Wellcamp: A horror story of government waste

Utter “Wellcamp” aloud and it sounds like the title of a Goosebumps book about a holiday park that looks normal on the outside but is actually run by bloodthirsty zombies on the hunt for their next meal. The reality is much more terrifying. Standing just outside leafy Toowoomba, the Wellcamp quarantine facility is almost brand new but already effectively defunct. Funded by the Queensland Government in response to the Covid pandemic, its goal was to accommodate interstate and international travellers who would wait out mandatory isolation periods and undertake testing before rejoining society.

Of course, the facility’s utility has diminished enormously after mandatory quarantine was scrapped for unvaccinated arrivals in April. Though it sleeps 1000, as of Monday (30 May 2022), the facility houses just seven people - a figure that seems of especially poor taste as the housing crisis grips families across the country. Hold that number in your head and get ready to do some division because this next part is where it gets worse.

Weekly, the facility costs taxpayers close to $4 million dollars. So, each of Wellcamp’s seven guests is costing taxpayers more than half a million dollars, per week. All up, the number is enormous. True to its nature, the government has kept details surrounding the facility’s total cost well under wraps but it is understood to have spent nearly $200 million during the facility’s first year of operation. If we imagine a reality in which that money needed to be spent, just picture how much better it could have been allocated.