South Australian Opposition Leader Peter Malinauskas urges national quarantine facilities

SA’s Labor leader says his plan to get quarantine facilities out of Adelaide would finally end “potentially catastrophic” hotel leaks and lockdowns.

Labor leader Peter Malinauskas is declaring he would establish a greenfields quarantine facility near Adelaide if he was premier, in a bid to stop Covid-19 leaks triggering catastrophic lockdowns.

Speaking after Victoria declared a seven-day statewide lockdown to stop an outbreak stemming from an Adelaide quarantine hotel, Mr Malinauskas said a Labor government would work with federal counterparts to create purpose-built national facilities.

This should involve a quarantine centre in each state, modelled on the Northern Territory’s Howard Springs facility, 30km southeast of Darwin’s CBD.

Opposition Labor Leader Peter Malinauskas. Picture: Roy VanDerVegt

“If I was premier now I’d be actively working with the Commonwealth Government about building a purpose-built quarantine facility that works,” he said.

But the State Government challenged Mr Malinauskas to detail where he would build the facility, how much it would cost and how it would be staffed and operated.

Mr Malinauskas said national figures provided to Labor showed hotel quarantine had a one per cent failure rate – for every 100 Covid-19 cases entering the system one was not contained.

“That one per cent failure rate is potentially catastrophic,” the Opposition Leader said.

This had triggered lockdowns in almost every state, at enormous cost to the economy, jobs and people’s mental health.

“If we want to keep people in work then we need purpose-built quarantine,” he said.

Mr Malinauskas said expert medical opinion said this needed to be near health facilities at a major population centre, ruling out remote locations.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison in March announced an expansion of the Howard Springs centre, saying its capacity would increase within months from 850 returned Australians a fortnight, to 2000.

Premier Steven Marshall on Thursday told parliament there had been 300,000 people through the national medi-hotel system and 20 Covid-19 transmissions.

Mr Malinauskas said the Howard Springs greenfield site model was safer than repurposing CBD hotels as quarantine facilities.

“That facility hasn’t had a single breach of quarantine, despite having a significant number of Covid cases coming through that facility, which stands in stark contrast to the medi-hotels around the country,” he said.

A state government spokesman accused Mr Malinauskas of attacking health experts such as chief public health officer Professor Nicola Spurrier, whose advice had been followed to keep the state safe during the pandemic.

“The Opposition need to come clean on where they would put this facility, given the health advice states any facility must be in close vicinity to a major hospital. Will the Labor Opposition establish this facility in Golden Grove or Colonel Light Gardens?,” he said.
“Labor haven’t said where this facility will go, won’t say how it would be staffed or operated and won’t how say much it would cost.”

Mr Malinauskas pointed out the returned Australian to whom the Victorian outbreak had been traced had caught Covid-19 in an Adelaide medi-hotel.

“The quarantine is supposed to contain the virus, in this case it’s spread the virus,” he said.

In the wake of Adelaide’s Covid-19 outbreak last November from a medi-hotel, Mr Malinauskas wrote to Mr Morrison and Premier Steven Marshall calling for an urgent review of COVID-19 quarantine options.

“It is now crystal clear to all concerned that the medi-hotel arrangements in the current format – of housing people with the virus in CBD hotels in proximity to subcontracted private security guards – is not safe,” Mr Malinauskas said at the time.

But Mr Marshall branded him “disgusting” for suggesting people should be placed into a detention centre to quarantine, after the Labor leader referred to Woomera and Christmas Island when declaring the current arrangement unsatisfactory.