Capacity at Darwin’s Howard Springs quarantine facility could double PM says, as negotiations with NTG get underway

The capacity of Darwin’s Howard Springs quarantine facility could be expanded and potentially doubled in a bid to bring home more Australians stranded overseas, though this may have to wait until the cyclone season ends.

THE capacity of Darwin’s Howard Springs quarantine facility could be expanded and potentially doubled in a bid to bring home more Australians stranded overseas, though this may have to wait until the cyclone season ends.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison, after Friday’s national cabinet meeting, revealed the Commonwealth was in negotiations with the NT government to expand the capacity of Howard Springs beyond 850 people per fortnight and “potentially well beyond that”.

AUSMAT staff conduct a Swabbing run at a PPE drill at the NCCTRCA/AUSMAT sections of the Howard Springs coronavirus quarantine Centre on Darwin's outskirts. Picture: GLENN CAMPBELL via NCA NewsWire

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“(This) would involve a more than doubling of that capacity in Howard Springs,” he said.

Chief Minister Michael Gunner confirmed discussions were underway, but indicated the NT would see if it could go beyond the current cap as “we emerge from the cyclone season”.

Mr Gunner this week said one of the constraints of expanding the international wing of Howard Springs, formally known as the Centre for National Resilience, was the capacity of the cyclone shelter at the former mining camp.

The government also continues to use a portion of the Howard Springs facility for domestic quarantine under its hot spot border measures.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison during a press conference in the Prime Minister's Courtyard on February 05, 2021 in Canberra, Australia. (Photo by Sam Mooy/Getty Images)

A third round of negotiations to increase the capacity of the facility comes as Mr Morrison declared Australia’s number one priority was assisting the return of Australians stranded overseas, of which there are about 40,000.

He said expanding Howard Springs was a “far more effective way” to ramp up the repatriation effort compared to opening new facilities in regional areas, as has been suggested by Queensland.

“If you’re adding to an existing facility in an existing place then you’re also not exposing new areas of health risk,” Mr Morrison said.

“You are actually just keeping it focused where you’ve been able to demonstrate you can maintain and manage that risk”.

The Commonwealth and NT governments first struck the Howard Springs deal in October, when the capacity was 500 repatriated Australians per fortnight.

This increased to 850 after the deal was renegotiated in December.

The bilateral repatriation deal, originally worth up to $54.7m to the NT government was also quadrupled to $243.7m.

The Prime Minister said discussions were ongoing about a proposal out of Queensland to build a quarantine facility in Toowoomba, near the Wellcamp Airport, to house returned Australians.

“There’s a lot more information we’re going to need before we can get to an assessment of how we go forward on that,” he said.

“And it’s not just about, you know, understanding the costing arrangements, but it is understanding the workforce arrangements to run a facility like that, and how that can be delivered in that location, what the impact is on other local health facilities in a regional location like that.”

National cabinet on Friday agreed that from February 15 South Australia would increase their international arrival capacity to 530 a fortnight, Victoria would increase 1310, and NSW and Queensland had agreed to expand their caps to previous levels.

Mr Morrison said he was still working through arrangements with Western Australian Premier Mark McGowan.