Coronavirus: Tourism body slams state premiers for keeping borders closed

The Australian Tourism Industry Council says it’s ‘quite galling’ that border restrictions remain in place despite lower case numbers.

The Australian Tourism Industry Council says it’s ‘quite galling’ that border restrictions remain in place despite lower case numbers. Picture: Nigel Hallett

The Australian Tourism Industry Council has slammed state premiers for keeping their borders closed, telling a Senate inquiry scrutinising the government’s response to COVID-19, it was “quite galling” the restrictions remained in place despite reductions in coronavirus cases.

The tourism body’s Executive Director Simon Westaway said leaders shouldn’t be “dictated by public polls” ahead of the Northern Territory and Queensland elections and suggested that borders be reopened after 28 days of no community transmission.

He called for a clear set of rules when it comes to domestic borders, telling the inquiry on Friday that the states should be working with the Commonwealth to prevent the total collapse of the tourism industry.

“We have to get serious, super serious about how we‘re going to address this border conundrum that we are now facing,” he said. “You have the NT poll … and then we have to wait until the Queensland poll.”

“I don’t think we should be dictated to by public holes in the lead up to these … we’ve got to have a framework.”

He said that despite the release of a “really good” road map to recovery in May, when Scott Morrison unveiled a three-stage plan to relax restrictions, progress had stalled due to premiers “doubling down” on state border closures.

“Even though we’ve had the best seven rolling seven day period in terms of reduction of incidents of COVID in our community,” Mr Westaway said. “I think it’s really quite galling.”

He said Queensland was “the biggest loser” out of the border closure debate.

Asked whether JobKeeper payments had been sufficient, Mr Westaway flagged that further support may be needed beyond the wage subsidy’s second incarnation, which is set to expire in March 2021.

“I mean we would like to see more money coming in for specific targeted tourism initiatives as we move forward from the situation that we’re in and we’ve got some really good ideas here as do a number of our industry peers on how that can be done,” he said.

“Let’s get JobKeeper 2.0 through the two houses in the next fortnight and then let’s potentially work on a 3.0 at some time,” Mr Westaway said. “We’ve got to keep this industry standing on its two feet.”

Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry Jenny Lambert CEO called for targeted financial support for the tourism and hospitality sectors, which would be “better” than further changes to JobKeeper.

It comes as Qantas boss Alan Joyce on Thursday announced the airline had suffered a $4 billion revenue hit from the coronavirus crisis, declaring the company’s financial woes would like continue with international travel unlikely to restart before July 2021.