[VIDEO] Sky News

The Victorian government has extended the emergency powers for a further 9 months. What does that tell the businesses and consumers of Victoria about the level of confidence that our government has in their ability to efficiently manage the vaccine roll out and the contact tracing system?

Bill Lang joined Chris Kenny on Sky News to discuss the latest in small business news.

You can watch the segment via the following YouTube video or read the highlights of the transcript below.

Chris Kenny
Images of the contemporary country now and especially the pandemic and its effect on small business and especially in Victoria. And I’m joined now by Bill Lang again, who’s the executive director of Small Business Australia. Good to talk to you again, Bill. Look, it’s fantastic to see particularly in Melbourne, which is obviously had the harshest lockdowns in the country, the CBD opening up business, opening again. But there are real problems out there a lot of fears I see in Melbourne that areas like the CBD and Docklands are going to take a long, long while to recover.

Bill Lang
Yes, we’ve fallen a long way, Chris, and I’ve just walked through that area on the way over the studio here in Melbourne. And we’ve got a long, long way to come back. There’s a few little green sprouts, but there’s a lot more to be done and a lot more help as needed.

Chris Kenny
Now that would leave government to really push this along, especially given that the vaccine is being rolled out. Do we need government to be a lot more optimistic? And pulling back the restrictions? I understand that Daniel Andrews is going to talk about extending his emergency powers further. Isn’t that the wrong message at the moment?

Bill Lang
Well, Chris, since your show started, they’ve just been extended here in the state or the colony of Sick-Toria for another nine months. So the upper house, so called crossbenchers have teamed up with the current autocrat and it’s been passed. So we’ve got nine more months of emergency powers. So what does that tell people, particularly people in business and the consumers about the level of confidence that our government has actually got in their ability to take advantage of vaccinations, to take advantage of a new tracing system? You know, we’ve literally said, Look, we can’t accept anyone internationally coming into Melbourne. So we’ve got ongoing incompetence there. We had that inquiry at the end of last year, the so called creeping assumption. But what we’ve got going on here now is the creeping resumption of autocratic power, and a lot of things happening from our perspective, which just appears to be a pure power play. For example, the five day Valentine’s Day lockdown, two days before it was called, we were hearing from the government that we had gold standard hotel quarantine and tracing gold standard one, day five down lockdown number three the next.

Chris Kenny
But this is a problem here. You’re not another nine months of emergency powers. And as we know, this gives the state governor enormous power to shut down and restrict people at will, surely if you need those powers in coming weeks, there should be a much shorter timeframe. Surely it should only be imposed a month at a time. At the moment we’re just surrendering these freedoms and submitting to lockdowns around this country willy-nilly sometimes based on one case.

Bill Lang
And look, and continuing to withdraw from the emotional bank accounts of the citizens a level of trust in the government. So they need nine more months, why can it be reviewed every month, for example? And yes, like telling us gold standard one day, then a couple of cases, we’re locking the whole thing down and of course, they will hear about some strain that’s so virulent. And what I found very interesting in recent days Chris and speaking with a lot of younger people, like the Valentine’s Day lockdown, Chinese Lunar New Year, Valentine’s Day weekend, very busy weekend. Up to a half a billion dollars lost. And the government couldn’t even announce at the same time, what the level of compensation would be for the businesses directly impacted by it. It was state-wide, it wasn’t just in Melbourne, state-wide, six and a half million people, pretty much every business told to shut. And then when they finally announced some compensation, at best, maybe 50,000 businesses can maybe get $2,000 yet there were 600,000 businesses impacted. Why can’t they walk and chew gum at the same time, if they’re going to do this stuff? Tell us what’s going to happen. But look, this appears to be a continuous stream of making things up as they go along, the exercise of raw power. And the people in power are the people that design the big mega departments. Now that the current premier is a former Minister for Health. So all of these issues that we’ve got, it’s not just all they happen to be in government now they’ve been in government for a long time. They’ve been ministers in the areas and we are we are a very sick state. And it’s not about the virus.

Chris Kenny
This breaking news that you’ve updated us on that the emergency powers will be extended another nine months will bring to 21 months, the period in which Victoria has been subjected to emergency powers that is extraordinary. There’s almost two years of emergency power.

Bill Lang
Look, I sadly probably with the exception or on a parallel with London, you would have to say that Melbourne in particular, once the world’s most liveable city now is the world’s most lockdown city and most unliveable city. And for the small business people, Chris, like these people aren’t public servants, they’re not working in big corporations. There’s no guaranteed income coming in. They’re born the biggest financial costs, the biggest emotional costs, the biggest mental health costs, and we’re about to see particularly here in Victoria in coming weeks. We’ve already had 10s of 1000s close there are going to be many more 10s of 1000s closing. A great big addition to unemployment as a result of people that have been on JobKeeper here in Victoria is a big mess, Chris a big mess.

Chris Kenny
It’s a shocking situation. Thanks for bringing us up to date with Bill. I appreciate it. Bill Lang there who’s with Small Business Australia