Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Northern Australia) Share this | Hansard source

[by video link] One of the recurring themes of the COVID pandemic in Australia has been this Prime Minister's failure to act—failure to act on advice; failure to act on the facts—and nowhere more than in the area of quarantine. We have known for close to two years that construction of purpose-built quarantine facilities is vital to keeping COVID rates in Australia to a minimum, and—despite that advice; despite report after report from the government's own hand-picked expert, Jane Halton, calling for purpose-built quarantine stations—we are still yet to see a single new quarantine station built by this government anywhere in the country.

This pandemic has been going for nearly two years. This government has had ample opportunity to build purpose-built quarantine facilities which would keep Australians safe, and the emergence of the omicron variant makes very clear that this pandemic is a long way from being over. It's very clear that we need to prepare for all circumstances—including the emergence of new variants about which we know very little and which are most likely to be developing in other parts of the world and, potentially, being brought to Australia. That's why quarantine facilities are so important.

Let's just look at how the most recent delta outbreak commenced in Sydney: it commenced because we had a poorly vaccinated population because of the government's failures on vaccine rollout—a poorly vaccinated population hit by a new variant entering the community because of the government's reliance on hotel quarantine. It was the fact that people were in hotel quarantine—were being transported from airports to hotel quarantine—that led to the delta variant getting out and into the community, and, tragically, leading to the deaths of Australians in a number of states, not to mention the enormous business losses that we've seen all around the country. That's why purpose-built quarantine matters, and that's why it should have happened well before now.

It is the case, fortunately, that there are governments who are moving ahead with building quarantine stations. In my state of Queensland, the Queensland government is well advanced in getting the new Wellcamp quarantine station just outside Toowoomba completed, and all indications are that it will be built by the end of this year. But even on this one the Morrison government is nowhere to be seen. This quarantine station, which is likely to be up and running before the end of the year, will receive not a single dollar of federal government investment—yet again, it's being left to the states, to Labor states, to carry the can for a government that fails to act in an area of its responsibility. Just like aged care—another area of gross failure by this government—quarantine is a federal government responsibility. There can be no doubt whose job it is to do this, and there can be no doubt who is dropping the ball—that is, Prime Minister Scott Morrison and his government. The only other quarantine station that is under construction in Queensland is at Pinkenba, near the Brisbane Airport. I was alarmed to read a couple of weeks ago that the federal government is considering halving the number of places that will be available at that quarantine station. It may turn out that that is a very short-sighted decision now that we have the emergence of this new variant.

The decision by the government to temporarily extend the closure of Australia's international borders is a decision that Labor supports. We have always argued that we need to apply the precautionary principle when new variants emerge and new circumstances emerge. But that is causing real consternation in the tourism industry and the international education industry, which were both really looking forward to international borders starting to reopen. That's why purpose-built quarantine stations matter. If we are to have confidence and security about our ability to bring people, particularly international workers and international students, into our country, we need to have these kinds of purpose-built quarantine facilities around the country to provide that kind of security and make sure that new variants aren't being brought into this country.

Why is it that Mr Morrison is always so slow to act? Nearly two years have elapsed since the beginning of this pandemic and we don't have a single new quarantine station. We saw it with the bushfires, we saw it with vaccines and we're seeing it now with quarantine as well. It's always too little, too late from this Prime Minister. And he never takes responsibility, even when the Constitution says that quarantine is his responsibility.