Earlier this week, I argued that Australia’s tourism industry won’t recover so long as Australia’s quarantine system continues to leak virus into the community and our governments continue to close borders and force people into isolation anytime a few virus cases emerge:
The end result is that a form of ‘sovereign risk’ has crept into the travel and tourism industry. That is, nobody can be confident to book travel when borders can be suddenly shut, visitors can be thrown into isolation, or be barred from returning home.
As long as this uncertainty and ‘sovereign risk’ lingers, the domestic tourism industry won’t recover. Travel will simply be too risky. Planes will remain grounded. Hotels will remain empty. And consumers will keep their wallets closed.
New data released by ANZ Research confirms my view with the perceived risks of travelling to some cities in Australia, due to sudden virus outbreaks and border closures, having a detrimental impact on planning for domestic flights:
It stands to reason that Australia needs two things to occur if the tourism and travel industry has any hope of recovery.
First, policy makers must get quarantine right, since it is our number one defence against importing the virus and failure in this area inevitably means further community outbreaks, border closures, and economic disruption.
The number one priority should be shifting quarantine out of densely packed hotels in our populous cities to mining-style camps like Northern Territory’s Howard Springs facility (shown below):
Second, national guidelines need to be set up and agreed upon governing how states respond to COVID outbreaks in other jurisdictions and when borders can close. We cannot continue to have situations where the travel plans of thousands are thrown into disarray, people are forced into isolation, and/or unable to return home because of a handful of cases cropping up in a particular jurisdiction.
A better balance needs to be struck between protecting the community, personal freedom, and managing the economy.
On both of the above issues we need the federal government to stop abrogating responsibility to the states and to lead.
Scott Morrison should long ago have centralised the quarantine system in regional areas, under federal control, and have liberated states from this risk. It should also have developed national guidelines and cooperation on how jurisdictions respond to virus outbreaks.
Unless the situation changes, Australia will continue to experience leakages of COVID-19 into the community, resulting in further knee-jerk border closures and more pain for travellers and tourism operators.
