NSW charging quarantined travellers fee for police & army guards, COVID testing, another reason why Queensland may be ignoring NSW's quarantine fee invoice -Queensland only charges fee for food and hotel accommodation

 by Ganesh Sahathevan 


Former NSW Treasurer and current Premier Dominic Perrotet issued the Queensland Government an invoice for quarantining Queensland residents who had returned via Sydney Airport, which the Queensland Government has quite literally thrown in the bin (see story below).


One of the problems with the Perrotet invoice might lay in the fact that NSW charges  quarantined travellers  a fee for police & army guards and COVID testing, while Queensland only charges a fee for food and hotel accommodation .

Queensland provides travellers ordered into quarantine an invoice with details of the components of the quarantine fee (see excerpt below), while NSW will not. 

In NSW quarantined travellers receive a demand for payment from the NSW State Debt Office, and requests for an itemised invoice are ignored, if not denied. The quarantine fee is effectively a penalty imposed on anyone ordered into quarantine. 




TO BE READ WITH 

  Premier Dominic Perrotet, the former Treasurer



The Daily Telegraph has reported this morning that travellers still owe $ 110 Million in quarantine fees. NSW Finance Minister Damien Tudehope is quoted saying:

“It is only fair to the rest of the taxpayers in NSW that people in hotel quarantine pay their fees due,” he said.

“Don’t put the invoice aside for another day, contact us about making a payment, entering into a payment plan, an extension to pay or other hardship measures that may be available.

“Revenue NSW has a range of options when it comes to resolving these invoices. Get in touch today and get on top of it.”



Meanwhile Tudehope and his fellow NSW ministers responsible for the quarantine fee, Brad Hazzard,Dominic Dominello and the former treasurer, now Premier Dom Perrotet, are still stonewalling requests from this writer for an itemised invoice for quarantine fees, and continue to demand payment of the invoice as if it is a penalty imposed by the NSW Government(see story below).  


Their determination to impose the fee as if it were a penalty seems to be the reason why invoices issued for quarantine fees do not include a GST.

However, when the former Treasurer Perrotet issued his infamous $30 million invoice to the Queensland Government for quarantine fees he included a GST component. Put in another way, Perrotet, who is now premier, decided that when dealing with the Queensland Government the quarantine fee was in fact a service that had been provided, not some arbitrary penalty that the NSW Government imposed on arrivals by air into Sydney, for which an itemised invoice need not be provided. 



A copy of the $30 million + invoice posted by Steven Miles. (Facebook)

While Tudehope speaks of payment of the fee being "only fair" elsewhere he has indicated that he is trying to recover fees for non-health services, despite imposition of the fee being justified by Section 70 of the NSW Health Act, which concerns health services only. 

It does appear as is Perrotet, Tudehope, Hazzard and Dominello have gotten themselves into a position where their quarantine fee notices will have to be re-issued as proper invoices, with a GST component, and itemised to show what health services have been provided. 

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