After abrogating responsibility for quarantining of overseas arrivals to the states, Prime Minister Scott Morrison has rejected QLD’s sensible proposal to shift quarantine from city hotels to regional mining camps, claiming resources workers could become infected and thus hamper Australia’s economic recovery:
Ahead of national cabinet on Friday, Mr Morrison expressed scepticism about Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk’s plan to use a former mining camp near Gladstone…
Mr Morrison said in addition to health concerns, there was the risk of exposing workers coming up to Gladstone to do major maintenance works on gas projects in the coming 12 months.
“There’s not a great risk tolerance there, because that work needs to happen,” he said.
All of Australia’s recent COVID-19 outbreaks – Melbourne, Adelaide, Sydney and Brisbane – have stemmed from failures in hotel quarantine that have led to the virus leaking into the community.
The costs have been enormous, resulting in widespread hard lockdowns, border closures, disruptions, and many billions of dollars in lost economic activity and economic stimulus.
It simply makes no sense housing quarantine in densely-packed inner-city hotels where the risk of contamination and spread into the community is high.
Instead, Australia’s quarantine system should:
- House international arrivals away from population centres (e.g. in low density remote army bases and mining camps);
- Utilise only highly trained and well paid staff;
- Ensure these staff work in dedicated teams (to avoid cross-contamination) and remain on site throughout their deployment (similar to mining FIFO workers); and
- Conduct regular testing of quarantine staff and guests.
The Howard Springs Facility in the Northern Territory is the model that Australia’s governments should seek to emulate:
QLD’s Gladstone proposal obviously fits this model.
Instead of opposing such an idea, and facilitating further quarantine outbreaks in the cities, Scott Morrison should actually do his job as Prime Minister and stop passing responsibility to the states.
The federal government is best placed to coordinate and fund Australia’s quarantine effort. It also has constitutional responsibility for quarantine and managing Australia’s international border.
Australia’s governments must get quarantine arrangements right if we are to avoid further costly virus outbreaks, shutdowns, and disruption. This necessarily involves moving quarantine out of city hotels into low density accommodation in remote areas.
Leith has previously worked at the Australian Treasury, Victorian Treasury and Goldman Sachs.
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Should workers be forced back to the CBD?
The Melbourne City Council continues to plead
“The costs have been enormous, resulting in widespread hard lockdowns, border closures, disruptions, and many billions of dollars in lost economic activity and economic stimulus”
Yeah, all for a growing list of dual citizens who were warned months ago to get back to Australia. They had a punt and got it wrong. We shouldn’t have to suffer more because of them.
Shut the gate.
How about, “Don’t impose unnecessary restrictions.”
Twiggy clearly doesn’t think it’s a risk worth worrying about. https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2021/01/why-is-twiggy-risking-life-and-limb-flying-around-with-covid/
Twiggy clearly puts money ahead of all else. He’s already had it so both knows he’ll get through it, and might also be ammune.
I more want the end of restrictions that only seem to apply to the plebs…..but don’t want the virus to run rampant. It’s too brutal on too much of the community.
Shut. Up. Man.
Leftard, I think you’ll find lots of Australians now agree.
LOL. I actually tried to delete my comment because I thought it was unwarranted. Cheers man *thumbs up*
I think everyone has that experience with Totes….
Hombre, I’m not sure if you’ve ever watched Veep, but you are sounding more and more like Jonah Ryan every day:
“Now, there has been a lot of debate about whether vaccines do or do not kill people. And they do… That’s just science. But the other real killer… is diseases. And how do these diseases get into America?.
– ALL: How?
– Immigrants
– RANDOM MAN: Kill ’em!
– Yeah… Well, I mean, we don’t have to kill all of ’em. There are some good immigrants. Beyoncé is one ?. There was also this Mexican guy and he had this carne asada that I think was a family recipe. That guy stays.
But we are not going to stop diseases unless we close our borders!
– ALL: Yeah!
– From now on, no one in, no one out! Thank you. No one in, no one out!
It’s not about migrants, and it’s certainly not about killing anyone.
It’s about what’s in our collective interests.
FO with your garbage woke idiocy.
We’re so soft as a country, a people, we can’t even make decisions in the interests of the greater good for Australians.
We’re inevitably doomed. That’s when you’ll see your scenario in real life.
Eye roll at Totes be Woke – 36,000 Aussies are desperately trying to get back to Oz and have been trying to for months but with only 1500 quarantine places in some states, and limited flights, its impossible.
So this “shut the gate” crap is unreasonable and unconscionable. If you were stuck in another country you’d be desperately whining about how “the government should be doing more” to get aussies home.
I wouldn’t be stuck in another country, because I would have met the deadline.
If I took the punt, and lost, it’d be my problem.
I’m sick to fking death of how soft people are. Men now think like women. You a bloke or chick? Actually don’t bother answering.
You think this is how we evolved and survived as a species?
36,000 Aussies DUAL CITIZENS that had fair warning……. 25m traumatised Australians. It’s a simple decision.
Shut the gate.
I think some of us have evolved more than others.
lol. We’ll see who comes out the other end.
It sure as fk won’t be your inner city effeminate woke leftards.
If this was game of right wing bingo you would have won by now.
