SA Police Commissioner Grant Stevens tells parliamentary committee a dedicated quarantine facility would be ‘ideal’

A dedicated quarantine facility for overseas travellers would be “safer” and “ideal”, the Police Commissioner has told a committee.

South Australia’s top cop has thrown his support behind establishing a purpose-built quarantine facility for travellers returning to the state from overseas.

Facing the parliamentary Covid-19 Response Committee, Police Commissioner and state co-ordinator Grant Stevens said creating a separate facility outside of the hotel system was an “ongoing consideration”.

“My advice from the discussions that I’ve been a part of is that the ideal (scenario) would be a dedicated facility outside of the hotel environment,” he told the committee.

“I think we need to acknowledge there is a risk of Covid-19 sneaking out of our medi-hotel environment, because of the highly infectious nature of the virus and its transmissibility.”

South Australia already has Tom's Court, a medi-hotel that it used only for positive cases. But the state government has so far resisted calls to set up a purpose-built dedicated facility for all overseas travellers, saying there are no suitable locations for it.

Opposition leader Peter Malinauskas has consistently called for a greenfields quarantine facility near Adelaide, in a bid to stop Covid-19 leaks triggering lockdowns.

Asked by committee member Emily Bourke if he thought a separate facility would be safer than the current hotel system, Mr Stevens said: “Yes, I think that is generally accepted”.

Police Commissioner Grant Stevens told the Covid-19 Response Committee that a separate facility would be safer.

“Obviously this is something that is front-of-mind, because we do know there is a risk that Covid-19 can escape from the medi-hotel environment,” he said.

Mr Stevens told the committee that no viable options had been presented so far.

For a separate facility to work, it must be close to an international airport and a suitable hospital, Mr Stevens said.

Opposition health spokesman Chris Picton again urged the government to establish a permanent, purpose-built facility, especially after Mr Stevens’s comments.

“Hotels were built for accommodating tourists, not containing a virus,” Mr Picton said.

“Labor has been pushing for permanent quarantine facilities to replace medi-hotels since last year.

“(Premier) Steven Marshall has repeatedly refused to consider the idea, despite the overwhelming evidence of the risks of medi-hotels.”

A state government spokesman confirmed there were still no viable options within SA for an alternative dedicated quarantine facility.

“The Federal Government has made it clear that any built-for-purpose facilities could only be used to increase the number of returned travellers through that state,” he said.

The spokesman said the Opposition’s plan would increase the number of returning Australians quarantined in SA.

“We do not support the Labor Opposition plan … as we already do our per-capita share of the national repatriation effort,” he said.

The Parafield flight school site was identified as the location for the state’s new international student hub, but Mr Stevens said it wouldn’t be suitable for non students.

“The risk assessment for the people coming in as international students returning to Australia is different to the assessment for people simply returning to Australia from other countries,” he said.

“But there is a high level of confidence that it will be quite suitable for the nature of people we are bringing into that alternative environment.

“If we are able to take that as a first step in relation to dedicated facilities, it’s certainly something we will be looking at, but there’s a range of other factors that need to be (considered).”

Mr Stevens said international students selected to arrive in SA would undergo testing and participate in a vaccination program while overseas, but authorities did not have the same level of control over general travellers returning.

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