The Commonwealth should fund and manage a national hotel quarantine system for future pandemics, senior NSW government officials have said.
In a submission to the federal COVID inquiry, the Minns Government’s Cabinet Office argued that the lack of national quarantine arrangements meant states and territories were having to fund and provide border control measures “beyond their constitutional jurisdiction”.
The NSW Cabinet submission was among more than 2000 submissions released on Wednesday.
It said the pandemic had challenged Australia’s federated system of government in an “unprecedented way”, while raising concerns about the lack of consistency between different jurisdictions and levels of government in approaches to vaccine roll-out, public messaging, aged care, travel and cargo.
Government officials said the hotel quarantine system “has required significant ongoing state and territory resources that have had to be diverted from other aspects of the public health response, in addition to other public safety responsibilities”.
NSW quarantined more than 265,000 returning Australian citizens and travellers from March 2020 to April 2022, more than any other jurisdiction, they said. This included a “significant” number of citizens from other states and territories.
They suggested a “Commonwealth-led, centralised approach to managing hotel quarantine in the event of a future pandemic, consistent with the Commonwealth’s role in managing international border arrangements and biosecurity risks”.
The inquiry, announced by the Federal Government last year, will examine federal and state government responses to the pandemic from January 2020.
