Coronavirus: Closed states face a $10bn economic hit

Continued border lockdowns by the smaller states will deprive their tourism of about eight million visitors and cost about $10bn in earnings.

Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton urged Queenslanders to ‘keep the pressure’ on Premier Anna­stacia Palaszczuk. Picture: AAP

Continued border lockdowns by the smaller states will deprive their accommodation and tourism businesses of about eight million visit­ors and cost about $10bn in earnings if the premiers refuse to reopen before October.

Government data shows there were 7.9 million interstate visitors to the jurisdictions determined to keep their borders closed — Queensland, Western Australia, South Australia, Tasmania and the Northern Territory — from April to September last year.

Analysis by The Australian ­reveals they spent $9.7bn over the six-month period, including $5.6bn in the September quarter.

The stark economic picture emerged as state leaders continued to trade barbs over border closures, and Deputy Chief Medical Officer Nick Coatsworth joined his federal peers in declaring there was absolutely no medical reason to keep the borders shut.

While it was recommended that Australia’s international border close in March to protect the public, the health committee advis­ing national cabinet on the coronavirus pandemic has never advised states to close their ­borders. “We have to open up,” Dr Coatsworth said on Thursday.

Nearly 11 million Australians travelled interstate in the September quarter last year, according to data from Tourism Research Aust­ralia, spending about $10.4bn across 50,663 nights.

Queensland, which may not ­reopen its border until September or later, was the most popular state for domestic tourists in those cooler months, with 2.2 million interstate visitors spending $3.1bn.

During the same period, there were 515,000 interstate travellers to WA and 695,000 to SA. Those tourists spent about $867m and $686m respectively.

Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton, the federal government’s most senior Queensland MP, urged Queenslanders to “keep the pressure” on Premier Anna­stacia Palaszczuk, as he launched a scath­ing attack on the Labor leader. “The public needs to keep the pressure up here because I think the Premier will change her mind,” he told Sydney radio station 2GB.

“If she had a sound basis then people could easily agree with her position, but it’s clear that she just doesn’t have a logical argument.”

There is a Queensland state election on October 31.

 

Mr Dutton said it would be sensible to open the borders before the July school holidays so struggling tourism operators could benefit­ from domestic travellers.

“Lives are being destroyed and the Premier is conducting some social experiment here,” he said.

Queensland and WA have said they would not reopen their borders­ until NSW and Victoria both report four consecutive weeks of zero community cases.

But Australian National University School of Clinical Medicine ­professor Peter Collignon, who specialises in infectious diseases, cast doubt on this happening, saying he did not believe COVID-19 would be eliminated.

“Closing state borders because a state has one or two cases a week I don’t think is likely to achieve the result they (Queensland and WA) want, which is elimination, because I don’t think that is possible,’’ Professor Collignon said. “That’s very, very unlikely (although) I’m happy to be proven wrong. We need to learn to live with a risk that is low but a risk that will not be zero.”

Archie Clements, a professor of infectious disease epidemiology at Curtin University, said the state border closures were not just a health decision but “very much a political” one.

He was more optimistic of a four-week block of no community transmission cases in NSW and Victoria in the next month or so.

“We’ve seen very little community transmission now, just a little bit in Victoria and NSW,’’ he said. “The other states have done so well, the level of appetite in the community for opening borders and potentially winding back some of our gains is very low.

“If we do start to see a resurg­ence in cases in places like WA and the Northern Territory … they’ll have to shut down again. It might be easier for them just to keep them closed a little bit longer to safeguard against the risk of infections coming in.”

Modelling by EY for the Business Council of Australia predicts that 49 per cent of the accommod­ation, food and service industry’s reduced output during the coronavirus pandemic will be caused by domestic travel restrictions.

Ms Palaszczuk hit back at criticism from the NSW government, saying she would not be “lectured to by the worst-performing state”.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian said it was critical the nation restored jobs, and open borders were crucial for achieving that.