The Tasmanian government has been accused of wasting more than $700,000 of taxpayer money upgrading a motel owned by a Liberal Party member, before abandoning plans to use it as a COVID-19 management site.
The revelations have led to calls for the money spent on refurbishing Burnie's Wellers Inn to be recouped.
Answers tabled in State Parliament showed $717,246 was spent on refurbishing and renting the hotel to be used as a COVID case management facility, only for it to be deemed unsuitable due to storm damage.
Those costs included $356,000 to rent the facility for three months, just over $60,000 to install Wi-Fi and CCTV, $20,000 for miscellaneous repairs and $278,000 for on-site security and fencing.
Shadow Health Minister Anita Dow questioned the spending in State Parliament on Thursday.
"This obscene waste of taxpayer money to upgrade the hotel of a member of the Liberal Party stinks," she said.
Opposition Leader Rebecca White said the state government needed to try to recoup taxpayer money spent.
"Tasmanians should be appalled that $700,000 has been spent to upgrade a hotel to house patients with COVID when not one single patient was kept there."
Facility 'selected by the Health Department'
Ms White said the government needed to explain how Wellers Inn was selected as a case management hotel and why an expression-of-interest process was not held.
Deputy Premier Michael Ferguson said the facility was selected by the Health Department and he was not aware of who owned it.
"Clearly if it is a Liberal Party member that owns that hotel, well, that would then be a question for the Health Department," he said.
He said the government was still investigating "options to capture as much value" as possible from its contract with Wellers Inn
Wellers Inn co-owner Nigel Morgan told The Advocate newspaper in February that he told the Health Department he was a Liberal Party member and chairperson of its Braddon Electorate Committee when it contacted him asking to use his motel as a COVID management facility.
"I was up-front with them and said I hold this position, and they came back and said that's fine," Mr Morgan told the newspaper.
Wellers Inn was contacted for comment.
Three case management facilities, in Devonport, Launceston and Hobart, managed 469 symptomatic COVID-positive patients in the six months after the state's borders reopened to COVID hotspots.
