Almost a quarter of NT quarantine bills overdue at end financial year, millions owed by bill dodgers

Almost one quarter of domestic quarantine bills were overdue at the end of the financial year.

• Debt collectors called in as only 60 per cent fork out for Territory hotel quarantine bills

ALMOST one-quarter of domestic quarantine bills were overdue at the end of the financial year, with millions owed by quarantine bill dodgers from six months ago or more.

As at June 30, there were 1833 quarantine fee bills unpaid after 90 days from the 7930 issued by NT Health to domestic travellers, according to data obtained by the NT News.

The federal government is responsible for quarantine fees charged to international repatriates entering the Centre for National Resilience

For invoices issued by NT Health older than six months, Australians who underwent mandatory quarantine in Darwin and Alice Springs owed a whopping total of $2.66m – a fraction of what the multi-agency quarantine response has cost.

A portion of the outstanding fees includes individuals on payment plans.

NT Health confirmed that debt collectors had been called in to claw back the millions owed to the Territory government.

As of Monday morning, there were 2290 people undertaking quarantine in the NT, with seven active cases in the Territory. All cases are in quarantine.

The Territory’s quarantine debt woes have weighed heavily on the government for months.

In March this year, the NT News reported the Territory’s hotel quarantine system, which has now been closed, had left the government deep in the red due to domestic travellers dodging their quarantine dues.

Only 60 per cent of hotel quarantine bills had been paid nearly nine months after the NT shut down the hotel system in favour of a domestic wing at the Howard Springs facility.

The federal government officially handed over the keys to the Howard Springs international quarantine facility in May.

The Centre for National Resilience at Howard Springs started expanding its capacity earlier this year to be able to accept about 2000 repatriated Australians from overseas each fortnight, up from 850 in March.

The expanded facility can also house about 1000 domestic travellers on any given day.

In a major operation requiring more than 400 extra workers, the expansion of the gold-standard facility carried a price tag of $513.5m, paid for by the commonwealth.

It’s a far cry from the original agreement, signed when Howard Springs opened under the eye of the National Critical Care and Trauma Response Centre in October 2020, which was worth $54.7m.

Under the latest agreement, the commonwealth covers the costs incurred by the NT government in running or upgrading the facility, including staff, security, equipment and necessary infrastructure upgrades.

The operational cost to NT Health alone in November 2020, according to information provided during budget estimates, was $681,037.

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But now, after almost a year of an open-door policy for domestic travellers, Chief Minister Michael Gunner has banned non-approved travel from declared Covid-19 hotspots.

Mr Gunner said the policy up to now, which allowed anyone to enter NT’s quarantine facilities at a cost of $2500, was no longer tenable.

He said the Howard Springs and Alice Springs facilities had become a “victim of its own success”, and was being used inappropriately by interstate travellers. “More and more, the Howard Springs facility is being used by people from interstate who have no intention of spending any further time in the Territory … it does cost (the NT government) more than $2500,” he said.

“They are using the best quarantine facility in Australia and then they are leaving us.

“Our quarantine system isn’t there so that people from Sydney can have a holiday in Broome.”

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Originally published as Almost a quarter of NT quarantine bills overdue at end financial year, millions owed by bill dodgers