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Where Wellcamp went wrong: Review finds govt rushed it
By Matt Dennien
The long-awaited audit of Queensland’s $223 million Wellcamp COVID quarantine deal has criticised the state government for not fully considering other options to give taxpayers better value.
In the report, published on Friday, Auditor-General Brendan Worrall also said the Palaszczuk government should have considered disclosing the full cost of the finalised arrangement despite confidentiality clauses.
The purpose-built, privately owned but government-backed regional quarantine centre near Toowoomba was mothballed in August 2022 just months after opening.
“While there was still significant uncertainty on the continuing impact of the pandemic at this time, alternates such as home and hotel quarantine were available,” Worrall wrote in his 18-page report, which found procurement processes were “reasonable”.
“This should have been more fully considered at the time of entering the contract in September 2021 to better ensure value for money for taxpayers.”
Worrall recommended the government disclose the future purchase and lease of property, update processes around the release of confidential contract details and train ministers to answer related questions in parliament.
While the property calls were agreed to, the Department of Premier and Cabinet said in a letter attached to the report it did not agree ministerial guidance was needed as parliamentary rules governed any answers.
Speaking to reporters in Brisbane shortly after the report’s release, Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk reiterated the government’s long-held defence of the project amid “difficult circumstances”, strained hotel quarantine, and what it said was federal government inaction on their responsibilities around quarantine.
“We did not know what was going to happen,” she said.
“The pandemic could have got worse. We applied the best advice at the time to protect Queensland.
The report features detail of the half state-federal proposal put to, and rejected by, former prime minister Scott Morrison in June 2021 for an expected three-year cost of $776 million.
That month, the Morrison government said it would build its facility at Pinkenba. Weeks later, before key sign-offs, Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk announced Wellcamp would open that year.
“This is a race,” Palaszczuk told reporters at the time.
Her government compared Pinkenba and Wellcamp in a review which found the latter a “significantly more expensive option for the state”, but with lower risk.
The need for COVID-19 quarantine facilities dissipated in the first half of 2022 after the Commonwealth and some states set out to build them to help the country reopen.
Only Queensland ended up with two.
Pinkenba, costing an expected $400 million, was never used for quarantine and remains subject to an ongoing cross-government fight over its use for emergency housing.
Wellcamp opened in early 2022 and was mothballed in August after housing 730 guests.
The state, which made a $48.8 million upfront capital contribution and paid $198.5 million for a lease that ran out in April, tried but failed to find another use for the facility.
While international students or migrant workers were floated as options, “no projections” were provided in the government proposals, the audit office found.
Wagner Corporation chair John Wagner has said the site would probably be used to house agricultural workers and eventual form part of a planned entertainment precinct.
The state LNP opposition repeatedly questioned the taxpayer value of Wellcamp and use of commercial confidentiality to avoid revealing its cost, with then-finance spokesperson Jarrod Bleijie formally requesting the later widened audit office investigation last February.