THE Murray region will not recover from the economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic until at least the 2022-23 financial year, State Parliament has been told.
Member for Northern Victoria Wendy Lovell told parliament on Thursday that Mildura’s visitor expenditure loss this financial year would be “significantly worse” than the $40 million hit to the region during the first three months of the pandemic.
Ms Lovell said Mildura was showing a 13.6 per cent decline in domestic overnight visitors compared to the year ending June 2020 “so we are expecting a much worse result when we see the full figures for 2020-21”.
The Liberal Party MP joined calls for the Victorian Government to urgently support tourism and events industry businesses and to hold public hearings to identify key issues and areas of concern on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Ms Lovell said the tourism sector was “really important” to the Mildura community, supporting about 1680 jobs — or 7.5 per cent of the workforce — as well as the sub-sector of accommodation and food services of more than 900 jobs.
She said it had been estimated that it would take at least until the 2022-23 financial year for the Murray region to recover to the same levels as the 2019 economic year.
“This is no growth — just to recover,” Ms Lovell said.
“So they are going to be down on their turnover and on their visitation and on their profits and on jobs in the region for some significant time to come.
“This is why we need to hold this inquiry — we need to hold this inquiry to ensure that we do know the full impact that this has had on this sector and what support is needed from government to help them to recover.
“But I would say we do not need to wait until the inquiry has said what support is needed.
“The government needs to step up now and provide support.”
Ms Lovell said businesses in the Murray region had been hit with a “double whammy”, first with the border closure with New South Wales on the stroke of the new year and again with the snap five-day statewide lockdown over the Valentine’s Day weekend.
“The fresh produce that restaurants and the hospitality sector have thrown away is incredible,” she said.
“This is really impacting on their businesses’ confidence and their confidence that they can continue to gear up into the future and have confidence that they should make preparations for the Easter period and the March long weekend — and any weekend really.
“They are just really concerned about when there will be the next snap closure and the effect that it will have on them.
“This is having an enormous impact on tourism in my electorate.”
Ms Lovell said it was “appalling” that the State Government had yet to announce support for businesses that had been affected by the five-day lockdown.
