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Parliamentary Questions


Question Without Notice No. 478 asked in the Legislative Assembly on 11 August 2022 by Dr D.J. Honey

Parliament: 41 Session: 1

HOMELESSNESS — BULLSBROOK QUARANTINE FACILITY

478. Dr D.J. HONEY to the Premier:

I refer to comments the Premier made yesterday as he dismissed using the Bullsbrook quarantine facility to house homeless Western Australians in need, when he said that it would not work, people would not stay there, people would leave and it would last five minutes for those purposes. Why would international high-demand workers want to stay in this facility when, according to the Premier, not even those suffering from WA's housing crisis would stay for even five minutes?

Mr M. McGOWAN replied:

I will just explain the situation. The facility was commissioned and put in place by the last federal Liberal–National government. It made a commitment, I think in late 2020, early 2021, towards these purposes and started a process. It looked for various sites around the place—one at Jandakot, the other out at Bullsbrook—and all these sorts of things. I said that if the federal government wanted to build a quarantine facility in Western Australia and spend $200 million or $300 million, that was up to it but we would welcome it if that was what it wanted to do. We have committed to operating it for one year on the basis that that was the agreement with the former federal government. It spent $250 million or $300 million, which obviously created a huge number of jobs, opportunities and apprenticeships for many people. A great Western Australian company, Multiplex, has undertaken its construction. It is not finished yet; there are still some commissioning processes to go before it is finished. They are the circumstances. The site selected is in bushland out at Bullsbrook, which is 40 minutes or so from the city, near the RAAF base. As part of that process, we got some upgrades from the commonwealth to fix a long-term issue with PFAS in the water out there. It was a win-win for Western Australia. We negotiated with the last federal government, as we did many times, to get more and more money out of the last Liberal–National government for Western Australia, which was a great outcome for us.

In terms of what it can be used for now, obviously the quarantining requirement for people returning to Australia or from interstate is no longer in place, except for those people who are COVID-positive who are quarantining at home. The need for those purposes is no longer there. We are currently undertaking a process to find a purpose for the facility. We are looking at that across government. The advice I have received—to say to homeless people that they must go and live in a facility in the middle of the bush, 40 minutes from the city, without any wraparound services, where they do not have contact with other people who might be in a similar circumstance—is unwise and would not work. Anyone can see that. A person would have to be a fool not to see that. That is the advice we have received. Anyone who deals with people who are homeless, who may have mental health issues, substance abuse issues and the like, knows that.

We are looking at how we can use the facility, particularly given the worker shortage, as a transition form of housing for people who might come from overseas, particularly those in the building and construction industry, and live there for a month or two months with their family or children or whatever it might be as a transition form of housing before they get more permanent housing. They would go and live there, they might have work that they are transported to by their employer and then they would move into a more permanent form of housing after that. This has been a common practice historically in Australia. If we go back in history, quite often when migrants moved to Australia, that is what they did. They lived in places like this as a transition form of housing. We are just trying to look for a way of properly utilising this facility that we did not build but we have a responsibility to operate for at least a year.