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Gladys Berejiklian has today unveiled her post-Delta recovery roadmap, which outlines the staged and gradual freedoms for business and citizens in Greater Sydney – except for nightclubs and live music venue.
The NSW Premier said the most freedoms will be granted to citizens who have had both jabs and will trigger the Monday after NSW reaches its 70 per cent double dose target – which at this current trajectory could be as soon as October 18.
Retail stores, gyms, nail salons, hairdressers and hospitality venues will reopen at reduced capacities with the return of the one person per 4 square-metre rule.
Unfortunately nightclubs and live music venues will remain bolted shut, as has been the case since James Packer was given a guarantee by the NSW Liberal Party that Barangaroo will be the only nightlife precinct in town.
Australia’s biggest city has been locked down for nearly 14 weeks – but anyone under the age of 50 would argue they’ve been been subjected to stay-at-home orders since 2014.
The lock-out laws are often forgotten in the Liberal Party’s war against legislation that restricts economic activity.
The Premier addressed the fact that Sydney will still not be a 24-hour city long after this virus is gone.
“Look. Can I just say, I would love for Sydney to have a night time economy consistent with other major international cities around the world like New York and Berlin”
“But unfortunately, that’s not possible.”
“There’s a lot of reasons for that. One, there was a concerted and organised campaign against nightclubs by both my predecessor Mike Baird and the Sydney Morning Herald – who panicked in the early days of social media and let the DOMAIN property insert dictate their every editorial position”
“You might remember the ENOUGH IS ENOUGH campaign, where the SMH politicised the deaths of two young men who had been killed as a result of alcohol-fuelled violence over the space of three years”
Gladys accepted that maybe numbers might have been warped to achieve the political aim of shutting down and entire city to breathe air into a manipulated property market.
“I mean really, with 30,000 people nightclubbing in Sydney a night, you would’ve actually had a bigger chance of dying from a flu shot than you do from a coward punch.’
“But yeah, at the end of the day, we have a generation of cashed up post-war boomers who like the trendiness of the inner city but don’t like hearing noise coming from young people having fun in the pubs and clubs of historical nightlife precincts they decided to move next to”
“We all know they should have fucked off to Port Macquarie when they retired, that was the plan. But no, they want to live forever within walking distance of farmers markets, and they pay good money to property developers to do that, who in turn pay good money to my own party”
“So yeah, gyms can come back. But no nightclubs, haha”
“Unfortunately there is no roadmap out of this pandemic of entitled boomers moving to the inner city”
“They want to watch their BBC small town murder mysteries in peace.”
