$325,000 per inmate: Queensland’s Wellcamp quarantine hub will be mothballed within days.
The state government could have bought a one-bedroom unit for each guest. This was a trigger-happy decision to try and wedge the former federal government and this waste could have funded nearly 2,500 nurses in the middle of a health crisis.”
– Queensland Liberal-National Party Leader David Crisafulli
What about their Olympics?
The morons will still vote for her.
I didn’t know Qld still had an opposition. Now the spineless wastes of space are squeaking out, when they finally realise the people are angry.
They are just as much opportunists as the ALP. They would have salivated at having Wellcamp at their disposal.
Makes me wonder what the builders have on all the parties.
The Wagners found their Alan Bond.
Indeed.
You only get one Chooky and they’ve had theirs.
So much for Labor state governments’ unity with the federal government on tackling Covid.
Then again, ScoMo did abandon the field completely to state premiers’ tyranny.
Presuming anyone still actually wants to do serious quarantine … a one bedroom unit won’t do the job because it requires a physical air-gap between each building. If they had this facility on day one back in 2020 it would have been useful … building it now is at best in preparation for whatever next pandemic comes out of the lab, and we don’t know what the next one looks like.
Did Australia overall benefit from delaying the inevitable and avoiding the waves that hit Europe and the USA? Probably yes, but we don’t know why most of the Asian nations (including Australia and NZ) did significantly better than Europe. For example, on a per-capita basis Japan has had fewer deaths than Australia, way fewer than France, Italy, Spain, etc … and they have made it most of the way through the “Omicron” wave.
https://epidemic-stats.com/coronavirus/japan
Australia still has some way to go, but at least recently most Australians are getting mild infections only and haven’t been freaking out. Two Australians I know got hit fairly hard (sick for about two weeks) although of course there’s other non-covid virus types going around the place and only recently have doctors even bothered testing for anything other than covid. Thus no meaningful stats available.
The greater scandal is WA hospitals operating in code black despite being isolated from the rest of the country for two years. They have done nothing but play politics
No, Tel, it was never going to be useful to anyone but the Wagners. They will make a crust out of it. Speedway or some such with on site accomodation. Maybe even an illegal immigration centre.
The nearest international passenger airport is the other side of Brisbane, 130 plus kms, 2 hours drive. There are many hotels and other options in between.
It was just a grand and highly visible example of political stupidity with Other Peoples’ Money.
Perhaps Wagners should rename it Camp Palaszczuk for the service she did for them.
the only reason Camp Palaszczuk will ever be used by government is if they use it over other, better options to justify their earlier squanderfest of OPM.
Which raises the question, what is meant exactly by ‘in mothballs?’
Because, in principle, I don’t have any objection to a purpose-built quarantine facility for a mass of people in a genuine pandemic. A rich country should probably have such facilities and be willing to maintain them. That shouldn’t be prohibitively expensive and would be no more a pessimistic luxury than a warship – and we haven’t used one of those in anger for 75 years.
Wellcamp was thrown up by Palaszczuk to mine the ‘keeping us safe’ poll gold and to differentiate herself as a goody to Morrison’s baddie. The details of the contract with the Wagners remain top secret. Think about that. Two hundred million dollars of their money but the people of Queensland are banned from seeing the terms of the deal. Crisafulli needs to escalate. An independent inquiry is warranted.
CL
That shouldn’t be prohibitively expensive and would be no more a pessimistic luxury than a warship – and we haven’t used one of those in anger for 75 years.
Australian warships fired shots in anger during the Vietnam War, and were involved in armed actions during various stoushes in the Middle East since 1990.
PS, also during Konfrontasi in the 1960s.
Right but those were missions of geo-strategic choice, not continental defence.
What we need in Australia is a Royal Commission into the rule of law implications of what happened during the so-called pandemic. This is 1000 times more important than the ‘voice.’ Having disgraced themselves in government, however, the LNP are now disgracing themselves by burying what the Uniparty did to Australians over the last three years.
