Correct. And can probably (?) not be used as a quarantine facility while it is being used for immigration detainees.
Also, take a look at my previous post regarding runway length.

But what's your point with regard it being a federal facility and not state?

latest word is that the Victorian 5 day lockdown will be extended to 2 weeks.

Although it could be extended I was reading this in another forum, and it seemed that people were misinterpreting the State of Emergency order (which will always be made for a minimum 2 weeks) with the Lockdown order. Only 1 positive case today is good news.

I think that was pretty well cleared up today. That is an order drafted by a Legal that 14 days.

As he said. No surprises in the next 4 days. And we are back to last Thursday’s setup.

However one single surprise then you can bet 2 weeks.

Quarantine centres historically not in remote locations, they were close but just outside of the cities. The only reason I say Howard Springs is gold standard is because the rooms are individual cabins with no stagnant corridors. They all have a veranda and items can be delivered safely as it’s outdoors. I don’t care where you build them, build them in the suburbs if you wish but individual Dongers are the way to go, there is almost no chance of aerosol transmission if protocols are followed. The fact is that almost all the epidemiology experts have been stating this pretty much since a year ago. You can’t trust State Governments, they quite frankly aren’t the sharpest tools in the shed, basically they couldn’t make it to Federal Government and went to the next best thing.

What “Phase” will pilots fall into, regarding the vaccine?

Depends, could be 1B if they see pilots as 'critical and high risk workers' I would imagine cabin crew would fall in this category. If not that, definitely 2A I believe Pilots would be 'other critical and high risk workers'

​​​​​​

Stuff: Hundreds fly from MIQ in NZ to Australia

There already seems to be a group of islands a few thousand kilometres east of Australia that are providing Quarantine for Australians coming back home. It appears cheaper and easier than doing it in Australia.

At least the country doesn’t go into full-blown lock downs when there are breaches in the MIQ system..

International crew classed as 1A. Domestic crew 1B. There should only be a few weeks difference between those two groups, so most active pilots should have access to the vaccines within the next few months.

International pilots are treated no different unless you can provide another reference to what the government website has. 1A has border force that’s as close to a pilot you will get, 1B earliest for aircrew no way they’re going ahead of health care and aged care workers. Pilots are not that important.

Not only that heaps of money has been spent in recent years restoring Port Arthur ready for "clients".

In Vic, 1 case yesterday, 2 cases today, come Monday tomorrow is pretty much d-day regarding Wednesday announcement.
Is 1 or 2 per day enough to lift the lockdown or not. If lockdown continues and job keeper finishes that will be like dropping a nuke on Vic.
I remember lockdown 2, went for 2 weeks then extended to 6 weeks finished up being 4 months. I don't think Dan's got the guts
to do a three peat of this. Victorian citizens will just rebel.

I think you’ll find you’re wrong and dr dre is right.

The “border workers” 1A classification isn’t necessarily just ABF personnel, it’s all who have a role in international travel, like International airport workers with face to face contact with travellers (pilots I believe included in this, in addition to being “travellers” themselves).

For the 1B classification that includes “critical workers” such as people working in supply and distribution of essential goods and services which would encompass pilots.

3 new cases in NZ, connected to airport catering staffer. Lets see if the bubble gets dropped again.

https://www.skynews.com.au/details/_...8E8o9FmSmpxCzU

And...... HS Q being ramped up

US marines arriving into Darwin will be provided quarantine facilities at RAAF Darwin, and "The Marine force has rented a secure facility outside Darwin – understood to be Bladin Point, about 20km south of Darwin – for the majority of personnel to complete their quarantining". Source: The guardian.

So we can find suitable facilities for US marines, but for our own citizens, lets put them in hotels in the CBD....Shows where the Fed gov's priorities are...

If im not mistaken, the facilities at Bladin point will be the former 'immigration holding centre', essentially donga's, not unlike Howard Springs. EDIT. The bladin point village, former INPEX workers village, accommodation for up to 750 people!!

How many facilities are there like this around the country.....

I'm not sure that facilities suitable for a few hundred US Marines would necessarily be equally suitable for families, including children, returning from o/s.

I’d love to see civvies being put up in Tin City on the RAAF base for 2 weeks. Scomo would hear their whinging all the way from Engadine.

I’ve heard on a Melbourne talk back radio station the other day of potentially using cruise ships as quarantine facilities, together with Puckapunyal Army Base. Probably an effective means to prevent people from escaping!

New Zealand is imposing a three-day lockdown in its most populous city beginning Sunday, after three new locally transmitted Covid-19 cases were reported on Saturday.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced the lockdown for Auckland, home to 1.5 million people, during a news conference on Sunday. The lockdown will end at 11:59 p.m. on Wednesday.


She defiantly has more intelligence than Dan by 2 days.

Um, stage 4 for Auckland and stage 3 for the rest of the country as of about now.

Yes, the bubble is off.

Yes, you could quarantine in NZ then travel on to Australia within the bubble.

If you booked today, your slot would come up in.....June.

:rolleyes:

Try Level 3 for Auckland and 2 for the rest of the country. Level 4 cannot be put in place for individual provinces and is country wide only.

As in August, because the contact tracing team hasn’t figured out where they got it from, lock down to make sure it’s not being spread through the community without people knowing.

Unlike the community cases a few weeks ago, in November and October where the source can be traced back to MIQ, no alert levels were changed because contact tracers and genomic testing could identify a source.

