Originally Posted by
ExtraShot
We don’t need to use abandoned mining camps. Also, Military facilities are deemed unsuitable due to their dormitory style accommodation... shared bathrooms, mess facilities, plus, 14 days confined to something smaller than a modern jail cell wouldn’t last long before people had human rights lawyers up the wazoo... (asylum seekers can wander around facilities fairly freely, so it’s not the same- and no I don’t think 14 days confined to a standard hotel room is much better).
It would have to be $50-100 million for a brand new Howard Springs style facility within 100km of each capital city (or toowoomba or Avalon as previously proposed). 1 bedroom with en-suite and kitchen granny flat demountables... Space for an aeromed chopper to land on site will have people at capital city hospitals in short time.
Could be completed in 3-4 months if we’re truly on a ‘war footing’.
I doubt that very much.
You are talking about building a small township for a thousand or more transients* in quarantine, plus permanent staff.
Even assuming the Commonwealth decided to simply ignore any requirement for planning permissions, consultations with stakeholders, environmental impact statement, etc - and I think that would be political suicide - you still have to manage the infrastructure issues: roading, electricity, potable water and sewage treatment & disposal. Roading is almost trivial.
The Commonwealth will have to
- negotiate with a lines company to add a point load of some megawatts into a network probably designed to handle a farm every kilometre or so, and then get them to design and build it.
- find a source of potable water, negotiate a supply agreement with the owner and design & build a pipeline to your camp site, probably build an on-site reservoir to give a surge/emergency/firefighting supply too or design and build a complete water supply and treatment system.
- conceptualise, then design and build, a sewage/wastewater treatment plant and outfall.
These are not off-the-shelf purchases, they take months and months and gobs of money to do.
And if the Commonwealth were to go through the normal planning processes, add at least another three to six months.
Sorry, this is at least a twelve to eighteen months' project.
* If you are only going to take one planeload a week - A330 size, empty middle seats, say 150 SOB - and working on a sixteen day cycle (reception day, fourteen days quarantine, cleaning day) - you are going to need four hundred to four hundred and fifty beds. A thousand beds only gets you two flights a week, occasionally three. Daily flights, you're looking at two to two and a half thousand beds.