Never a bad time for planning
Twenty years in the Blue Mountains region and I have been planning my own business, even before then. Business planning is ongoing so as to cope with changes, like unemployment.
I have recently joined Lithgow Tourism, being a tour operator based in nearby Katoomba, with a key focus on encouraging visitors to the Lithgow Region from Blue Mountains stays.
Like all locals engaged in tourism, since the NSW Government’s declared bushfire emergency (3 times) impacted our region (Dec 2019 – Jan 2020), my tour operation has halted due to the NSW Government lockdown of all access into the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area. Tourists from Sydney were told to go away. The widespread thick wood smoke made tours unviable during that bushfire emergency. Cancellations, refunds and then customer enquiries all drying up. Established operators and their workers and families, I know are faring far worse off than mine are.
Government Service NSW and Service Australia has since offered bushfire disaster welfare, if you meet the eligibility criteria. Then on the back of this bushfire disaster, we all cop a fully imported Coronavirus pandemic. Government responded by imposed a national emergency lockdown since February 2020. It’s a double whammy and not just locking down tourism and hospitality – but all businesses, all workers the right to earn a quid, extended out to most of Australia’s economy and society. It’s unprecedented.
Who’s in charge of quarantine to safeguard Australia? What is government doing to step in and to step up in response to these two catastrophic disasters that in essence have been of its own making? Private enterprise has been all but wound up and workers herded into welfare queues. The year 2020 far from visionary has become a sad state of affairs, risking a return to The Great Depression of my late grandparents’ memory.
Taxpayer depended government, during its policed lockdown, seems to be tinkering aloof with notions of support for private enterprise – local businesses, including those in tourism.
Yes this is a time for social distancing to get us out of the pandemic ASAP and as Australians we are stepping up in solidarity better than many overseas. There’s talk already of a new vaccine from Oxford and from our own University of Queensland. So hope is in sight and it is a time for communities like Lithgow to plan for economic recovery. This is not a time for hiding under rocks.
The federal government in the wake of the bushfire emergency has allocated a whopping $76 million from its $2 billion bushfire recovery fund in a new push to revive Australia’s tourism sector nationally. The government has also committed a further $10 billion to promote regional tourism events.
So what is Lithgow Council doing to tap into this rare funding to support the region’s economy particularly tourism – hotels, restaurants, cafés, museums, attractions, tour operators and the many locals they employ? As reported “This is make or break for many businesses and tourist hot spots and not just in those areas directly hit by the bushfires. The PM has admitted that “Australian tourism is facing its biggest challenge in living memory.”
The Greater Lithgow Region has indeed been adversely impacted by the bushfires as well as this pandemic. So how is council engaging with the local business chamber to apply for a share of these millions up for grabs? Where are the shovel ready projects? How many applications has Lithgow Council made to secure some of this funding, before we miss out? Both the NSW Government and the Federal Government have recently publicly announced considerable welfare relief, low interest loans, delays in debt repayment, and a variety of financial and humanitarian support for Australian businesses, employees and individuals adversely impacted by these two back to back disasters.
Lithgow has planned strategies well researched and in place to boost economic opportunities for Lithgow into the future. Others will have a host of ideas, as I do. I proposed a Lithgow tourism initiative to the Mayor Thompson back on 13th February – no acknowledgement or response.
This is a time to be planning our way out of all this, not to be drawing public service income and doing nothing.
With technology at our fingertips facilitated by a plethora of technology and the NBN, this is a time for innovative engaging online with so many free and accessible software tools out there – email, smartphones, Skype, Google Docs, Zoom, Slack, GoToMeeting and many more such collaboration online. In the past week I have engaged in three separate meetings using ‘Zoom’ software – it’s so easy.
We need community leadership now. Last Tuesday I applied to join the Lithgow Chamber of Commerce. I await a response. Its stated mission is to provide leadership for the businesses of Lithgow and a platform for support for local businesses in the Lithgow Region.
This is a good time for planning, if there was ever a bad time.
Steve Ridd, Tour Director, Katoomba
[This article was first published as a letter to the editor in The Lithgow Mercury newspaper on 1st May 2020]