Last week I mentioned the $40 million wasted on 12 people’s hotel quarantine costs by this Government – a huge waste of $3.3 million per person, uncovered by the LNP in carrying out our job of holding this Government to account. In doing so, I mentioned only briefly the reported cost of the Wellcamp Quarantine Facility near Toowoomba that was supposed to end all hotel quarantine (it didn’t, but that’s another story).

I say “reported” because, at that time, the Government was still refusing to detail the actual costs, citing dodgy “commercial in confidence” reasons for keeping Queenslanders in the dark. Fast forward to this week, and things have changed. We saw the Auditor-General announce in Parliament last week, following requests from David Crisafulli and the LNP, that they were launching an investigation into this facility and its cost, and then on Wednesday last week the Deputy Premier swallowed hard and read a statement to Parliament that lays out the $238 million cost of Wellcamp (it could yet be more). I was there and couldn’t believe he was actually doing it – after both he and the Premier claimed for nearly a year that it was “commercial in confidence.” What changed? And so quickly? Was it a sudden change of heart? A pang of conscience?

This Government cares more about how things look than how they actually are, and I’ve no doubt this sudden turn of accountability is more about trying to end the negative stories than anything else. The Auditor-General will now examine this project, which never went to open tender, and which gave the Wagner family (that’s who will own it – the State is only leasing it right now) a 1000-bed facility paid for by Queenslanders. The Auditor-General will examine the operations of a facility where only about 700 people have stayed. The average cost per stay is well over $300,000 per quarantine visit, an amount which I can’t find words to describe. It’s just unspeakably bad value. The Government cannot claim this cost will come down in the long-term – because Queenslanders don’t own it, so there is no long-term when it comes to this white elephant. Back in the 80s, Kerry Packer said you only get one Alan Bond in your lifetime when he sold a network to Bondy and then bought it back for less than what he sold it for. Let’s hope, for Queensland’s sake, that there’s only one “Alan Bond” in government for a very, very long time.

This waste of money is criminal, and more so in the face of this Government penny-pinching on so many essential items – like school bus routes for our kids in Scenic Rim Electorate, on road maintenance on the Mountain and the despicable road known as Beaudesert Nerang Road, on National Park maintenance and hospital services across Queensland. We must do better to bring the best future for everybody. We must end this era of waste and dereliction of duty by Labor in Queensland.

SCENIC RIM ELECTORATE OFFICE
You can contact me by phone, toll-free, on 1800 813 960, or email scenicrim@parliament.qld.gov.au, so I can lobby on your behalf. In an electorate as large as the Scenic Rim, there are lots of issues and I appreciate your feedback that helps me do my job as well as possible.