With the Easter holidays coming up, the New South Police have advised that they will not tolerate travellers visiting holiday destinations as tourists.
They say they understand everyone’s frustrations at this time, with many restrictions limiting what individuals, families and businesses can do right now.
The current orders as outlined by the NSW Premier and the NSW Health Minister state that a person must have a reasonable excuse to leave their home at this time.
These rules are in place to protect millions of people across the state.
Holidays and travel are not essential
We appreciate the pressures many businesses in the tourism industry are facing – holiday rentals, licensed hotels and accommodation providers, caravan parks, tourism operators – under the current NSW Public Health Act (2010) regulations, we cannot be encouraging people to visit our popular locations and destinations.
The safest thing every person in the state can do right now is stay put.
As operators in this space, we are urging you to work with us as we all need to work together to spread this message – unfortunately, at the moment, we cannot be pleading with the public not to visit the Byron area and the Tweed Coast.
Police say all of these rules are in place to protect the health and safety of not just travellers, but residents in these smaller communities. An influx of visitors could put their health systems under pressure, whilst potentially transferring the virus from one part of the state to another.
Safest thing is to stay where you are
This is also relevant to the thousands of visitors and backpackers that are currently in NSW. We cannot have additional persons migrating to parts of the North Coast, the safest thing at the moment is to stay where you are. Do not decide that now is the time to get in your van and head towards the border. The risks greatly outweigh the benefits, and it is now law to stay put.
This is about everyone’s actions – everyone has to band together to slow the spread of COVID-19.
Every industry, every family, every person.
If you have a holiday booked in for this Easter/school holiday break – cancel it.
If you are an accommodation operator – you need to tell the public that visitors aren’t welcome.
We know this is hard, especially after the heartbreaking bushfire season and ongoing drought impacting many of our holiday destinations.
But this is something every person has to do – everyone needs to do their part.
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