WAKING UP TO REALITY
AS Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk wakes up to a chilly day this morning, we can only hope that plunging temperatures have helped something dawn on her.
Cooler pre-winter days usually herald the tide of grey nomads trekking north to enjoy Queensland’s relatively warmer weather. Our holiday parks should be full soon, especially with the June-July holidays coming as retirees who like to settle in for the winter are joined in the camping grounds and holiday units up and down the coast by families taking a midyear break.
Our “new normal” should be something of a “back to the future” moment, when families and retirees once again become the mainstay of our city’s tourism economy, which is reeling from the impact of the coronavirus pandemic border closures and business lockdowns.
But there is a big problem.
The grey nomads might make it to northern NSW from the south, but they will not be coming into Queensland – at least not until the Premier rethinks her “closed until September” bombshell from earlier this week when she blew her top at calls by her NSW counterpart for Queensland to reopen its border.
So the millions of dollars brought north by retirees will not be going into our local economy or to help bail out the coastal centres further up the coast, or the Outback towns and tiny communities that make up the Dinosaur Trail in central and northwest Queensland.
Ms Palaszczuk is venturing down the M1 today, but instead of taking a close look at closed businesses and talking to battling small businesses and workers who have lost their jobs in a tourism economy that has copped a diabolical battering, as we urged her to do yesterday, we understand she will instead be making an announcement about a tourism campaign that will encourage people to holiday in Queensland. Well that’s fine but as already outlined, there is a problem in that.
People from the other states cannot come here while the border is shut, and urging Queenslanders to go on holidays within their state is all very well, but in the end it is setting Queensland cities and regional centres against each other in competition.
We repeat our plea to the Premier. She must come not only to talk to the big end of town, but to a cross-section of those hurt the most in the fallout from the pandemic and the border closure.
The way restrictions are at the moment, it is difficult for restaurants, pubs and clubs to operate properly. Reopening our shopping centres is a welcome relief, but why are they any different to our theme parks?
The public needs consistency in the Government’s rulings and the Gold Coast needs its tourism and hospitality workers back in jobs. The tourism industry yesterday urged the Government to return to the original time frame of its own “road map to recovery”, which would put a July reopening back on track provided the coronavirus was under control. The Commonwealth’s chief health officers say there is no reason for the border closures.
Our city needs its new dawn, when the state border is open and tourists are once again flocking back here.