VICTORIAN Liberal leader Michael O’Brien says small businesses in Mildura remain fearful of snap lockdowns and “knee-jerk reactions” from the State Government.
Mr O’Brien spoke with local business leaders and councillors during a visit to Mildura yesterday, gaining a “first-hand” understanding of the issues that have faced the region during the COVID-19 pandemic, and their hopes heading into next year’s state election.
“My takeaway was that I think Mildura did better through lockdown than many other places,” O’Brien told Sunraysia Daily.
“But there were some serious issues, those the border problems, no-one wants to see those come back, because just so much seemed to be bureaucratic and didn’t make a lot of sense.”
And he said the five-day lockdown around the Valentine’s Day weekend was “actually more damaging” for many Mildura business operators than the larger lockdown, given it sapped confidence as they moved into recovery phase.
Mr O’Brien said Premier Daniel Andrews should have gone to New South Wales and “copied Gladys (Berejiklian) as homework”, rather than “pressing the big red button” and locking down the entire state.
“When they had an outbreak on the Sydney northern beaches, guess what? They locked down Sydney’s northern beaches, they didn’t lock down the entire state. that’s what the Labour government in Melbourne should have done,” he said.
“They shouldn’t have locked down Mildura for an issue that was limited to Melbourne because they did a lot of damage here.”
Mr O’Brien, who visited the region with Member for Northern Victoria Wendy Lovell, said helping small businesses in regional Victoria get back on their feet would be a priority as he begins his long run towards a state election.
“I mean, we’re 18 months until the state election, and I’ll be announcing some really significant commitments to Mildura before then” he said.
“I’ve already come out and announced some really significant commitments in relation to small businesses because one thing that I’ve learned is that particularly in regional Victoria, small businesses is the absolute heart of the local economy, and small business got smashed last year.”
“We want to get the state back on its feet, we need to just be a small business lead recovery. So I’ll take our payroll tax and being the worst in the country for small business to the best. Because payroll tax drives people mad, it’s a tax on jobs.”
He said Mildura voters faced a clear choice next year, voting for Independent Member Ali Cupper or Labor and getting a “Melbourne-centric” Labor government, or voting for the Liberals or Nationals and having an O’Brien coalition government that was committed to the regions.
“When Labor runs into financial problems for a Melbourne project, you know what they do, they throw more money at it until it’s fixed,” he said.
“They’ve done that with Metro tunnel, they’ve done that with level crossings, they’ve done that with the West Gate tunnel. But when labour runs into problems with a regional Victorian project that benefits the people of Mildura like the Murray Basin Rail Project, they say ‘too bad, we’ve run out of money’.
“It just shows you this is a Melbourne centric government. And I want to give people a better option.”
