An Australian mother has been left heartbroken after her attempts to help hundreds of other families with babies return home elicited silence from the government.
Carly - who is now in hotel quarantine in Australia - organised the campaign from the UK, with about 350 families registered to return.
She found an airline prepared to do the flights but was forced to walk away from the plan after communication attempts to officials outlining the proposal weren't responded to.
"It's just heartbreaking for me because I can't get home, I can't get these people home," she told a Senate inquiry on Thursday.
"I feel that I've done everything in my power humanly possible to try and get involved and make a change, and nothing happened."
Carly - who does not want to release her surname after receiving abuse over social media - said she had only heard back from Labor's foreign affairs spokeswoman Penny Wong.
Some families have since returned, with cots and high chairs not always available in hotel quarantine.
One mother could only take her eight-month-old baby outside for 15 minutes a day - and that was to a smoking area.
"I've got pictures of him covered in smoke ash on his hands and his knees because that's the only place that he was able to crawl."
David and Kate Jefferies also shared their struggle to return home from Canada where they've been since March after travelling to care for David's sick mother.
The couple have a young son and have had multiple flights cancelled in their expensive quest to return.
They're booked on a flight next month but expect to be bumped off, with their bill totalling about $50,000.
"We live in a state of constant uncertainty ... we are simultaneously always leaving and never leaving," David told the inquiry.
"Being stranded is expensive and the Australian bills haven't stopped just because we're not home."
David is angry sports teams and their families have been allowed into Australia, after Mr Morrison said Australians were at the front of the queue.
"We hope to raise our son to have more respect for the truth than the prime minister of Australia," he said.
"The reality is there is no queue that my family and I can join to reserve our spot in hotel quarantine."
During the course of the pandemic more than 426,000 people have returned, with 30,000 of those on government-facilitated flights.
Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade officials told the inquiry 1.3 per cent of returnees had tested positive for the virus.
About 36,000 Australians want to come home, a steady increase on the 24,000 that were registered with the government in September.
At the time, Scott Morrison said he was keen to get as many as possible - if not all - of the stranded travellers home in time for Christmas.
Mr Morrison insists good progress has been made off that benchmark, putting the blame on states for the cap.
"Australia is doing everything we possibly can to get as many Australians home," he told reporters in Canberra.
"But there are obviously understandable constraints to that because of the quarantine capacity."
The Senate inquiry will also grill senior bureaucrats from the foreign affairs, health, home affairs, prime minister and cabinet and infrastructure departments.
