Tamworth hotel quarantine: Plan to use Tamworth airport pilot school to quarantine agriculture workers 'too great a risk' Barilaro declares

Deputy Premier John Barilaro declared on Thursday that "any quarantine arrangement for seasonal workers will not be taking place in Tamworth nor any other regional location".

A proposal by Tamworth Regional Council had been looked at by NSW Health and NSW Police "but it posed too great a risk," he said.

Mayor Col Murray told the Leader on Tuesday the council had been in talks over a plan to bring in a small number of low-risk workers like fruit pickers from non-hotspots.

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The Tamworth Mayor said he'd had "confidential discussions with different levels of the NSW government" but was not prepared to elaborate further than that.

He said the discussions were "at an early stage", but could possibly "progress over the short-term".

Tamworth MP Kevin Anderson opposed the idea.

On Thursday, he told the Leader the council still hadn't come to him about the plan, but that he had spoken with his own contacts in his state government.

"Council didn't come to me in the first instance and they still haven't come to me on it, so they're dealing directly with whoever they're dealing with in the state government," he said.

"I have my own contacts in the state government that I have been consulting with and talking with about this. And the feedback from within government is that the plan didn't stack up.

"I believe on that basis it poses too great a health risk for our community."

Mr Barilaro said the state "will have more to say on seasonal workers shortly".

"The NSW Government is acutely aware of the need for seasonal workers to arrive in NSW to assist our farmers. That's why the NSW Government is looking at a range of options to do so safely," he said.

"It is not important where seasonal workers quarantine, but it is important that we get them here to assist our primary producers."

New England MP Barnaby Joyce told the Leader last week he was "trying to make Tamworth part of the solution" to the hotel quarantine bottleneck.

"We don't have to build [a quarantine site] when we have one here, and it's far enough out of town that it's perfectly sited," he said.

He said Tamworth Flight Training Centre could be used as a quarantine hub to bring Australians, like Tamworth-born opthamologist Phoebe MacKenzie, back home from the UK.

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