It is perhaps one of the most notable white elephant projects in West Australian history – a $400 million quarantine facility that took so long to build that, by the time it was completed, the COVID-19 pandemic had moved along.
In the four years since its completion, the Bullsbrook quarantine centre has sat empty, though not for want of ideas on how it could be put to use.
The centre, funded and built by the federal government, was completed and handed over to the WA government in the middle of 2022. But the timing could not have been worse.
By that stage, returning residents were no longer required to quarantine in hotels, with the program winding down from March and done away with completely by August.
It left then-premier Mark McGowan – whose popularity soared to astronomical heights in WA due to his handling of the pandemic – with a 500-bed facility and no one to stay in it.
Even then, McGowan was adamant the quarantine centre would be put to use.
“We’ll make it operate. We’ll make it work when it’s handed over. Whenever that is,” he said at the time.
“There’s a whole range of scenarios out there as to who can be placed in it, but we haven’t made any decisions on that at this point in time.”
Since then, there have been plenty of ideas on how to utilise the facility – most of them focused on the increasingly pressing issue of housing in WA.
In early 2023, there was the idea to use it for international and regional university students, who were struggling to find digs as Perth’s rental market tightened.
That idea was quickly shot down, with the chief executive of government body StudyPerth saying the facility had already been canvassed and deemed unsuitable.
“It is a long way from anywhere and would require significant investment to be fit for purpose,” Derryn Belford said at the time.
“Students come to Perth to experience our city’s lifestyle and if we put them out in Bullsbrook it is not ideal.
But again, the plans cooled, and the facility remained empty, sitting out in Perth’s north-east next to the RAAF Pearce air base and the Outback Splash water park.
Earlier this year, WA Opposition Leader Basil Zempilas put the prospect of the Bullsbrook centre being used for housing back on the agenda, only for it to be pooh-poohed by the head of the state’s peak housing and homelessness body.
The centre was back in the headlines only last month, as Corrective Services Minister Paul Papalia confirmed it was considering using it to house inmates and take the strain off WA’s overcrowded remand prisons.
“Shelter WA said that site is not suitable for rough sleepers because it’s in the middle of nowhere, effectively. Conversely, that might make it a good place for a prison,” Papalia said in April.
On Monday, Federal Health Minister Mark Butler revealed six Australian and New Zealand passengers on board the MV Hondius cruise ship, which has been struck with an outbreak of the deadly hantavirus, would fly into RAAF Pearce on Tuesday and quarantine at the Bullsbrook centre for three weeks.
“This is not a virus with pandemic potential, transmission is very difficult human-to-human, but that does not mean there is not a risk of transmission and as you’ve seen, three deaths from eight cases, transmission of this virus can have very serious, including deadly, consequences,” he said.
He said the estimated incubation period for hantavirus was 42 days, and after their quarantine period, the passengers – from New South Wales, Queensland and New Zealand – would eventually return to their home states.
It may have taken four years, but the Bullsbrook Centre for National Resilience will finally be used for what it was originally intended – and with 500 beds available, its six guests will have plenty of space to spread out.
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