Anna Caldwell: How Queensland’s border is killing Sydney businesses
It’s not just farmers and border communities doing it tough because of Queensland’s unreasonable restrictions — the economic harm is also being felt on the streets of Sydney, writes Anna Caldwell.
Opinion
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- Crisis talks to save Sydney from retail oblivion
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Gladys Berejiklian described Queensland’s new insistence that NSW record 28 back-to-back days of zero cases of community transmission before the borders come down as a “tall order”.
It’s worse than that. It’s absurd. The border debate has reached a phase of farce.
Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has every right to listen to health advice and protect her state from this virus.
Border restrictions can make sense when the virus is out of control in one location.
But there’s a difference between getting that right and jumping the shark to full hiding-under-the-doona territory, having zero faith in our ability to manage small outbreaks and pursuing an impossible elimination standard.
Ms Berejiklian rightly baulked at the threshold on Thursday.
“I don’t know anywhere on the planet where a society could function productively during a pandemic and get an assurance you’re going to (get) zero cases of community transmission,” she said.
Then, she deftly kicked the ball deep into Queensland territory, asking what’s wrong with their systems that they can’t manage a few cases of community transmission?
“If you have confidence in your health system, confidence contact tracing is something you can do within your state, there shouldn’t be a reason for you to keep your border closed given the low rates of community transmission currently in NSW,” she said.
NSW has worked hard to ensure we are keeping our economy open while stamping out outbreaks as they occur — and we have proven we can do that, emerging as world leaders in managing this virus.
All while taking on the burden of the nation’s returned travellers and their quarantine, something not being asked of states like Queensland and Western Australia who are imposing the harshest border measures.
Even former Prime Minister and Labor great Paul Keating said on Thursday he didn’t see a case for hard border closures “anywhere”, putting him at odds with the Labor Premiers who have the toughest closures. Mr Keating said the economy was stronger with open borders and we are stronger together.
While we can respect Queensland’s right to manage its own borders when cases are out of control, we must call our neighbours out when they get it wrong.
And the problem is, the longer states put up their own walls, the harder it is for the rest of us to get back to normal.
The release of this week’s horror national account figures highlight just what is at stake here — and we can expect the pain to get worse.
This means that every leader has a responsibility to help our nation through the tough times and, rather than feed the panic, work to get things as open as possible, as safely as possible.
This is particularly crucial in Sydney, where despite NSW’s best-in-class performance in balancing health and the economy, there are genuine fears that a slow Christmas retail period will bury businesses.
On Thursday I spoke to Ben Sweeten, who has an 85-seat eatery on Gloucester St in the city.
He relies mostly on tourists and city workers and told me that the best week he’s had in this pandemic — the week before Victoria went into lockdown — trade was down 59 per cent on the year before. Every other week has ranged between an 80 and 96 per cent downturn.
Australians are trying to support each other — one loyal customer kept showing up to Ben’s eatery every Sunday and ordering brisket and waffles but paying twice just to help out — but that good will can only go so far, so long.
When borders are closed, it hurts all of us, including tourism-dependant businesses like Ben’s.
That’s why we must welcome Dominic Perrottet and Rob Stokes launching a Save Sydney Business summit, as I revealed on the front page of this paper on Wednesday.
Every idea is on the table for discussion.
Ben told me the main thing he’d like to see fixed is parking in the city.
“Open up free parking in the city, stop fining people, make transport into the city free and safe — government can subsidise that,” he said.
This is a terrific idea and while it won’t be a cure-all, it is these small, practical measures that can help.
Greater Sydney generated an estimated economic output of $460bn in 2018-19, which represents 24.5 per cent of Australia’s GDP, or 75 per cent of NSW GSP.
Between March and May 2020, we know that almost 75 per cent of job losses in NSW occurred in the Greater Sydney region.
Online job ads for Sydney-based jobs have fallen by almost 50 per cent from last year, more than any other city or region in the state.
Vacant Sydney office space has increased from 3.9 per cent to 5.6 per cent this year.
And, analysis by SGS economics has estimated that the direct costs to the CBD caused by working from home are in the order of $7bn.
These are sobering figures.
Mr Perrottet this week said it was critical to save Sydney and the CBD if the state was to navigate successfully through these economic headwinds and this data shows how right that assessment is.
Some NSW government ministers believe a Ministerial portfolio for Sydney should be created in the upcoming reshuffle, an idea that’s previously been floated by Perrottet.
Maybe we’ll need a minister for border advocacy as well but let’s hope sense has prevailed by the time a reshuffle is launched.
The added stress of closed borders when there is not the case load to justify them casts a pall on everything, including our economy.
NSW has shown that there is a way to keep things open and crush cases all the name of saving both lives and the economy, and still we have much work to do.