Owner of "Texas Pete" BBQ joint in Hamilton, Jared MacDonald (Ngāti Porou) says that he would rather have all lockdown restrictions removed than receive money from the government. This statement comes ahead of the budget announcement this Thursday.
“I don't hold out huge hope that there is anything in there.
“If they were going to help out our sector, I believe they would've,” says MacDonald.
Although the doors of his popular BBQ joint reopened under Level Three restrictions two weeks ago, MacDonald says he is yet to scratch the surface in terms of recovering the amount of money his business loss during level four lockdown.
“We are almost no better off in Level 2 than we were in Level 3,” he says.
“Unless you're a big joint with a whole bunch of seats like some of these bigger restaurants, you're not able to operate under those level two restraints - single servers, the spacing between tables - to me it shows the lack of understanding that the government have.”
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern briefly addressed the hospitality sector today in her 1pm address.
“We are setting out a path that hopefully hospitality can get back up and running some of those generic ways of support like the wage subsidy has been generic to that sector.”
However, MacDonald feels the wage subsidy does very little in regards to the survival for his business and other small business nationwide.
"I employ five people, four of them are Māori, all of them with people to feed in their household.
"We have paid them the workers subsidy, what's gonna happen when that runs out? I will tell you what'll happen - we gotta cut cost cos [sic] we don't have the income to pay for those overheads now."
The Budget will be announced this Thursday.