From COVID to cops? Fate of abandoned quarantine site ‘sad and absurd’

The fate of the Pinkenba quarantine hub has been decided after nearly two years, with the federal government announcing it would be handed over to the Australian Federal Police.

Finance Minister Katy Gallagher and Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus confirmed the site, in Brisbane’s east, would be used for police training, with additional funding provided from the federal government.

The Centre for National Resilience, a quarantine hub built in response to the COVID pandemic, was officially finished on August 25 – less than a month after the Queensland government advised the Commonwealth it would no longer be needed.

The land, owned by the Department of Defence, is in an industrial area next to Brisbane Airport.

Queensland Housing Minister Meaghan Scanlon said the federal government’s decision to use the site for police training was disappointing.

Brisbane lord mayor Adrian Schrinner went further, calling the decision a “sad and absurd outcome” and “truly demoralising for those people sleeping rough in Brisbane”.

“It’s been 641 days since I wrote to the federal government urging them to put the idle and empty 500-bed facility to better use,” Schrinner said.

“Had the federal government acted, that’s 641 nights that hundreds of people, including women and children, won’t have been forced to sleep in cars and tents at sites across Brisbane.”

In 2023, Scanlon announced a $10 million investment to convert the empty 500-bed facility into crisis accommodation.

“We have been trying to work with the federal government since last year, putting money on the table and meeting all their requests, including to provide a proposal for the Pinkenba site,” Scanlon said.

“It’s disappointing given the time and work we put in, but ultimately, we’ve always said this was a federal government decision.”

Scanlon said the $10 million initially offered for Pinkenba would be redirected by the department to provide other means of housing support.

But repurposing the federally owned and operated Pinkenba site for housing or crisis accommodation was never a straightforward proposal.

Asked in March last year about Pinkenba’s future use for crisis accommodation, Gallagher’s office said it was “too far from the additional necessary support services for [family violence or homelessness] accommodation and therefore not considered suitable”.

Community service groups echoed these concerns and added their own, including the facility’s design (the beds are in units without kitchens or laundries), space, costs and distance from allied health services and transport infrastructure.

Micah Projects chief executive Karyn Walsh said: “It’s not a one-size-fits-all when it comes to who is homeless in Brisbane at the moment.

“You know, we’ve got hundreds of families in hotels, we’ve got single people in hotels and we’ve got more in crisis short-term accommodation.

“But we still need that final housing where people have a secure tenancy to call home.

“Pinkenba was one solution that’s been looked at and I don’t think it was the answer to all of Brisbane’s homelessness anyway, regardless of whether it went ahead or not.

“We understand it’s a housing crisis, but 500 beds with everybody in one place without understanding how you would operationalise it is the question that I posed most of the time.”