There’s also no getting around the fact that Australians loved the jackboot.
Tel, there’s an hypothesis that in the Asian countries people had already been exposed to a somewhat similar coronavirus in the past, thus providing some degree of immunity to Covid 19.
No building can ever be kept “in mothballs”. The idea is ludicrous. Ongoing maintenance will be required, a further drain on the public purse.
They can choose for this idiocy to be a political albatross around their necks* or sell it off.
* silly me. That would require an effective Opposition to remind them of it at every turn.
Entropy says:
29 July, 2022 at 9:03 pm
The nearest international passenger airport is the other side of Brisbane, 130 plus kms, 2 hours drive. There are many hotels and other options in between.
The nearest international facility is less than 2 kms away – at Wellcamp.
This airport is owned by the Wagners, as is the entire site.
“nearest international facility” = nearest international airport above.
Where’s struth.
CL
About Australians loving the jackboot.
We have allowed ourselves to be psychologically programmed to so do and moreover to bring it down upon our own necks. Just look at the wearing of face rags – no longer necessary for the likes of an unelected National Cabinet to mandate ‘masks’ for we are now prepared punish ourselves by pulling them on over mouths and noses to indicate bondage.
Wellcamp is an international freight terminal. It does not have immigration facilities for passengers, and is not approved for that purpose.
I’d be looking at the Wagners a bit more. This and other moves they have made have whiff of the white shoe brigade of the Joh era. As always though all will get a free pass because our media doesn’t have a scintilla of interest unless it involves the LNP…
not approved for that purpose
If they wanted to fly people there for internment, how long do you think it would take to change that (government) regulation?
Passenger flights operate from that airport (Australian)
Rockdoctor says:
30 July, 2022 at 1:48 pm
I was living in Toowoomba when the airport was built – it wasn’t common knowledge until it was about 3/4 built.
To build an international airport without all the green b/s stopping you is quite an achievement.
The Adani mine was screwed around for 10+ years by regulation and green b/s
Fat Tony, have no probs with the Wellcamp Airport. I have previously been in admiration of that feat.
What I do have a problem with is the attempted extortion of Townville City Council and Rocky City Council rate payers for $15mil a piece to build a brand new airport worth a fraction of the cost at said Adani mine (I have worked on the tenement when under Linc’s tenure). Sealing Moray Downs or Doongmabulla airstrip would have been much more feasible but much less lucrative.
Recently they have been at it again with the Townsville City Council with another project, I take issue with that fact whilst hiding behind commercial in confidence. Sorry had enough, my rates are high enough already without politicians fleecing it let alone a private corporation with friends in high places.
I suppose, I am very wary of the family if that is any explanation of my point of view.
I’m happy with that as one possible explanation, but there isn’t any direct experimental test that can demonstrate who has this special immunity … nor is there a good correlation in terms of the SARS outbreak of 2003 never made it to Australia not NZ either … and yet Aus, NZ, Japan, India, Singapore all had fairly similar deaths per capita … all of which were much lower than Europe.
on all these questions re Covid rates the easy answer is if it isn’t written down it never happened.
That has not even begun to be sought. And takes years.
Entropy says:
31 July, 2022 at 9:24 am
That has not even begun to be sought. And takes years.
I don’t know how aware you have been of the government behaviour of the past 2.5 years, but many regulations were changed overnight, without reference to any of the Parliaments.
Their “Biosecurity Act” seems to have given them power to do just about anything they want.
Rockdoctor says:
30 July, 2022 at 5:59 pm
My comment “To build an international airport without all the green b/s stopping you is quite an achievement” was actually along the lines of what you said, without actually stating it…
Well,it still isn’t an international passenger airport, the airport has been there for years, and the Wellcamp facility has been being built for two years. I reckon it isn’t as easy as you want it to be to win an argument.
Entropy says:
I don’t care – you just keep living in your little pretend world if it makes you feel safe.