Home Affairs chief Mike Pezzullo refuses to say who is responsible for hotel quarantine

The Department of Home Affairs secretary says the feds and states have to co-operate on international arrivals.

Department of Home Affairs secretary Mike Pezzullo. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage

Department of Home Affairs secretary Mike Pezzullo has refused to weigh in whether the federal government should take over hotel quarantine, saying the Commonwealth and the states would have to co-operate on housing international arrivals whatever the arrangement.

Anthony Albanese and Labor state premiers like WA’s Mark McGowan have ramped up calls in recent weeks for Scott Morrison to create a national quarantine strategy, arguing it is constitutionally a Commonwealth responsibility.

In a rare television interview on Tuesday, Mr Pezzullo refused to reveal his department’s advice on quarantine and said it was up to national cabinet to determine Canberra’s role.

“From an operational point of view and an administrative point of view, whichever way you want to run a quarantine activity, in a federation it always have to resolve down to teamwork,” he told Sky News.

“The international border is controlled at the federal level, it’s clearly stated as a federal responsibility, but of course public health is a state response.

“You couldn’t countenance a situation where people are flooding into the country because the border is very open but then you had very restrictive state public health orders … so it has to come down to teamwork.”

Mr McGowan – who has put Perth into a five day lockdown over a hotel quarantine guard contracting COVID-19 – has said this week the Prime Minister is ultimately responsible for quarantine and Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has called on Canberra to carry the costs of the scheme.

Mr Morrison has rejected calls for the government to set up alternative quarantine systems – including using old immigration detention centres – due to potential cost blowouts.

“If you want to see thousands of Australians come home every week, thousands … the advice was very clear that the most effective way to do that was in a partnership with the states,” he said at the National Press Club on Monday.

“The idea that we could sort of replicate a sort of border protection failure, detention network that was put in place by the previous Government and, somehow, that that’s the way we should have gone down, you will remember that alone led to cost blowouts of more than $11 billion at the time.”