Monday
The only thing that has kept our business alive over the last few decades of ever-greater regulatory hardship has been an insistence on paying cash for what we have. We have stoically remained debt free. That we were not burdened by the need to service a debt is part of what saved us from the shuttered-up state of many others.
We are in the third week of a government enforced shut-down. Now they are asking that we take on debt in order to continue paying our staff. If we are willing to do that, then they will back-pay us for some of the money that we are spending – in five weeks – maybe. Or maybe not if the situation changes, as it has been doing every time they make an announcement – every 48 hours on average.
The problem is not Wuhan Virus. The problem is government and debt. Our business will not be taking on debt in order to bail out the government from its own bad decisions.
Much as we love our staff (they are the best of the best), we will not kill the business in order to buy a little more time for them.
It would have been better that 5% of Australians died (I am in the high risk category), than that we killed the livelihood of tens of millions. But our politicians were too cowardly to make the tough decision.
The shut-down (hibernation!) is the result of electing people to parliament who have never opened and run a business. They don’t understand risk, they don’t understand debt, they don’t understand business and, they certainly do not understand an economy.
Those people that are frantically stocking up on food, toilet paper, medicines and vegetable seeds and seedlings? They are the smart ones.