Palaszczuk’s white elephant

In a dud deal for hard-pressed Queensland taxpayers, the Palaszczuk government agreed to pay a cap of up to $108m – or $300,000 a day for 12 months – to a medical company to provide health services at its Wellcamp quarantine facility near Toowoomba. The 1000-bed centre has housed only about 700 people since it opened in February, an average of 30 guests a week. And its use is dwindling as the use of Covid-19 quarantine facilities peters out.

The company, Canberra-based Aspen Medical, is paid monthly on the basis of services actually delivered in the preceding month. A government insider told The Australian the company had been paid $16m for providing services at Wellcamp since the centre opened, an average of about $700,000 a week.

In a state in which teachers are set to become the highest paid in Australia and coal producers pay one of the highest tax rates in the world, 60 per cent, the medical deal is another example of the state’s peculiar financial abacus and how business has been done north of the Tweed.

Aspen Medical is a client of ­lobbying firm Anacta Strategies. The firm is run by two Labor lobbyists – Evan Moorhead and David Nelson – who have since been banned from doing business with the Palaszczuk government until 2024 following the Coaldrake integrity review. Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk’s former deputy chief of staff, Denise Spinks, now works for Anacta. In an earlier statement, Anacta said Ms Spinks had no involvement with Aspen Medical and had not disclosed any information about Wellcamp that she had learned while working for Ms Palaszczuk.

Financial details of the project have been shrouded in secrecy. The govern­ment owes taxpayers full disclosure about why the costs are so high.