Don’t waste time

Blue Mountains tourism particularly local tour operators such as myself have continued to suffer financial losses from the dearth of visitation since December 2019.

Communities entrust government to respond to emergencies like bushfires; yet outside urban centres, World Heritage ecology and rural communities are treated like second class citizens.  Government ‘she’ll be right’ bushfire policy of ‘Advice’, escalating invariably ‘Emergency Warning’ level has this tourism season resulted in widespread financial losses to many NSW communities.  Whereas in the city, a call to 000 Emergency means Emergency from the get go.

Rural communities like the Blue Mountains have become victims of this negligent cost-cutting government policy that abuses volunteerism, wastes precious time, and does too little, too late.

Now we’re all impacted by the Corona Virus pandemic as a consequence of government quarantine policy doing too little too late to protect local communities from a foreign threat.  Despite knowing since January that this new highly contagious virus had pandemic potential with no vaccine, tens of thousands of people have been allowed to arrive/return into Australia unvetted.

Two months hence, the financial damage is now done.  The virus is here and Blue Mountains tourism is again the victim, this time along with the entire Australian economy.  Government is simply not learning from disaster management.  Capital works spending and its overinflated public service carry on business-as-usual in some financial bubble.

“We search for leaders on our hands and knees” – Richard Clapton, 1982.

Steve

[This blog post was first published as a letter to the editor in the local Blue Mountains Gazette on Wednesday 25th March 2020].