HUMAN PAIN BEHIND OUR DEVASTATING BORDER CLOSURES

AS a representative of a city that relies so heavily on tourists from interstate, and with the genuine community of interest between the Tweed and Coolangatta, I am well aware of the pain the closure of the borders is having on our region.

As the state’s shadow tourism minister, I owed it to an industry that employs more than 200,000 people to see the damage being done to other parts of Queensland.

I could tell the story of what I saw over one week driving 1800km from the Gold Coast to Cairns in statistics. You’ve heard them all before. Nearly 130,000 Queenslanders have lost their jobs, or had their hours drastically cut, and over 20,000 businesses have been directly affected by the restrictions.

The economic and personal pain is real.

I won’t forget the passion of Don from Caloundra. He has owned a menswear store for much of his life.

Over half of his business at this time of year comes from interstate tourists and his sales have plummeted. Even with his landlord allowing him to halve his shopfront, he told me he was weeks away from losing his house.

But that wasn’t his concern. As an “old bushy”, he reckons he’d be happy enough “living in the scrub”.

What hurt was telling his kids last week he could no longer afford to send them to the school where they had obtained all their education.

At the other end of the state I met Rhonda. A decade ago in the twilight of her working life,

she and husband Chris took a chance on a rundown motel at Palm Cove. They put everything they had into it, did all the work themselves to restore it and turned it around to make a profit. Until now.

Rhonda can accept the financial pain that came from coronavirus. What she can’t tolerate are the mixed messages and confusion from the State Government around reopening the borders.

She told me how scared she is for her financial future. How during her high season she is running around 10 per cent occupancy. She told me how the calls she has been getting are her interstate visitors asking for a refund on their July holidays, to be able to book elsewhere in Australia because no firm date has been given around our border reopening.

She feels she can probably survive a few more weeks but after that her reserves will run

dry. That is why every day matters. If the borders are to open in July, and the Premier’s backtrack in recent days suggests it will, she owes it to our state to announce a firm date and allow small business owners and their staff to salvage something during winter holidays.

I understand there are those who quite rightly urge caution to be exercised with the virus after months of success. We started this campaign to “flatten the curve”. This was to ensure people did not die waiting for a bed and a respirator. Because of our discipline, this nightmare never came to pass.

We can’t turn our attitude on coronavirus from suppression into a new expectation where each time there is a handful of cases here or interstate our State Government demands we go back into our bedrooms and put the doona over our heads.

Two weeks ago today 30,000 marched in Brisbane (and tens of thousands did the same across the country) and the only comment from our Premier was a thank you for “adhering to social distancing”.

It made every small business owner, every hospitality worker and every community leader angry at the double standards. But it has proven we do not have rampant community transmission.

It shows we can emerge from our economic cocoon and manage the health risk to get Queensland working again.

It is more than just a slogan put forward by the LNP and our leader Deb Frecklington. It is a mantra that will guide our response. For Don. For Rhonda. And for everyone who makes a living in tourism, hospitality and retail from the Cape to Cooloongatta.