Annastacia Palaszczuk renews push for federal aid on coronavirus quarantine facilities

Annastacia Palaszczuk has again sought federal support for her proposal to set up regional quarantine facilities for overseas arrivals.

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk. Picture: Attila Csaszar

Annastacia Palaszczuk has again sought federal support for her proposal to set up regional quarantine facilities for overseas arrivals in the face of opposition from a local Queensland mayor and accusations there is no detail to the plan.

Ahead of a national cabinet meeting on Friday, the Queensland Premier has written to Scott Morrison saying a regional-based facility would meet one of the central recommendations of last year’s Halton review into hotel quarantine.

Ms Palaszczuk last month said the state government was considering using workers camps in regional Queensland to quarantine arrivals after a cleaner at a quarantine hotel in Brisbane was infected with the British variant of the virus.

An existing 1400-room workers camp 20 minutes’ drive west of Gladstone and a yet-to-be-built, purpose-designed facility in Toowoomba are two sites flagged as alternatives for hotel quarantine in Queensland.

Gladstone mayor Matt Burnett on Monday wrote to Ms Palaszczuk and the Prime Minister voicing his community’s opposition to the proposal.

Ms Palaszczuk is on leave until the end of the week.

In response to Mr Barnett’s letter, the office of the Premier issued a statement saying Ms Palas­zczuk believed the proposed facilities met the needs identified in a review last year of quarantine by former health and finance department boss Jane Halton.

In her report, handed to the federal government in September, Ms Halton said the commonwealth “should consider a national facility for quarantine to be used for emergency situ­ations, emergency evacuations or urgent scalability”.

“Consideration of a regional quarantine facility is consistent with the recommendation of the Halton review for the commonwealth to consider establishing a national facility for quarantine,’’ a spokesperson for the Premier said. “As such, the Premier has recently sent further correspondence to the Prime Minister on the matter.”

Mr Morrison’s office has previously asked for a detailed proposal from Ms Palaszczuk and federal Liberal National Party MP Garth Hamilton, who represents the Toowoomba-based seat of Groom, said the local community was still waiting.

Mr Hamilton said he had been contacted by community members who were worried about the risk of the proposal. “This was announced by the Premier weeks ago as an idea without any details behind it,’’ he said. “We need to see a plan.’’