AVOIDING 1984 SINCE 1986 The Byron Shire Echo • Volume 36 #07 • July 28, 2021 • www.echo.net.au
Byron businesses buckle down Aslan Shand The Greater Sydney lockdown has had a direct impact on local businesses who have seen a dramatic fall in customer numbers, particularly in Byron Bay. General Store owner Ben Gordon told The Echo, ‘Most business owners agree that Byron seems to be the quietest it has been in nearly ten years, and while this has some benefits for us locals, it’s not so great for small businesses’. David Jones, vice-president of Destination Byron, said that before the Sydney lockdown, the visitor economy was expecting a ‘historical bump’ for this period, with around 65 per cent occupancy for the Shire for July. ‘July is normally around 55 per cent occupancy, but now it will be more like 5–10 per cent’, he said. ‘Any business that is exposed to, and relies on, the overnight and day visitor economy will absolutely be feeling it right now. ‘About 80 per cent of demand for the last 12 months has come from Sydney. As long as greater Sydney remains in lockdown, Byron is going to feel very different’. Mr Jones continued, ‘My only concern is the government. I have a very bad feeling the government will want to make sure everyone feels this one’. ‘They may push restrictions into October, until the vaccines arrive to push people to get vaccinated. People will keep restricted until then, and that will hamper our visitor economy. Once Greater Sydney can travel, Byron will
Saddle Road land snapped up for $10m ▶ p4
Katie Munro from Arnhem, Karkalla’s Mindy Woods, Gabrielle Pool and David Uliara from Peek Gallery, Bryn Newman and Carrie Pickford from Arnhem. Photo Jeff ‘Am I Masked? Yes, Since You Asked’ Dawson bounce back with a vengeance’. Responding to the slow down, some local businesses got together to begin looking at how they can work with each other and the community to help get through this downturn. ‘Right now, with the continued restrictions and lockdowns, everyone is trying to be compliant, but there is very little foot traffic. No one is coming into town’, Katie Munro, Arnhem General Manager told The Echo. ‘With NSW being a statewide hotspot, the school holidays were hardly a blip. We still get our beautiful community of
Vale John Cornell ▶ p5
followers, but the new eyeballs and new traffic from Sydney and Melbourne are lost. The non-local element during summer and school holidays would usually triple revenue for holidays… ‘So as businesses, we are talking about how we can do the right thing, get a local, community voice and power happening’.
Tourism dependence The impact isn’t just felt by the retailers, with Mr Gordon pointing out that ‘From an economic point of view, it has become very clear that Byron depends on tourism – hospitality, retail, accommodation
David Heilpern talks sovereign citizenship status ▶ p13
– all heavily rely on tourism, and when they take a hit, there is a knock on effect to other areas such as suppliers, farmers, tradies, services etc. Whether we like it or not, we need tourists’. For Byron businesses who pay extremely high rents, while having a significantly reduced income, it’s a major challenge to be both paying staff and remaining in business. ‘We are hoping that this doesn’t continue for too long as there will be some visitor economy businesses that won’t survive this second round’, Mr Jones told The Echo.
Freedom Rally – was it based on science? ▶ p18
MONDAY = STEAK
Local govt elections delayed, again Local Government Minister Shelley Hancock (Liberal) has issued a directive to reschedule this year’s Council elections until December 4. Elections had been scheduled for September 4, 2020, in accordance with the state’s four-year local government cycle. But in late June last year, the State government announced a year’s delay, allowing councillors and mayors to serve five years instead of four. While the announcement was short on detail, local MP Tamara Smith (Greens) told The Echo that if the election is unable to be held (in December) owing to COVID-19 restrictions, she expects it to be held as an iVote, ‘so that it can go ahead no matter what’. She said, ‘I don’t think anyone in the State wants it to be delayed beyond December’. According to www.elections. nsw.gov.au, ‘The NSW Electoral Commission’s iVote system enables people to vote online or by phone’. Yet Ms Smith added that iVote has its issues. A 2019 report by Melbourne Uni claims, ‘Flaws in the iVote internet and telephone voting system used in the 2019 NSW election could have made it vulnerable to undetectable voter fraud’. In response, The NSW Electoral Commission says it engaged PwC and Demtech Group to audit iVote’s technology and source code that was used for the 2019 NSW election. According to a 2019 report by www.zdnet.com, iVote was purchased via a Barcelona-based vendor, Scytl Secure Electronic Voting.
Curating beautiful spaces ▶ p22
A&I and Habitat on the map ▶ p24
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