Wednesday, 4 August 2021

COVID-19

Ms SANDELL (Melbourne) (10:00): The pandemic has been so tough for the Melbourne CBD. Office workers, international students and tourists once fuelled the daytime buzz and economy of the city, but we do not know when or how many will come back. The arts have also been decimated. For residents, empty shopfronts and barren streets are a really sad sight. So what do we do now? For some hope we can look to other cities to see what they have done after crises. Newcastle, Christchurch, Berlin and others have all taken steps to attract the arts and new industries after a crisis, creating jobs and boosting their economies.

As the MP for Melbourne I have been thinking a lot about what the CBD will look like in the future, and I have also spoken to a lot of locals. With more and more people working from home, once we are fully vaccinated Melbourne can transform from a city that is driven by nine-to-five office workers to a city that is more about attracting people for unique experiences around the clock. But it would mean more government vision and intervention to attract creative industries, biotech and other tech companies to our city. It could start with curated events and festivals, but it cannot stop there. It needs to be backed up with policies like state-government-funded rent caps for creative industries and a change to policies that encourage landlords to keep shopfronts empty rather than rent them out at a discount. The government could even look to pay a percentage of rent for companies that base themselves in Melbourne’s CBD for five years.

We could also use this time to make the city more livable for residents, but that means policies to better deal with congestion and safety and to better deal with the impact of construction and short stays on residents, and creating more green spaces. All of this will rely on an improved vaccine rollout, but once this happens, let us not just go back to where we were before. Let us think about a big vision.