The comment on quarantine was the most interesting:
"In relation to Mr Dutton I want to make this point. He is the Minister for Home Affairs. They have the responsibility for quarantine under the Constitution. But he does not want to do that. So therefore, it has fallen to the states to perform the role that Mr Dutton should be performing under the Constitution. So he should not be criticising when we are doing the task he should be performing. Under the Constitution, quarantine, it is the responsibility of the Commonwealth -- section 15.
[The federal government has access to] Defence bases, Christmas Island, sometimes very remote places and they are not doing it and refused to do it so therefore the state is doing it so I urge Mr Dutton not to be a critic."

Credit where it is due compressor stall, your opinion is based on your own personal experience.

I cannot fault you on that.

Your position is a giant leap ahead of many, who appear to be getting played by elements of the media.

Those that would orchestrate conflict for the sake of selling newspapers or clicks.

The very first ‘national cabinet’ made the decision that the states would handle the quarantine in the respective states. They had the capability which the federal government lacked at the scale required. The hospitals, the coppers, the contracts for security people, the processes, are all things that states do on a regular basis but the feds do not do across the nation.

So its a bit rich that having signed on to do this- thus ensuring the jobs go mostly to who the state Premiers wanted them to go to- that they now try and disown it when all of a sudden they’ve decided it’s too hard and they need to blame someone for locking down their state when they shouldn’t.

Dre, let me be very specific. Precisely what ‘remote location’ are you proposing for these quarantine facilities? 1A Please has already spoken of some of the logistic issues relating to the numbers of beds required so exactly where are you putting this new town that you want to knock up in 10 days or so?

Sure the Chinese cobbled together some shipping containers and called it a ‘hospital’ but I’m not sure that’s the sort of thing we should be considering when you’re going to lock people inside it for 14 days in the middle of nowhere during an Australia summer. Then again, I’m not sure the Australian people would be prepared to agree to the Chinese way of doing things when it comes to things like the environment, WHS, industrial relations, working hours, pay and conditions, etc.

Keg, you seem to be good at poking holes in proposed solutions but don’t seem to willing to put up too many of your own. Even in your beloved NSW there have been lockdowns and restrictions on multiple occasions as a result of quarantine hotel breakouts (or in NSW’s case ignoring of government granted home quarantine).

A lot of prominent epidemiologists and leaders in Australia are calling for remote quarantine. Qld is investigating it. Have you a better idea? Should we quarantine hotel workers to the same hotel and pay them handsomely?

Unless we’re prepared to do this until a critical level of vaccination is reached? Maybe the Feds have run the numbers and have said it’s not worth it as vaccination will be coming quicker than originally proposed?

We need to stop international arrivals altogether until there is a secure quarantine facility, preferably run by the Feds, for ALL arrivals to go to, a long way from capital cities. Time to stop propping up multi national hotel chains and face reality They are not designed as quarantine facilities and clearly not fit for that purpose.

When I was there late last year Christmas Is facility was full of ex-con non citizens who had been moved there from Northam and will remain there until their countries of citizenship agree to take them back. Rottnest Island has already been used as a quarantine facility when we had all the cruise ships arriving. Would be sad to have it shut off to the rest of us again but I think this will be the only way as a temporary fix until a purpose built federal run remote facility is available.

As for those of you who harbour such hatred towards us Sandgropers..why do you care if the borders are controlled if you hate this part of the country so much? Maybe we don't want that kind of spite and negativity here. Jealous that we have a budget in surplus maybe? McGowan is our elected leader, whatever you may think of him he is always consistant.

I agree Clare. All International arrivals have to stop until they can be placed a long way from the city.

The politics of doing this is very difficult so it won't happen. As I explained upthread, there is no likelihood of the remote capacity required to replace hotel quarantine will be available in the medium term. .

The whole purpose of track and trace is the ability to jump on any potential escapes. NSW showed it is possible and Qld also managed. Victoria was hopeless back in July but has spent significantly in duplicating NSW's systems since so hopefully is now under control. Even now, it looks like WA probably doesn't have an issue apart from a trigger-happy premier.

You do realise all those outbreaks in all those states (plus SA) triggered various border restrictions and lockdowns? All of which affect harm domestic air travel? So for an airline employee the current track and trace for quarantine outbreak system is not working to allow confidence for travel bookings therefore from that point of view it needs to be changed.

Remember this company
They built an international airport in 18 months.
Already has internation flight operating there.
purpose-built quarantine facility

Yes, but those closedowns were because of trigger-happy premiers not because there was a significant outbreak. The only potential outbreak since Victoria's troubles was NSW and they managed it well and it never got away from them. The only reason there was border closures in that case was because the premiers of Vic, SA, WA and Qld are bedwetters who don't trust their own systems and more interested in their approval ratings than their states' economies. Until we get past closing down as a first resort rather than last, air travel will continue to suffer.

