House debates

Thursday, 4 February 2021

Statements by Members

COVID-19: Hotel Quarantine

1:41 pm

Photo of Bob KatterBob Katter (Kennedy, Katter's Australian Party) Share this | Hansard source

We've called upon the government to look at Dunk Island. The present quarantine areas are in the rabbit warrens of the great cities of Australia. The last place on earth you should put a potential COVID patient is in Sydney, Melbourne or Brisbane, and yet that is what the Queensland government are doing. They have their quarantine station in Brisbane.

Dunk Island is currently uninhabited. With a little bit of money spent, there would be 100 rooms. It employed 200 people at the tourist resort. There's no-one at the tourist resort now. It could be used tomorrow. With 60 demountables we could put 1,000 people a month through. We could bring 20,000 stranded Australians back to Australia. They could have a nice holiday in what was one of the world's leading tourist resorts—and the current owners would like it to again be that. They would like to get it working.

It is an uninhabited island. That is where you put people who may have COVID until you are absolutely sure that they haven't got COVID and then they can move in Australia. In the meantime they are at a beautiful North Queensland tropical island tourist resort. What could be better? (Time expired)

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