Coronavirus: ‘Virus will be a part of our lives by year’s end’
Flight Centre CEO Graham Turner believes Australians will soon be ‘living with Covid’ so there’s no need for quarantine facilities.
One of Australia’s top tourism bosses does not think there will be a need for purpose-built quarantine facilities by the end of the year as the pandemic “is almost over”.
Flight Centre co-founder and CEO Graham Turner, a vocal critic of lockdowns and state border closures, believes Australians will be “living with Covid” in six months’ time, negating the need for specialist quarantine.
“Most overseas countries, if you are in the US, UK or Europe, the concept of a quarantine facility is ludicrous because they are already living with it. No other country in the world, that I can think of, would consider building quarantine facilities for Covid-19 except Australia and New Zealand.”
Mr Graham’s comments come as Victoria prepares to build a new 500-bed facility near Avalon Airport to bring home more stranded Australians and Queensland remains in a negotiation deadlock with the commonwealth over its proposed hub.
Annastacia Palaszczuk has been lobbying Scott Morrison to approve a purpose-built centre in southern Queensland for returning Australians, international students and Pacific Island labourers. The Morrison government has repeatedly rejected the Toowoomba Wellcamp quarantine camp, proposed by billionaire construction magnate John Wagner.
Released after the Palaszczuk government submitted a 95-page plan, the criteria requires any federally backed facility to be close to an international airport … be commonwealth-owned and within an hour’s drive of a tertiary hospital.
Mr Turner said he supported quarantine centres but they would be need to built by early August to have any use in this pandemic. “In the longer term Australia probably needs quarantine facilities for the next pandemic but I would argue this one is almost over. I think we will be living with it, like the flu, in six to nine months’ time,” he said.
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