Susan Templeman (Macquarie, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

'You're resilient until you're not.' That's what a mental health expert said in the last fortnight in one of my committee hearings into mental health and suicide prevention. You're resilient until you're not. No-one can accuse my community of the Blue Mountains and Hawkesbury of being anything but resilient. This is a community that knows natural disasters like few others: the 2019 bushfires, the 2020 flood, COVID and the 2021 flood. People rose to the challenges they faced. They rallied, they cleaned up, they rebuilt, they pivoted. And then they did it again. They've done it since November 2019, when the smoke was so thick that people stayed away. They stayed away for months, yet businesses tried their best to keep workers on, or to get them back as soon as there were green shoots emerging in the bush and in the local economy. Even though the support that came didn't come fast, wasn't perfect, often had to be fought for and left many people out, there was still gratitude and a belief that soon it would get better and that they would survive and thrive. There was still a sense of hope.

But the mood has changed. With the latest lockdowns, retail and cafe owners have said to me in the last few days that they're at a critical tipping point, with decisions needing to be made within days about whether they can keep going. These are not decisions that they should be forced to make, but it's come to this because of the total failure of this government to protect its citizens by getting quarantine right and having a proper vaccination rollout. We wouldn't be in this situation were it not for that, and it's also compounded by the failure of the state to help distribute the partial federal funding and state funded packages to business and individuals.

The lack of coordination between the state and federal payments in the system that has been put up by the Prime Minister means that people are holding off applying through Centrelink in case their small business, their microbusiness, their sole trader, their partnership, is eligible for a business grant. That means many have received no income since the end of June; they're in their sixth week of no income. They laugh at the comment I heard the Prime Minister say in a media conference a few weeks ago: 'Businesses have built up a buffer.' The kindest response I have had from a small-business owner is, 'He's out of touch'; the rest would not be acceptable in this chamber.

I spent 25 years in business. I know what it was like in the recession of the nineties and what it was like in the GFC, and I've never seen anything like this—nor have long-running businesses, particularly tourism businesses in the Blue Mountains. The government's failure on vaccines and quarantine has led so many of them to the precipice. We're fortunate in Macquarie not to have had a large number of cases—and, thank God, no deaths. Our hearts go out to the families who have lost loved ones. I want to commend the member for Werriwa for her moving speech today about the losses her community is experiencing. But we can see it getting closer. And none of us should be in this situation. It is a direct consequence of the Morrison government's complacency.

As one owner of several popular businesses across the mountains for more than 20 years tells me: 'Over the last few years, because of fires, floods and lockdowns, we have as a family poured every last cent we have into keeping the business going. We have no more personal funds to inject. I've done all the paperwork for grants and funding. There's been no communication or funding provided. This week I have to make a decision about whether to continue trading or close down. If I close, it's forever.' The owner of another retail and cafe business, in Katoomba, warns that he's looking at voluntary administration if the money he applied for weeks ago, when the details were finally released, doesn't come in by Monday. He has spent hours holding on the phone to speak with someone at Service NSW. One time it was three hours and 20 minutes in a single go. This is how small businesses are being treated. They are paying a terrible price for the Prime Minister's vaccine and quarantine failures. This is the Morrison government's idea of supporting small business, and it is bringing them to the brink. There are scores of similar stories across the tourist areas of the Blue Mountains and the Hawkesbury and across a range of businesses—any businesses that need customers walking through the door.

Another flaw in the support the government belatedly stumped up in its stubbornness not to bring back an improved version of the model that everyone understood—that would be JobKeeper—is that the link between employer and employee is gone. For businesses that are still able to operate, that really hurts. It's compounded for some businesses, because government has failed to deliver a package to support the big attractions like Scenic World in the way that it has for zoos and aquariums. They've just been left out. You cannot maintain major attractions like cable cars and railways without some funds; it doesn't happen for free.

The hint of a tourism recovery campaign post bushfires, called for by the Blue Mountains and the Hawkesbury in January 2020, has never eventuated. By the time the very latest funded campaign hits, operators are worried they won't be around to benefit from it. And these business owners are locals. They live in our community. They employ locals. This is their home, and the effect is far reaching. It's the consequence of government not going fast enough or hard enough. We saw it in the wake of the fires and the floods, and we're seeing it now. It's time the Morrison government stepped up to help New South Wales make sure this financial support gets out the door. Even then, there are going to be many who fall through the big gaps of eligibility, of the available support, including people whose businesses were affected by the fires and who were told there would be exceptions for them. But in reality they're missing out. Businesses that are new and have grown are now just closed.

When I think about the Prime Minister's performance, I think about how he's helped small businesses. I can't help but contrast it to the amazing achievements we have all seen of our Olympians. It's like being in an Olympic heat and holding back your best effort for the final. But the problem is that you might miss that race; you might miss that final. But this Prime Minister always holds back. He does just enough to be able to tell people how good he is but never throws everything at it. We saw this in the bushfires. Good on paper, big announcements, less than impressive on the ground. You also need to have done the preparation just to be at the starting gate.

Our position was enviable last year. We had low deaths, outbreaks that were tough but managed well by the states, especially Victoria. But while that was happening, the government didn't do two jobs. It didn't shift from temporary hotel quarantine to secure, purpose-built quarantine, and it didn't plan how to get a jab in everyone's arm. Complacency, incompetence, a sense of being bulletproof, stubbornness or all four—who knows? All we know for sure is that the hard work getting a mix of vaccines and making sure there were different ways of getting them to different populations just didn't happen. It doesn't matter how many times you channel our Olympic victories and achievements at the Olympics, if you haven't done the hard yards, you won't even make the final.

That's where we are now with the vaccination rollout. In my area, there are hundreds of people trying to get an appointment and struggling to find one. There are people following the advice, 'Go and get vaccinated now.' They're trying; they are really trying. The first hurdle is to find availability. The cumbersome online system that the government set up means that many people are falling back into phoning around to GPs. That's just the extra load that GPs don't need. This is no reflection on our GPs, who have put up their hands and are doing all they can with the limited supply and capacity they have. The promise of pharmacies hasn't eventuated. There is no delivery through pharmacies. The booking system that they've created is as effective as their COVID tracking app. Remember that? People are turning to Facebook with appeals for somewhere that will vaccinate before October. Teachers are desperate to get vaccinated before they have to teach face to face in the hotspots. These are the people who want to do the right thing. But the problem is, of course, supply; we all know it. We have never had enough supply—no contingency, no room for error. What we are seeing in Sydney, on our worst day of COVID, is a failed vaccine rollout. We need mobile services in the mountains; we need our own hub. That's what will give people hope. Until then, we don't have any.

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