Business organisations are urging the Victorian government to compensate businesses impacted by the snap lockdown for missed financial opportunities on what was supposed to be one of the busiest hospitality weekends in recent years.
“You’ve got a perfect storm this year because Valentine’s Day was falling on a Sunday,” Paul Guerra, chief executive of the Victorian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, told the Sydney Morning Herald in an interview. “We were having the first crowds back in the day at the VRC [Victorian Racing Club] at Flemington on Saturday, the Australian Open for the first time in February, and of course it’s Chinese New Year as well, and then add to that the weddings that were delayed from last year to this year.”
He estimated the financial losses caused by the five-day lockdown to be between $500 million and $1 billion.
Premier Daniel Andrews told SMH on Saturday that the government would carry out further assessments on the lockdown’s impact on businesses before announcing support measures.
Guerra said the support package should compensate for losses not covered by insurance, including spoilt produce, and opportunity and cancellation costs.
Paul Zahra, chief executive of the Australian Retailers Association, also told SMH that he expected the financial damage to be significant, especially in the hospitality sector.
Chinatown precinct spokesman Christopher Ng admitted to SMH that the lockdown has a big impact on local businesses, given that the Lunar New Year weekend was often the busiest time of the year.
He also said that some Chinatown restaurants had to shut down permanently as takeaways were not enough to keep the business afloat.
Some businesses feared that the snap lockdown could last longer than five days, Bill Lang, director of Small Business Australia, told SMH in an interview. He added that JobKeeper would not be sufficient to help small businesses recoup lost money on produce. He also called for targeted support from the federal and state governments to compensate the most affected businesses.
The Victorian government has also faced mounting pressure to end the lockdown after five days, and health authorities said they were managing a “high-stakes game.”
“We cannot afford to be wrong here,” said Brett Sutton, chief health officer. “We have to be precautionary. It’s an awful situation to have a circuit-breaker of any kind, but it’s done because we must get on top of this. There is really no alternative.”