Well that's not going to happen. It's pretty clear by now what the response will be to a hotel outbreak. The solution is to stop the hotel outbreaks from occurring in crowded cities in the first place.

Yep that type of facility at Wellcamp is what we need to move towards.

I’m kind of with Dre on this one. Yes logistically and financially it is a BIG undertaking. But throw enough money and resources at something and pay the right people enough $$$ to do fly in, fly out work and it CAN be done.

Given the number of similar hotel “scare” events we have had in a small number of months I suspect the $ invested would soon be recouped (vaccine or no vaccine), but this is purely speculation, like most of our thoughts.

We appear to have had three outbreaks from HQ of the more contagious strain, one in Brisbane, one in Perth and one in NZ.
The Perth one is too soon for a determination of how the breach occurred.
The method of the breach in Brisbane has not been released or they cannot determine how it happened and we are being mushrooms.
I have not seen any information as to how the NZ breach occurred..

Before any more increase in the numbers in HQ is made, we need to determine how these breached occurred and the changes made to prevent such breaches.

Regardless of where quarantine is, it is imperative that the staff quarantine as well.

Simple protocol that has somehow been overlooked from our bank of corporate knowledge this time around.

FIFO quarantine staff?

Single escapes will become plane loads of escapes.

No point in repeating and amplifying our current failures in a different location.

Yes. I suspect that the lack of detail being made public about these events is as much because of the potential embarrassment to those controlling as it is embarrassment to those being controlled.

Yeah agreed, I should have been clearer, I was implying 14 day quarantine for staff after their 2 week shift etc. 1 month on, 1 month off, you will get no shortage of staff paid 200k. It’s small bikkies in the grand scheme of things.

i imagine then that not only would the inbound passengers have to be confined to their Individual rooms for the duration of their quarantine but so would the staff guarding them, cleaning etc.

That is once they return to their own quarters. After all if one of them becomes infected, they would then spread it to the rest of the guards if they are all living in their own compound and allowed to eat together and otherwise socialise.

But then who guards them?

Easy: You have another set of guards to guard the guards at the end of their shifts and during their 2 week isolation at the end of their rotation. You will get away with a few less guards though per shift. Then you need another set of guards to guard the guards guarding the guards. And so on. Then at the end of the conga line of duty guards, you have, as W.E. Bowman of Rumdoodle fame described, a small boy guarding himself.

What state are you in? Certainly not NSW! There has been one lockdown since May last year. It was the northern beaches on December 20 when they had 30 cases in a day. It was one region in a city of 6 million. Other than that there has been social distancing and mandated mask wearing in shops- the latter only for about a month.

All in all, life is pretty normal for these times and certainly shouldn’t be classed as ‘lockdowns or restrictions on multiple occasions’.

By definition epidemiologists are not experts in logistics. Their purview also doesn’t take into account the other myriad costs of their advice. It is for politicians to take their advice, weigh it up with the various costs and plans in place and make a decision. So far our politicians have shown to be mostly pretty woeful with lots of knee jerk panic and very little leadership. Only have to listen McGowan press conference to see that in action.

Perhaps but I don’t have a good handle on the numbers of people they’re using at each hotel, how they’re rostered, what the testing regime is like, how they go about cleaning, what the risk profile is for individual workers, etc. Perhaps I’ll leave that one to the experts.

I do know that building suitable accommodation for quarantining people in Learmonth is going to take a long time, cost a lot of money, decrease the risk to the cities somewhat (yay!), create significant hardship on individual workers, create some hardship on towns, stretch regional infrastructure to the limit, etc.

I do laugh at the isolations requirements forced on crew returning from Covid ‘hotspots’ like Narita, Singapore, Shanghai and Hong Kong given the precautions crew are taking whilst there but in the mean time the security bloke working directly with infected people is allowed to roam around the country side and WA hadn’t even instituted daily testing despite agreeing 2 1/2 weeks earlier that they’d get onto that.

I note with some interest some of the proposals being promulgated here. The use of mining villages would be a nightmare. The purpose of quarantine is to isolate the infected person from the community, AND ALSO from every other person in the same facility. Anyone who has worked FIFO at a mining compound will know just how claustrophobic Dongas are, and would be quite unsuitable for isolation purposes.

Think facilities that (a) offer a modicum of comfort (you are going to spend 14 days cooped up); (b) have a series of rooms that can isolate persons from one another (even floors) and (c0 offer the logistics of rapid medical intervention if needed plus food and ancillary support. So the Hotel property close to to the entry point seems the most logical option (unless you utilise all the unoccupied prison cells - dooh! there are few of those and even then most 'inmates' are not in lockdown 24/7.

The mismanagement of quarantine has been about the human factors - minimum wage individuals working 'security'. Perhaps an ADF/Borderforce management would be the better option.

Those who propose regional / remote locations (including for crew) - be careful what you wish for.