Acting Premier Steven Miles said the pitch for 1000 cabins to be built on the site was welcome,but he questioned why the move had taken so long and said more work was now needed to flesh outthe 1½-page letter.
“The proposals that we had been working on were for regional quarantine facilities - this clearly won’t be a regional quarantine facility,this will be an urban quarantine facility,and that will require different arrangements for infection control and for keeping the community safe,” he said.
“So our officers will work with the Commonwealth to determine how that can be done.”
The 29.5-hectare site was developed by the Americans during World War II as a storage and warehouse facility,which it is still predominantly used as today. It sits just south of the airport,flanked by the Gateway Motorway,in a largely industrial area.
Mr Miles said the site had been identified under a Queensland audit of potential quarantine hubs but was ruled out because of potential contamination and asbestos in the old buildings,before being told a Commonwealth assessment of defence siteshad also ruled it out.
“Wellcamp[the Toowoomba site] remains the only proposal of detail,” he said aboutthe regional option,which the state believes could be built much quicker and bring more capacity to the quarantine scheme.