– Insults
– tired cliches
– classic MAGA lines – woke, leftards, snowflake.
This is a business blog not Parler.
I should have added you’ll be bred out of the species once women work out the horrendous mistake they’ve made.
You and others set the tone, and I’m sick of pandering to you cucks.
Not our Totes (our resident hard core right wing nutter)
https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2021/01/time-to-take-quarantine-out-of-hotels/#comment-4063383
Except Coshing the unemployed, Except bullshit jobs, except worker casualisation, except rorts for the aged and the wealthy at the expense of the young and the working……..Except almost everything the Liberal Government currently fronted by ScoMo stands for
Hey Totes, there would be Tory strategists out there looking at blog posts like yours and wondering if there is a demographic out there for whom ‘aggressively oppose’ means fellate. The Tories would like your opposition mate
Gunna, I’m trying to see how Totes stream of insults adds to the MB conversation on the topic of quarantine in mining camps and not seeing it.
I think someone needs a little nap.
Bubbley
Are you trying to shut down an alternative opinion? lol. The hypocrisy of the woke is laughable.
Gunna. I’m of the left. https://ibb.co/bvpwpQt
The old sensible left.
“If I took the punt, and lost, it’d be my problem.
I’m sick to fking death of how soft people are. ”
So how about you harden the F up and we can get over this quarantine nonsense over the sniffles.
and polls will tell us he is doing great job… at blaming others everytime things go bad and claiming credit when things do work out.
He’s a joke. Can’t wait to open the borders to the inflow of money for him and his donors.
Scomo desperately hoped to carry on Turnbull’s reputation as the do nothing PM. But try as he might, things keep happening that make him have to do sh!t.
Not. Happy. Jan
+1 million, but he’s trying mighty hard to keep that do nothing record intact
SFM has no idea on anything – he’s as thick as a brick. How he ever became PM I will never understand.
At least he isn’t suggesting people inject bleach…
But that AC for Margaret Court…
It’s a Happy Clappy circle jerk.
The difference is that Trump is a lunatic so it’s expected that he would say some out there sh!t.
SFM doesn’t come across as a loon – just plain dumb.
Humour is now cancelled.
Nah… he has a great ideas about how to shovel $$$$ to his owners.
Where would his masters who own hotels get the $$$ but for hotel quarantine.
People who are really good at playing the game inside their circle and who climb through the ranks are often the most incompetent in the real world because they are some detached from reality. There’s a reason why study after study shows that to be “successful” you have to be a psychopath. People who could actually use the power of government for the greater good don’t play the game so well and thus never actually achieve anything. Every once in a while you get someone who can gain power and not be a complete douche.
#scottyfrommarketing has no vision, no morals. Just spin and a lust for power. However he has an effective marketing campaign so people believe differently.
Scomo: “there was the risk of exposing workers coming up to Gladstone to do major maintenance works on gas projects”. If that’s his logic, then continuing to do quarantine in the singnificantly more dense and vibrant CBDs is significantly worse. FFS…
Yes, it is ironic but remember this is the PM who was berating Dan Andrews to open up when Melbourne was in the middle of its second wave and hadn’t got numbers under control.
If Melbourne had done that, Covid would be running loose around the country and Australia would be like England, where the National Health System is currently collapsing under the weight of Covid19 patients.
I love Scott and think he’s a great Prime Minister. Hotels are crucial to our brilliant tourism industry and need support during these hard times to make sure they sustain good enough profits to remain open ready for the next tourism boom. Using them for hotel quarantine is a ace way to achieve this. Well done Scott.
There’s a lot of empty mining camps in CQ from discontinued operations that could be utilised in some shape or form.
Unfortunately many govt decisions follow the path of least resistance coupled with plausible deniability aligned as close to the status quo as possible (which requires the least amount of change & therefore risk) and is therefore, by and large, the way things will go
Jeez he’s a dumb cnt.
If it gets out in a mining area, what’s the real risk, especially with good control in/out
Compared to, you know, getting out in Mel and killing 800 people
Fark he’s a venal POS
obviously, it would be easy to contain reasonably quickly and without the need for more lockdowns…
I would prefer to think Scomo is just too dumb to understand this ut I suspect he sees political advantage in it ( which could also be because he is too dumb)
Unless ScoMo can find the answer in his dog’s good book, he has a problem?
Nah, Scummo is just about looking after his mates who own hotels.
If Glenn Lazarus was the “brick with eyes”, then Scomo is the “brick with marketing”. The one with eyes was smarter.
> Scott Morrison should actually do his job
You mean only working 4 days a week and going on holidays a lot right? 🤔
Nah, look after liberal party donors, and [email protected] over the population if he has some spare time.
The last two words of this posts heading are superfluous.
“Mr Morrison said in addition to health concerns, there was the risk of exposing workers coming up to Gladstone to do major maintenance works on gas projects in the coming 12 months.”
Apart from basic stuff like the virus can only survive on surfaces for 28 days and that leaves 11 months for to deep clean the camps, this line shows how disconnected from Covid19 Morrison is and who he really works for – the big miners.
Oh…and just a sudden thought… if ScoMo is concerned about the availability of accommodation for miners, does that mean there is another big build coming up? I haven’t been keeping up with Adani etc so if someone knows please chime in.