It is now 12 months since we saw the first impacts of COVID-19 across the Ballarat community. Australia’s first recorded case of COVID-19 was registered on 25 January 2020, then on February 1 the Federal Government banned the entry of foreign nationals who had been in mainland China and ordered Australians returning from China to self-quarantine for 14 days. Almost immediately Ballarat’s economy was impacted, particularly those businesses whose visitors are comprised in large part by international tourists.
Not long after we had first heard of COVID-19, we saw the devastating sight of queues outside Centrelink as our nation began to lockdown, successfully preventing the virus’s spread but costing the jobs of hundreds of thousands of Australian workers. It was now that Labor first called on the Morrison Government to urgently introduce a job subsidy package, protecting Australians homes and jobs, and ensuring that our economy could return to normal with as quickly as possible.
Despite initially falling on deaf ears, the devastating impact of the lockdown finally saw the Government commit to JobKeeper. While this scheme has many flaws – and has failed to protect many industries and casual workers – for many businesses JobKeeper has been the difference between staying in business or closing their doors.
Thankfully our state governments took the difficult and not always popular decisions to lock down and stop the spread of the second and potentially third waves, sparing us from COVID’s worst impacts.
The good news is that our success at stopping the spread of COVID-19 has meant that our economy should be able to recover sooner and more strongly. We put health first, and that has given us the strength to rebuild the economy.
The bad news is that other countries have not had the success that we have. We listened to our medical professionals, and we successfully saved thousands of lives. In stark contrast, the virus is still running out of control in many countries recording almost 100 million infections and – devastatingly – resulting in over 2 million deaths. This virus has a long way left to run.
This Australian success in comparison to ongoing crisis around the world has meant some industries have been able to recover, while others face the prospect of an extended downturn.
In Ballarat, tourism supports an estimated 3,015 jobs, which is 6.2% of total employment in our community. Sovereign Hill itself contributes more than $228 million of economic activity each year to Ballarat and Victoria, creating and sustaining 1,442 full-time, casual and part-time jobs.
These employers need international tourists to return before they can return to business as usual, but to protect our success, strict quarantine measures for international arrivals will remain vital. Even with vaccination programs beginning to be rolled out. international tourism will be the very last sector to recover and it may be another twelve to eighteen months before visitor numbers return to anything like normal.
Until international tourism returns to normal, vast sectors of our economy will remain in strife and hundreds of thousands of jobs will remain at risk across Australia.
To protect jobs and ensure that Australia’s vital tourism sector survives this difficult time, the Morrison Government needs to review its plan to cut JobKeeper support by the end of March. At the very least it must carve out and extend ongoing support to those sectors of the Australian economy who are most COVID impacted and will be the last to recover, whether they be in our tourist economy or integral national businesses such as aviation.
This will allow Ballarat businesses to continue to recover and survive, ready to reopen foreign travellers when our world returns to normal.
We don’t know how closely the post-COVID economy will resemble the pre-COVID one. But until the promise of vaccination rollout and coverage is fulfilled, extending a lifeline a few months will allow more Ballarat businesses to get through to the other side.
This Opinion piece was originally published in The Courier on Friday, 29 January 2021
CATHERINE KING – OPINION PIECE – MORRISON GOVERNMENT MUST EXTEND SUPPORT FOR HARDEST HIT SECTORS – FRIDAY, 29 JANUARY 2021
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