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Outrage as Melbourne mayor says Covid was ‘GOOD’ for city – even as it suffered world’s longest lockdown
- Melbourne mayor Sally Capp is said to claim Covid was ‘good’ for her city
- The comments will be delivered on Friday at a TEDxMelbourne event
- Ms Capp argued that the city’s lockdowns have led to a post-pandemic boom
The mayor of the Australian city that endured the most lockdowns during Covid-19 has come under fire for claiming the pandemic was ‘good’ for her city.
Sally Capp, the mayor of Melbourne, made her views clear in a speech to be delivered in the city on Friday.
“Not many will stand in front of a crowd like that and say Covid has been good for someone or something,” Ms Capp is expected to say at the TEDxMelbourne event in pre-released remarks.
“But I’m here to do just that.”
Melbourne mayor Sally Capp will say in a speech on Friday that the Covid-19 pandemic was ultimately ‘good’ for her city
Ms Capp claims economic activity in Melbourne has recovered to pre-pandemic levels and will reach $150 billion by 2031.
“Now that’s what I call lockdown to boomtown,” Ms. Capp will say in the speech.
“Melbourne has emerged bruised, but bolder and braver through it all.
“It is thanks to the debilitating effects of Covid, the 262 days as a broken city and community, that we have achieved the seemingly impossible, turned around, risk taken, big dreams and accelerated progress,” she said in the speech.
The city’s residents experienced a record 262 days in lockdown across six lockdowns in 2020 and 2021, the world’s longest cumulative period of movement restriction during the pandemic.
People line up for a Covid-19 test in Melbourne in May 2021, just after five million people in the city were ordered into a week-long rapid lockdown
An abandoned Bourke Street in Melbourne, July 17, 2021, during one of Melbourne’s 262 days in lockdown
But company executives were furious at Ms. Capp’s comments.
‘Nothing good came out of Covid,’ Victorian Chamber of Commerce and Industry chief Paul Guerra told the Herald Sun.
“I don’t think there would be a single entrepreneur who would even remotely think that Covid has been good.
‘We had no access to the city for a long time, hotels were almost empty, restaurants and pubs closed, hairdressers and other specialty shops closed, people lost their jobs.
“Nothing good came out of Covid. People died, people got sick, our lives changed, things came crashing down, it was fucking scary.”
Ms Capp is expected to cite Melbourne’s response by housing people in hotels to help isolate them as an example of the city’s performance during the crisis.
‘It has changed lives. I recently received an email from a gentleman who lived in a local hotel during lockdowns. Despite being homeless for several years, this hotel stay was the circuit breaker he needed to turn his life around. He now has a job and a safe place to live,” she said.
The theme of the TEDx event is ‘Kintsugi: From Broken to Beautiful – discover how our scars, visible or invisible, make us and the world stronger and more beautiful.’
A spokesman for the City of Melbourne, contacted by Daily Mail Australia, said the mayor’s speech is about how the pandemic hit Melbourne “to an international audience”.
“She reflects on the devastation of lockdowns and restrictions, the pain they caused and how these experiences have made Melburnians more resilient,” the spokesperson said.
“The mayor explains how Melbourne is bouncing back and explains what is being done to make Melbourne a more vibrant, inclusive and sustainable city.”