Airlines, tourism back BCA reopening strategy

Friday’s national cabinet has been urged to consider a three-step COVID exit strategy to reopen Australia to the world.

Sydney Airport CEO Geoff Culbert says until international borders reopen, Australia will continue to lose $250m a day from the economy. Picture: Monique Harmer/AAP

The Business Council of Australia has released a detailed “COVID exit strategy” designed to plug the $250m a day leak in the national economy, as a result of the international border closure.

The three-step strategy devised by the BCA’s tourism and transport task force, sets out how governments should respond to the vaccination rollout to support the economic and social recovery.

Step one involved the opening of borders as key vaccination benchmarks were reached; step two was “changing the public health narrative” to shift the focus to vaccination numbers rather than a daily COVID case count; and step three recognised the need for ongoing government support for businesses affected by border closures.

Task force chairman and Sydney Airport CEO Geoff Culbert said the first order of business must be achieving consensus at national cabinet, to keep state borders open once the most vulnerable were vaccinated.

Following on from that, was the easing of international border restrictions that Mr Culbert said would increasingly become redundant as the vaccine rolled out here and around the world.

“Keeping the international border shut is costing Australia’s economy $250 million a day – that’s $7.6 billion every month,” Mr Culbert said.

The figures were calculated by business management consultants, EY, based on the enormous reduction in flights and visitors to Australia, and the impact to airlines, airports and suppliers.

Australian Airports Association chief executive James Goodwin backed the BCA strategy, after seeing the loss of 680,000 international visitors a month, and 506,000 jobs in the tourism industry.

He said as more Australians received the job, there should be “no excuses for the states and territories to suddenly close their borders”.

“Australians want to book travel in advance but they’re worried about being left stranded in another state or territory and being forced to isolate in hotel quarantine at their own cost if a flare up suddenly occurs,” Mr Goodwin said.

“Keeping borders open will rebuild confidence to travel, fill our airports and aircraft with passengers and allow the aviation and tourism sectors to begin to stand on their own two feet again.”

He said the report emphasised a need for a careful approach to restarting international travel, which would be crucial to getting the nation’s economy back on track.

“Before the pandemic, overseas travel injected more than $60bn into Australia’s economy with more than 9 million foreign travellers flying in to explore all that our country has to offer,” said Mr Goodwin.

“Keeping COVID out and maintaining safety is a top priority but let’s start to look at a plan to reopen Australia to other COVID-safe countries where we already have strong links. This would help to continue our economic momentum and assist in getting more of the 41,000 stranded Australians home from overseas.”

Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce last week revealed a number of state premiers, who he declined to name, had agreed to back a plan to permanently reopen borders once the vaccination of frontline health workers, hotel quarantine staff and the most vulnerable people in the community was completed.