2022-11-14 GC Agenda - Item 4 - Attachment 1 - Short Term Accommodation Monitoring Report 2022

With the onset of COVID 19 the state government’s priorities changed and the matter was not
progressed.
Council finalised its own local law approach which is further discussed in Part 3.6.1


2.9    Initial COVID-19 impacts –June 2020
Just prior to, and throughout the 2 year period of Noosa Plan 2020 commencing, the COVID-
19 pandemic created global, national, state and local upheaval with unprecedented economic,
employment, tourism, housing and social impacts.
The first confirmed case of COVID-19 in Australia and Queensland was January 2020 and
saw the first stages of quarantining introduced for returning travelers from China. The first
stages of international travel restrictions were also starting to emerge, particularly with the
World Health Organisation’s announcement that COVID-19 was a pandemic in March 2020.
As a consequence, Australian governments responded with forced lockdowns, border closures
and cancellation of major events.
The following sections outline the initial impacts of COVID -19 from March 2020 prior to the
commencement of Noosa Plan 2020 on 31 July 2020. Further impacts following the
commencement of Noosa Plan 2020 are addressed in Part 3 of this report.


2.9.1 Movement of people
Changes to the movement of people occurred during the early stage and throughout COVID-
19, both externally to and from Australian and internally between states, cities and regions.


2.9.1.1 Border closures
The closure of Australian borders to non-citizens and non-residents, social distancing and the
required closure of non-essential businesses effectively shut down the tourism industry for 8
weeks from March 2020, including the Easter period.
Latter March saw the closure of Queensland borders to non-essential travelers and domestic
flights to the Sunshine Coast were suspended. Non-essential travel was essentially banned.
Throughout April and part of May 2020 most communities in Australia were in lockdown and
domestic borders were closed.
Late May and June 2020 saw the easing of some travel restrictions and activities. However
significantly, Queensland’s borders remained closed to visitors for some time, but during
periods of border easing, there was movement of people from states worse affected by
COVID-19 lockdowns, particularly from Victoria and New South Wales.


2.9.1.2 Internal migration
The ABS Regional internal migration estimates, provisional for June 2020, stated that 85,500
people moved interstate in the three months to the end of June 2020, which was 14,800 less
compared with the June 2019 quarter. Notwithstanding this, capital cities had a net lost of
10,500 people from internal migration, the largest quarterly loss on record.
Queensland gained the most people through net internal migration and Victoria lost the most
in the June 2020 quarter, with Brisbane having the greatest net gain at 3,189 and Melbourne
and Sydney having the highest net loss of 7,994 and 6,378 people respectively, as shown in
Table 31 in Appendix 8.
The HNA2021 identified that:


                                                                                         pg. 69
Noosa Council Monitoring Report 2022/23