Lease ends on Queensland’s $500,000-a-day Wellcamp quarantine centre

Queensland taxpayers have spent more than $500,000 a day on average for the privately owned Wellcamp quarantine centre which has been shuttered since August.

John Wagner, left, with Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk and Deputy Premier Steven Miles at the Wellcamp quarantine centre in February 2022. Picture: Nev Madsen.

Queensland taxpayers have spent more than $500,000 a day on average for the privately owned Wellcamp quarantine centre, which has been shuttered since August and will be handed back to the Wagner Corporation this month.

Wagners, which owns the adjacent airport near Toowoomba, won the contract for Wellcamp without going through an open tender process and will own the site when the lease expires on April 29.

The state auditor-general has been probing the cost of the project for almost a year, including government use of confidential­ity provisions after some contracts bypassed tender processes.

LNP finance spokesman Jarrod Bleijie referred the matter to Auditor-General Brendan Worrall last February, asking him to investigate “whether a rush to complete negotiations resulted in a poor outcome for taxpayers” and whether other proponents put similar proposals to the ­government.

Mr Worrall is due to hand a report to parliament next month.

Wellcamp, funded by the state government, was one of a series of centres built during the Covid-19 pandemic to replace hotel quarantine. The commonwealth spent more than $1bn to build three facilities at Mickleham in Melbourne’s outer north, Bullsbrook on Perth’s northeastern fringe and at the Damascus Barracks in the Brisbane suburb of Pinkenba. All three have remained largely unused after mandatory quarantine was scrapped early last year.

In 2021, the Queensland government pressed ahead with its deal with the Wagners to build Wellcamp even though the Morrison federal government had already proposed Pinkenba, which was closer to the international airport and tertiary hospitals.

The $400m Pinkenba centre is on commonwealth land, owned by federal taxpayers, and will be kept for the Defence Force and as accommodation for future pandemics or ­disaster management.

After months of claiming that the Wellcamp deal was subject to “commercial-in-confidence” privacy provisions, the Palas­zczuk government eventually revealed it spent $223.5m for the facility, which was used for just six months and housed 730 people.

Building and leasing costs have totalled $198.5m while a contract with Compass Group to provide services like catering, cleaning and security cost $9m.

Aspen Medical, a client of Labor-aligned lobbyist firm Anacta, was awarded a $108m contract to provide health services at Wellcamp without going to tender, but only $16m was actually spent because the facility sat near-empty.

By the time the lease expires on April 29, Queensland taxpayers will have spent an average of $511,000 a day on Wellcamp.

Wagner Corporation chairman John Wagner said the Wellcamp quarantine centre was still a “good deal for taxpayers”.

“If you look at what the federal government spent at Pinkenba, which was more than double what we spent, and they haven’t had a single person in there, that sort of tells the story,” he said.

“At least this facility is now built and operational and we can put it to good community use.”

Mr Wagner said in the short term Wellcamp would likely be used to house agricultural workers as there was a “desperate shortage” of accommodation in the region.

Wagners eventually plans to use the site as accommodation for the family’s proposed $175m entertainment precinct.

The Palaszczuk government has already committed $40m to develop the precinct, which would include a racetrack and 40,000-person performing arts venue, and Mr Wagner said the corporation intended to approach the commonwealth for more funding “in the next few months”.