X-ray and infrared technology.
On this occasion, I asked for the opt out option, and was informed that there is no opt out unless you have a written medical exemption from a doctor. I couldn’t really believe it, so tried reasoning with them, but just got “it’s the law,” “it’s safe,”“that’s fine but you can’t board your plane,” and other variations of ‘computer says no.’
Not being inclined to take medical advice from a 20 year old security officer, I called my doctor, who happened to be in his office and provided real medical advice to not go through the scanner, which he was happy to support with a medical exemption emailed to me on the spot. What a legend.
I looked it up and it turns out that body scanning for international travel has been compulsory in Australia since 2017 - even for babies and children. In other countries, such as the US, Canada, and the UK, children are exempted from MMW and X-ray body scanners.
I only started opting out of going through body scanners around a year and a half ago when I began travelling a lot more and started to wonder about the cumulative effects. I would only have gone through international Australian airports between 10-12 times during that period I guess. Although I did have to argue a bit to get through with a manual pat down once or twice, I was never told I couldn’t board the plane without going through the machine until this trip.
I’d say the Melbourne staff are enforcing the letter of the law to the nth degree (typical) whereas perhaps in other airports they’ll use discretion. Plus, a recent update to Australia’s travel rules on the Department of Home Affairs website (updated 3 February 2025) confirms that “you are unable to choose how you are screened at Australian airports,” so it’s possible that the Melbourne airport staff I encountered had been freshly schooled in their duty to refuse travellers a choice in the matter.
Authorities say the MMW machines are safe because the radiation is non-ionising (as in X-ray machines), and that there are “no known health risks.”
A quick surf of the internet finds that the main reservations regarding MMW scanners like those used in Australian international airports are privacy, unknown cumulative and long term effects, and unknown effects on cell signalling and gene expression.
As seems to be so often the case Australia, authorities seem content to declare technologies safe and mandate them while the finer points are still unknown.
For anyone intending to travel into or out of Australia who would prefer not to go through the MMW body scanner machine, be warned, you will need to have a medical exemption on you. Or, you can opt for a technical fix like a friend of mine, who has been wearing neoprene for international travel since reading some studies which suggest that the material can block or attenuate the MMW technology.
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No surprise Melbourne is doctrinaire but now Australiawide ??! Covid mandates all over again. Oh you have a choice but you can't go anywhere if you don't.
I’ve wondered about this too? Another medical intervention without informed consent?
On a similar theme, a friend complained recently about being engulfed in pesticide spray on a plane after landing from Haiwaii, apparently this is a WHO dictate? See: https://x.com/leilanidowding/status/1892838749819519035?s=46
So it seems in Australia people are groomed to submit to these assaults on their bodily autonomy…
Who is actually behind imposing these interferences?