Business welcomes sensible approach

FAR North restaurants and pubs are hopeful moves for a “commonsense approach” in loosening close contact and testing procedures will ease fears about being left short of staff over the busy New Year period.

On the same day Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk announced tourists from Covid hotspots would no longer require PCR testing from January 1, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said a special national cabinet meeting on Thursday would discuss adopting a consistent definition of a close contact.

In Queensland, anyone deemed a close contact must quarantine for seven days, while casual contacts have to isolate until they receive a negative PCR test.

The news has been met with applause from Port Douglas publican Danny Gray, who has been left fearing a crippling staff shortage because of current quarantine and testing rules.

“If you have been at a casual site or a close contact, you need to get PCR-tested and then wait for a negative result, and that is taking three to five days,” he said.

“We are so short of staff as it is at the moment, you can’t afford to be losing any more staff.

“If you lose two staff members, you are stuffed.

“And then if you are a close contact, at the moment you have to isolate for seven days, whether you return a negative or positive result.

“So this move to relaxing this is a good one and it needs to happen.”

Cairns restaurant owner and Cooktown Top Pub licensee Paul Harris said “making life easier, not harder” for hospitality businesses should be a priority.

“I welcome what looks to be a more commonsense approach to testing and quarantine,” he said.

“We are doing everything right.”

Mr Gray has several staff on home quarantine orders after being told they were close contacts of positive cases in Port Douglas and Cairns.

He said a more fluid approach would help businesses cash in on a short window of high demand after a tough 12 months without visitors.

“At the end of the day, in hospitality, we are all vaccinated and we are all wearing masks,” he said.

“We have got the two lines of defence, so I think we’ve all done every possible thing that has been asked of us.

“We have nine days when we are extremely busy up here.

“If I keep losing staff, by the time they are all back at work, we’ll be quiet again.”