James Campbell: Cheers to end of shutdown but city is still grim

Victoria’s third lockdown may be nearing an end but the grim fallout is clear in the empty streets of Melbourne’s CBD.

Now that we have avoided the calamity of an ongoing lockdown, Victorians can get back to worrying about the disaster zone that is the centre of Melbourne.

Sorry if that sounds churlish on a day when you could be forgiven for rejoicing in a bullet dodged.

But let me take you through some numbers put before the Melbourne City Council on Tuesday night. Let’s start with the number of people going to offices.

The centre of Melbourne is a disaster zone. Picture: Andrew Henshaw

Although things are obviously better than they were late last year, in January only 31 per cent of workers went into work. In Sydney it was 45 per cent, in other capitals more than 60 per cent.

As bad as that is, if anything it undersells how empty the city is.

On February 10, the number of people who walked through Flinders Street station was 61 per cent lower than a year earlier, while the number of pedestrians around the Arts Centre was down 80 per cent.

Unsurprisingly more than a quarter of the shopfronts in the CBD are either closed or empty.

In Docklands it’s close to half. In January, Melbourne’s hotels were at 39 per cent occupancy.

Foot traffic in Bourke St Mall is half what it was a year ago.

The same goes for the area around Melbourne University. Which is unsurprising really as there are 64,000 fewer international students in Victoria than there were a year ago.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, 13 per cent of jobs in the city have disappeared during the pandemic.

As long as workers are expected to wear masks at their desks or on crowded streets, the city will stay grim. Picture: Alex Coppel

Foot traffic in Bourke St Mall is half what it was a year ago. Picture: Paul Jeffers

While it’s two cheers for the end of the complete shutdown, it’s still grim out there. Picture: Andrew Henshaw

Entertainment spending is down by 31 per cent from a year. And so on and on...

Obviously a lot of this economic activity has decamped to the suburbs, it hasn’t disappeared altogether.

But it’s still a disaster and given the CBDs of Sydney and Melbourne between them account for about 20 per cent of Australia’s GDP, a national one.

So while it’s two cheers for the end of the complete shutdown, it’s still grim out there.

And as long as workers are expected to wear masks at their desks or on crowded city streets, it’s going to stay grim.

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