Blame game continues as businesses still wait for support funds

Mike Amor

10,000s of 100,000s of businesses impacted by the lockdown extension are eligible for almost $300 million in extra support. But leading business groups say that’s nowhere near enough to help keep many businesses afloat. For more now, let’s hear from Bill Lang from Small Business Australia. Bill, thank you for your time. Is the state government’s support announced today enough?

Bill Lang

Way too little and way too late and for way too few business. They’re talking about 90,000 businesses but we have over 500,000 small business families here in Victoria and we’re now passing 180 days of lockdowns. We’ve got hardly one in five will receive anything. If they received something. It’s a few $1,000, there were still 10,000s of 100,000s of small businesses that were told they were eligible for lockdown number four, still waiting to receive money, Mike.

Mike Amor

What happens to these businesses that you say are falling through the cracks?

Bill Lang

Well many of them closing down, they’ve already closed down because they’ve already drawn on their own family savings. They’ve access their superannuation, some have already sold their houses, some are basically giving up Mike, that’s what’s happening. And these people are the hearts and souls of our local communities. And we need the government ministers to stop telling porkies and start telling the truth about the fact that they don’t understand and they have not been providing enough direct support fast enough.

Mike Amor

We hear there are problems for those who are receiving cash that they’re not receiving it in their accounts. But the government says that problem lies with the banks, could they be doing more?

Bill Lang

There seems to be someone else to blame when it comes to anything that goes wrong here in the state of Victoria. Like they’ll announce a lockdown and then we’ll hear the premier say, we’ll have more to say about support. We’re 18 months into this. Hasn’t all this stuff been sorted out and organised. We just always appear to be playing catch up.

Mike Amor

Bill, what more can be done? Let’s be honest here, this is a situation that no one wants, no one likes, like state government says is paid around $7billion to businesses throughout the pandemic that’s around 10% of our budget. What more can it do?

Bill Lang

Well, I think there’s a number of things. So start telling the full truth as opposed to throwing around those big numbers and show the evidence as to whether that we have where that money is actually gone? Is it going to small business families, and we would say it’s hardly going to small business families. Secondly, every small business has contracts entered into before the pandemic started, that they’re still subject to them, whether that relates to leasing premises, leasing equipment, paying taxes to the state government, they’ve just been hit, we’ve all been hit now with land, stamp duty related invoices. There’s a whole range of things that the government can be doing to soften the blow and give everyone the best chance of staying afloat, but many are not making it

Mike Amor

All right. What’s your message to those business owners or operators watching this right now?

Bill Lang

Hang in there, we’re hopeful that we’re going to see even more help come from the federal government and that the Victorian Government steps up more, of course, you have to minimise the cash flowing out. We encourage every Victorian to support their local businesses talk to them, they can tell you the truth on what’s going on and keep buying local please.

Mike Amor

Okay, Bill Lang, thank you for your time. Appreciate it.

Bill Lang

Thank you, Mike.