The decision, made recently by the organisation at a chamber meeting, was made on safety and logistics grounds, according to executive officer Brittany Sultana.

"We first met earlier back in March, which is when the committee meets early on every year to start putting things together," Ms Sultana said.

"It's a huge process to put the Rhinos together."

When the first meeting was arranged, the situation was nowhere near as bad and work began on putting together the beginnings for 2020's awards show.

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"However, the next meeting, the restrictions had come into place, so we played it by ear and decided to see how long things were going to go for," Ms Sultana said.

"We made a decision in the last month, obviously the social distancing measures were a huge factor, you just can't have many people in a single room at the moment."

Another major concern for the committee was the pressure on businesses to nominate, with the usually substantial process unlikely to be feasible for the many businesses struggling to stay open.

"The normal process it takes for the businesses who are nominating for the awards, it's quite a large amount of information, we just weren't sure if it would get the effort it normally would," Ms Sultana said.

"So many businesses are hurting right now, it's not really the right time to be asking them to put that kind of time and effort in."

"Similarly, we normally have a lot of sponsors, but now's not the right time to be asking people for money, we need to be helping people right now, we want to support the local businesses."

Ms Sultana said that if things go to plan, the 2021 Rhino Awards will occur at the usual date.

"We're hoping everything works out and we're hoping for October 2021, if the convention centre is available, because there's a lot of things that will be rescheduled now, but that should give everyone time to get back to normality."

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