In her words: Why the Premier is going it alone with the Wellcamp regional quarantine hub

The Queensland Premier announced the construction of a new regional, purpose-built 1000 bed quarantine hub near Toowoomba this morning. Here, in her own words, are the reasons she’s made the call to go ahead without any federal assistance.

The Queensland Premier announced the construction of a new regional, purpose-built 1000 bed quarantine hub near Toowoomba today. Here is a transcript of the announcement made this morning by Annastacia Palaszczuk, deputy premier Steven Miles, Wellcamp airport and business park owner John Wagner and Queensland Health Minister Yvette D’Ath.

Queensland Premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk:

I’m here with the deputy premier, the chief health officer, the health minister and also with our good friends John Wagner and the Wagner family to talk about a really important issue for Queenslanders.

Now we all know that our hotels were not built to deal with the Delta strain of this virus. In fact what’s happening in New South Wales and Victoria is a direct result of the delta strain coming in and essentially breaching hotel quarantine.

So we need regional quarantine facilities. I have been advocating this for a long, long time. It is a no-brainer.

People across Queensland come up to me and they say to me ‘We agree with you. We don’t need people being in hotels we need them in regional facilities’.

How do we know they work? Well look at Howard Springs. Howard Springs has been a brilliant example.

You’ve seen our Olympians come back and stay there. It’s spread out, there’s fresh air for people, people don’t have to stay in rooms without balconies.

I’ve done hotel quarantine myself. There is a constant flow of people coming up and down in the lifts. Our hotels were not meant to be the last line of defence to deal with a global pandemic.

Now we have agreed with the Commonwealth about Pinkenba. So we’ve got that agreement and the Commonwealth is building that facility.

Well, today I’m pleased to announce that my government has reached agreement with John Wagner and the facility in Toowoomba will be built.

Our cabinet has given the go ahead and as you can see right behind us, construction is underway today.

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk at the site of a quarantine hub that will be built at Wellcamp Airport in Toowoomba. Picture: Jarrard Potter

This is going to be a great boost for our defence against the delta virus in this country, and in fact, I believe we need regional facilities right across the country.

We are going to be dealing with delta for quite some time and if we want to open Australia up, we want to open our states up, regional quarantine facilities are the second part of the answer.

The first part of the answer is vaccine. So I need the vaccine rollout and we need to make sure we have quarantine regional facilities, away from our densely populated cities that can spread the virus as rapidly as we’ve seen happen, unfortunately, in New South Wales and of course in Victoria.

So the deputy premier will go through a few more details. It will be a 1000 bed capacity.

In fact, I’ve been calling for this since January. It could have been built by now but we are going to have this facility starting to be up and running by the end of the year, with 500 beds and a thousand bed capacity by the first quarter of next year.

I know the Wagner family and I know John, and when John says he’s going to get things done he gets things done. And you can see by the fact it’s starting today is a commitment by his family and a commitment to the people of this state.

This is a commitment by the Wagner family working with the Queensland government to say to the people of Queensland ‘We want to keep you safe’.

And the best way to keep you safe and to keep delta out of Queensland is to build as quickly as possible a regional quarantine facility, and as soon as that regional quarantine family is built, we are ready to put it to use.

Deputy Premier Steven Miles:

Well you can see behind us what we’ve been saying all year, that we have the perfect location for a regional quarantine accommodation facility.

It is buffered from the community, it is a greenfield location but ready for construction. In fact, early works are underway as we speak, and it is adjacent to an airport.

It will be the first facility, after Howard Springs, to be completed and be accommodating returning travellers.

The talk about this facility has gone for too long. And the premier gave me a very clear instruction to get it going, make it happen and that’s what we’re announcing today.

Five hundred beds will be online by the end of the year growing to 1000 by the end of first quarter next year.

That will be added to then by the Commonwealth governments Pinkenba facility, another 1000 beds, by around the middle of the year. As you’ve heard, our hotel quarantine capacity is currently stretched with more than 5000 people and that just underlines the need for us to have facilities like this.

We do that hope flights will be able to land here at the adjacent airport. The media that travelled with me will have seen just how convenient that airport is. We would expect that once the facility is built we will have support to be able to do that.

We do know that airlines and crew are happy to fly in here and we do hope that once its built, and the heat is out of the issue, the Commonwealth would support that.

