Central Highlands bases its disaster coordination centre at former ag college

It revealed on Sunday, two days before caretaker conventions came into being, that the Central Highlands Regional Council was using a building on the site as its Local Disaster Coordination Centre.

A three-year lease, with the option of a five-year extension, has been signed on a building at the 'Emerald Training Facility', according to Agriculture Minister Mark Furner.

The council began using the site as its COVID-19 control centre earlier this year, an arrangement Mr Furner said had been working well.

"The Queensland government is currently upgrading the building to a commercial standard with works due to be finalised before the end of the year," he said. "That will allow council's Emergency Management Control Centre to be fully operational from the start of 2021."

That news was the first sign of action for the campus, and followed the announcement in June that butchers Jed and Erin Marks had signed a two-year lease for the use of the slaughterhouse on the Longreach Pastoral College campus.

Central Highlands Regional Council Mayor Kerry Hayes said he was grateful to have the opportunity to tenant the former administrative building at the Emerald QATC campus for council's COVID response centre and disaster management activities.

"While we have had the use of the site on a temporary basis, a more permanent use will provide our disaster coordinator and his team with a dedicated facility for the medium to longer term," Cr Hayes said.

The announcement was not the broader vision many with an interest in the future of agricultural training had hoped for after more than a year of government stonewalling on what that would be for each centre.

As far back as September 2019, the government advised that its project management office "had met with shortlisted proponents and held group workshops in Longreach and Emerald to develop options for an operating model for each site".

In December, presiding over the symbolic final closure of the gates on an era, Mr Furner was saying he expected an outcome early in the new year, adding that the government wanted to see some progress so they could start looking at opportunities to support the communities at Emerald and Longreach.

The Remote Area Planning and Development Board submitted a business plan for the repurposing of the Longreach campus at the end of July this year and was "eagerly awaiting a response".

Even this week Mr Furner said his department was continuing to assess a range of proposals on how to best repurpose facilities with commercially sustainable future uses for former college assets.

The LNP's agriculture spokesman Tony Perrett said the facility at Emerald had enormous potential to teach and support the next generations of farmers but Labor was completely unwilling to invest in their and the regions' future.

"It's been nearly 2 years since Labor announced that the colleges would close but we are still no closer to knowing the future of any replacement agriculture education out of Longreach or Emerald," he said.

"To make matters worse $7m has been spent implementing Labor's college closure, yet there is still nothing to show for it.

"At a time when there are almost 200,000 Queenslanders out of work, young people in regional Queensland need access to training so they can get the skills they need for jobs in agriculture.

"This training debacle is yet another example of the Palaszczuk Labor government's anti-farmer, anti-region, anti-jobs agenda."

CHRC mayor Kerry Hayes has been contacted for comment.

In December 2018, when the bombshell announcement was made that the colleges in their existing format would be ended, Cr Hayes said the college at Emerald must be retained as the region's pre-eminent training facility, with agriculture at its core.