The federal government has switched locations for its 1000-bed COVID-19 quarantine facility in Western Australia, abandoning a plan to build it near an airport in Perth’s southern suburbs for a site on contaminated Defence land in the city’s far north.
The Jandakot Airport site in Perth’s south was announced in July as the preferred location for the $300 million facility but on Thursday federal Finance Minister Simon Birmingham announced it would instead be built three kilometres from the Pearce RAAF base in Bullsbrook on the outer fringe of Perth’s northern metro area.
Minister for Finance Simon Birmingham.Credit:Alex Ellinghausen
Senator Birmingham said during planning and negotiations it became clear the WA Centre for National Resilience facility couldn’t be delivered efficiently in Jandakot in terms of time and cost.
“Ultimately, in terms of looking at value for money for taxpayers, as well as the ability to ensure the timely delivery of this project, we’ve decided that Bullsbrook offered a stronger basis to proceed,” he told ABC Perth Radio.
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The new site will sit within the 1000-hectare Bullsbrook training area, where groundwater has been contaminated with PFAS fire retardant chemicals that were used at RAAF Pearce from the 1970s to 2004.
Senator Birmingham said an independent feasibility study was conducted on the site, which had found it could be used safely.
“Their advice to us was certainly that it is a suitable site to proceed,” he said. “We won’t be using groundwater for drinking purposes at the quarantine facility and obviously all safety precautions will appropriately be taken.
“We will look at the construction of if need be, in a temporary sense, [a] dedicated potable water system, including storage tanks, pumps and distribution on site. Obviously, ideally, [in] the long term we’d see connection to nearby mains, at Pearce or elsewhere.”
Construction giant Multiplex, which was also awarded the contract to build the Centre…