Thursday
I’ve pretty much made the decision not to re-open our business. The ineptly formulated government ‘rescue’ means that I would have to take out a loan, in order to pay my staff, in order to receive a government handout to cover some of it (not the ‘on costs’ of superannuation, holiday pay etc.).
I have been creating and running businesses for 62 years and have never taken out a loan. I do not intend to put myself under the pressure of starting now. Especially not to bail out career politicians who have so ineptly stuffed up.
I would be trying to service the loan in an economy that has been destroyed. The economy has been drowning in a sea of regulations with the tide rising ever higher for decades. Only a lot of hard work, shrewd hiring and decades of experience through thick and thin has got us this far. But now? Hands up who sees a bright business future. Me neither.
By not joining ‘Job Keepers’ (the above), we are not eligible to receive rent relief. So, even though we were legislatively closed down through no fault of our own, the business would have to pay at least half rent for the whole period. We would be entitled to a deferral of this payment. In other words, another debt foisted onto business in order to save commercial property owners so that the banks are not troubled.
A pox on politicians. They’ve destroyed our business that has been operating profitably for 36 years and they’ve screwed our staff.
It won’t be easy for our 17 staff – all good people who worked hard. There will be a million or so just like them all around Australia. Shafted by a government that pretended to give a s#%@. What will happen to them? They will be re-entering an economy that is now a pale shadow of an economy that was already on its last legs.
The Lucky Country is no more; Australia will be a place of hardship and visible poverty. The value of assets (always just an opinion) will crash, but the value of debts (a fact) will remain. Those debts, taken on in an era when prosperity seemed to stretch endlessly into the future, will likely be a millstone around the necks of Australians for the rest of their lives.
The economy will still have all the regulations, including Award Wages; it’s the jobs, and hope for the future, that have gone.