A group of central Auckland businesses are adding their voices to a growing chorus asking for more financial support for those hit hard by Covid-19.
Listen to the full interview here
Earlier this month, more than 60 business owners signed an open letter to Finance Minister Grant Robertson, calling for more support and saying they were on the brink of bankruptcy.
Now Newmarket Business Association (NBA) is joining the call for more support.
Businesses are allowed to operate under the red Covid-19 traffic light setting, but NBA chief executive Mark Knoff-Thomas told Checkpoint predictions of rising cases of Covid-19 have caused public confidence to take a nosedive.
"All across the country in town centres, we're seeing foot traffic all but disappear completely.
"Central Auckland, for example, foot traffic numbers are diabolical and if you're a hospitality provider or a personal service provider, or a retailer and you've got no customers coming past your business, you can't transact with them and that seems to be the real problem."
People were self-imposing isolation to avoid exposure to Omicron, Knoff-Thomas said.
"People are so afraid of getting Covid, there's an absolute culture of fear ... they want to stay home and isolate so they don't have to get exposed to it and have to go through the conditions of home isolation which have been forced on them, so they're doing it to themselves."
But with the majority of people in the country double-vaxxed, due to get their boosters, and health and safety protocols in place, then life should have some normality, he said.
"There is an overlying fear across the community, where people are literally afraid to leave their homes sometimes to go out, that's wrong, it's misguided I think, and the government needs to do something to bolster confidence within the community because it's gone too far."
Targeted financial support was also needed for businesses who have had to undergo two years of "diabolical trade" due to the conditions brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic, he said.
"There's no gas in the tank, there's no wage subsidy at the moment, there's no resurgence payment, there's no rent relief, trade is down by the self-imposed lockdown which seems to be happening across the country, it's just literally untenable."
The government has indicated it will soon offer hard-hit hospitality businesses one-off targeted relief, but exactly what that will be and when is still unknown.
Knoff-Thomas said financial support should not be universal, but rather given to genuine businesses who have had the "carpet ripped from underneath them", which should be demonstrated through trading history.
"What we don't want to see is a whole bunch of zombie businesses being carried through, I mean in a general real market there's going to be success and failure, that's the nature of our economy, in good times and bad times, but the problem is we've got some very good operators who are now on the brink of collapse for reasons out of their control."
Although Newmarket businesses had the best trading month in December, that was against a backdrop of two years of appalling trade, Knoff-Thomas said.
"December 2021, we did almost $90 million, but there were months in the year where we did $12 million. In a good month, in a typical month, Newmarket will do around $60 million but when it's down sort of $40-odd million a month, you can see very quickly that of the 3000 businesses trading in Newmarket, some of them are not getting very much at all."