If the contact tracing is good enough and you can quickly find the source and close contacts NZ does not change alert levels.

When there is no clear source, then yes alert levels change.

Compare NZ’s reaction to Victoria or WA, if NZ know where the case came from and close contacts are known (takes no longer than 24 hours for NZ contact tracers to identify close contacts, 48 hours for casual and casual+ contacts), so in the case of the Holiday Inn situation NZ would not have changed alert levels for that.

Does it matter, what ever lock down there is its a massive set back to recovery. NZ has just reaffirmed that you cant eliminate this virus as they have seen twice now.

Elimination is not a one shot wonder and forget about it. It’s an acceptance that humans and human made processes do fail and having no tolerance for letting the virus rage rampant in society.

NZ has successfully eliminated the virus in its community 6 times now, twice using changes to alert levels and 4 times now using simple contact tracing without changing the alert levels. They have eliminated the virus twice as often without sweeping changes to society.

They have recorded 2,330 total cases and 25 deaths through a pandemic, while keeping a far more liberal border quarantine process than Australia.

Chill out bro. As you pointed out, NZ eliminated it 6 times so they have not eliminated it because it’s come back 6 times. Maybe they have just stopped waves of it like NSW. Point is you will never eliminate this virus even with the vaccine.

I am chill, however, NZ has eliminated it.

But the world will not eradicate it.

As the epidemiologists keep saying elimination is not a point in time, but a continual process of outbreaks, crushing them and moving on.

We can eliminate it as we have done with things like typhoid and to an extent measles. The diseases are still out there, won’t be going away in a hurry, but it does not run rampant and out of control. It is a very easy process, vaccine is one step, more effective treatments are the next step. Until these two methods are widespread, social methods of control are the only guaranteed way to continue elimination.

Australia has eliminated the virus, evidence of lockdowns going on in states and the zero tolerance attitude for rampant disease spread is elimination. Each state may use the social tools available at its disposal and vary between states how they are used, but all methods witnessed across all states of Australia are an elimination process.

The world has only eradicated smallpox and it took a very very long time and a multi-national response of elimination in each country.

It may appear to be semantics; elimination vs eradication but both have very different outcomes, although as individual countries work towards elimination, eventually we will reach eradication, if it’s possible.

We can't afford to eliminate it. It will bankrupt all airlines, tourism, cafes, restaurants etc. The amount of food being wasted by the Perth and Melbourne lockdowns alone is disgraceful, both on a financial and ethical point of view.

There will be 3rd world countries who simply will just have to live with it as they can't play the lockdown game as that will kill people through starvation and poverty

I hope the vaccine works as advertised or the timeframe to a successful eradication may be too long and we will and up as one of those 3rd world countries.

Will end up as a third world country????

Heard from the same radio station I think, that the Fox group that own Avalon want to set up the airport as a quarantine base with quarantine facilities
which they think will take 8-10 weeks. Lindsay being Dan's best mate is asking for a little bit of cash for this to go ahead.

Chris2303, yeah I know but given time we'll lose our status of being "the only third world country where you can drink the water".

Sorry? I can't speak for Melbourne but what is your source for food wasteage in Perth?
Why would there be? Food going out of date in restaurant freezers over the five day lockdown?
I am sure there was some but doubt that it was measureable.

I am sure that the elderly would rather some food being buried that they being the centre of the burial.

I can't help to think that Qantas will have to lay off or put 1000's of staff on standdown at the end of Jobkeeper. Virgin will finish 3000 jobs at the end of March.

I'm sure Scomo and Joyce have already had this conversation. Not seen any reporting about this topic. Unless Scomo is going to pull a rabbit out of the hat by the end of March it's gonna be a bloodbath.

In the past weeks there has been several newspaper articles from restaurateurs in both Perth and Melbourne and a high profile seafood distributor who are all destroying fresh food that can't be sold due to snap lock downs by governments.
The seafood distributor claimed it was over a million dollars worth of produce. You can't hold seafood for over a week in your fridges.

If this continues as is then it's only the beginning. There will be bankruptcies in hospitality and tourism and if the State Governments continue with the uncertainty as to what is going on, the airlines will follow as there is no demand for travel as the population has no idea if they will be allowed to leave their home. A lock down over Easter would probably be the worst possible scenario for airlines as they are claiming that travel is looking good at that time. If all that gets shut down then it could be the beginning of the end for aviation.

I’m not overly familiar with the respective EBAs and the technical terms surrounding them, but can’t say Virgin move staff from JobKeeper to Unpaid leave?

Virgin is bare bones as it is I don’t really see the point in laying off Domestic NG crews which is the bulk of team members.

If you think things are bad now , wait till winter , especially in the south , it will spread like wildfire and then our jobs will evaporate.
The move away from jobkeeper means nothing to the companies, sure they were able to milk a little for themselves but having the staff lose jobkeeper is no skin off the companies nose .

For pilots it will just mean you are part time or stood down until you are made redundant or bankruptcy which ever occurs first.

I can't see any airline receiving a bail out from government regardless of circumstances.

The only real solution for airlines is for the State Governments to actually agree on not shutting the borders all the time. However it will take some significant financial shock before they are dragged kicking and screaming to that position. We only have to look at QLD, they shut down the State then expect a Federal Government handout. Until they and the general population start taking in the wallet it won't change.