On Wednesday, January 13, state Member for Northern Victoria Tim Quilty sat down with Moama businesses to hear how they had been impacted by the border closure.
It followed a meeting of more than 50 business owners, convened by state Nationals leader and Member for Murray Plains Peter Walsh.
Mr Quilty said he was shocked to hear how bleak the outlook was for some Moama businesses.
“This border closure is killing communities all along the Murray and the sad truth is that the Andrews Government could not care less,” Mr Quilty said.
“Towns on both sides of the border function as one but nobody in Melbourne understands.
“And because from Melbourne this looks like a problem affecting only NSW residents, it is highly likely the Victorian Government will be only too happy to do absolutely nothing to help.
“Dan Andrews can have his revenge on Gladys for the humiliation of the first border closure, and the border residents can be damned.
“It’s another example of COVID theatre, designed to appeal to voters in the city, achieving nothing but massive disruption of border economies and lives.
“Although I am a Victorian MP, I am perfectly willing to speak up for border communities north of the Murray.”
The meeting was called by Steve Shipp, who runs the Murray River Resort in Moama.
“We are trying to get our businesses working again — the destruction in Moama is incredible,” Mr Shipp said.
“We are a community that’s being killed by metropolitan-based governments who’ve got no idea about how we survive up here.”
Mr Shipp said the group was calling for the Victorian Government’s classification of NSW border areas to change from amber — which requires visitors to get a COVID-19 test and isolate while awaiting a negative result — to green, which requires no restrictions.
“They haven’t thought about border communities when they slapped that ridiculous border restriction on us on New Year’s Eve,” Mr Shipp said.
“We want them to change the border region of NSW to a green zone, we would like to see police off the border and we want both state governments to understand that they need to talk to each other and understand how their actions affect border communities.”
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