Deputy Premier Steven Miles and Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk at the site of a quarantine hub that will be built at Wellcamp Airport in Toowoomba, with John, Joe and Neill Wagner: Picture: Jack Tran

But, if not, we currently bus arriving travellers from Brisbane to hotel quarantine accommodation on the Gold and Sunshine Coasts and so that would remain an option to get people here safely.

The design and operation would be closely modelled on the very successful Howard Springs facility. It will be purpose built based on the learnings from that facility, therefore the infection control can keep our staff, the other people in the facility as well as the local community safe, in fact much, much safer than non-purpose built hotel quarantine accommodation where we currently have people.

There will be a mix of single, double and family accommodation in cabin-style with balconies, and importantly, no hallways adjoining rooms which we have seen as vectors in hotel quarantine for the virus.

While we continue to work through the details of the health and policing model that will be implemented here, Covid-positive patients who require hospital care will be treated in one of the five Covid hospitals that we currently use, that we currently transfer people to.

By funding this facility ourselves and building this facility ourselves we can ensure that it replaces current hotel quarantine usage that will allow us to take travellers who are currently within the cap and put them into this facility, reducing the need for hotel quarantine.

Wagner Corporation chairman John Wagner at the announcement a quarantine hub would be built at Wellcamp Airport, owned by the Wagners. Picture: Jarrard Potter

I want to add to what the premier said about the Wagner’s and particularly john Wagner’s support for this facility. They really do care about the Queensland community and see this as one way they can support the community and help us in the effort to address Covid-19 and we certainly welcome that.

There have been times throughout this process where it would have been easier for them to walk away, but they haven’t. They’ve continued to work with us and now we’ve achieved this very important milestone.

The financing arrangement will be commercial and confidence but I can confirm that we have an initial one year lease with options to extend that for two and three years. When you consider that the last lockdown alone cost more than a billion dollars in economic impact and compensation you can see just what fantastic value it will be if we can avoid just one lockdown, let alone more, with this new facility so the work has started now.

It’s time for the politics to end. The facility will be built. It will be a purpose built facility, it will provide a great service to the Queensland community and, as the premier says, we actually need more of these facilities.

John Wagner, Non-Executive Director and co-founder of Wagners, a Toowoomba-based construction materials and services provider:

Thank you premier and deputy premier. First of all I would like to thank the Queensland government for having the confidence in us to go ahead with this facility, and I would also like to take the opportunity to congratulate the Queensland government for keeping Queenslanders safe.

I think the fact we are going to move ahead with this facility, which was mooted a long time ago and as the premier suggested it could have already been built and operational, but as the landlord of this facility to the Queensland government, we are working though the final design criteria to make sure that we have the best fit for purpose regional accommodation facility for return travellers that there is in the country, or in fact, the world.

Preliminary work has begun on a quarantine hub to be built at Wellcamp Airport in Toowoomba.

So this is going to be a great economic boost for Toowoomba. It will create a lot of local employment. Our local producers, just by the fact we have to produce 3000 meals a day will really benefit from this and it will help get Queensland out of Covid and on the road to economic recovery which we desperately need.

So thank you to the Queensland government and congratulate them on actually getting this to fruition. Thank you.

Queensland Health Minister, Yvette D’Ath:

Well this is a great day. We’ve been calling on this for months and if this had been built months ago when we first asked the Commonwealth to partner with us and the Wagner’s we potentially may not have had to make the very difficult decision we made yesterday to pause people domestically coming into hotel quarantine for a couple of weeks.

But now we can move forward and we have this great facility that is already, construction underway.

As the deputy premier has said, most of our transmission that has occurred within our hotel quarantine has occurred through those corridors, closed in corridors. We know that that is a very high risk. We know our hotels are not built to be quarantine facilities.

We know that when you build dedicated facilities like Howard Springs that you significantly reduce the risk of exposure and transmission for our community, so this is a great day.

I’m thrilled to be part of the Palaszczuk government partnering with the Wagner’s for this.

…..

The last thing I want to say about why this facility is so important. The Doherty institute has been talked about a lot, their modelling, recently. Their own report says we will need to keep some public health measures in place.

Test, trace isolate, quarantine. So even with high vaccination rates, we must continue these public health measures, which means we will continue to need quarantine facilities and we need to make sure they’re purpose built and they’re keeping our community safe.

Originally published as In her words: Why the Premier is going it alone with the Wellcamp regional quarantine hub