Bilateral Howard Springs Quarantine Facility expansion agreement to be worth $513.5m to NT govt documents reveal

THE major expansion of Darwin’s gold-standard international quarantine facility will come with a sizeable open cheque courtesy of the Commonwealth, new documents have revealed.

THE major expansion of Darwin’s gold-standard international quarantine facility will come with a more than $500m open cheque courtesy of the Commonwealth, new documents have revealed.

The capacity of the Howard Springs quarantine facility, as announced earlier this month, is set to be more than doubled by the end of May, in a major logistic and operational effort that will require 400 extra workers.

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AUSMAT staff at Howard Springs Quarantine Facility. Picture: GLENN CAMPBELL via NCA NewsWire

Under the latest agreement between the Commonwealth and the NT government, the facility will be able to cater for 2000 repatriated Australians per fortnight by the end of May, up from the current capacity of 850.

The NT News can now reveal the bilateral repatriation deal will be worth $513.5m, double the previous deal worth $243.7m.

The original agreement, signed when Howard Springs opened under the eye of the National Critical Care and Trauma Response Centre in October 2020, was worth $54.7m.

It appears that the end date for the quarantine facility remains unchanged- December 2021.

Under the agreement, the Commonwealth will cover the costs incurred by the NT government in running or upgrading the facility, including staff, security, equipment and necessary infrastructure upgrades at the quarantine facility.

The agreement also outlines compliance audit requirements, including the need for the NT government to provide audit reports every three months while the Commonwealth will do their own also every three months.

The Commonwealth’s audits will relate specifically to infection control plans and activities, measured against the backdrop of the Halton review of hotel quarantine and Australian Health Protection Principal Committee (AHPPC) guidelines.

As part of the latest expansion, the international and domestic wings of the facility will be merged and the NCCTRC team will be transitioned out in place of a “single governance structure” controlled by the NT government.

When the expansion is in place, the Territory will be responsible for 15 per cent of Australia’s international quarantine capacity.