COVID-19 Response (Further Management Measures) Legislation Bill (No 2)

I move, That the COVID-19 Response (Further Management Measures) Legislation Bill (No 2) be now read a second time.

I don’t intend to go through all of the arguments, again, that I made in my first reading contribution about why the bill is necessary or what it does. I’m happy to answer any questions during the committee of the whole House stage should there be any further questions.

It’s a pleasure to rise and talk to the COVID-19 Response (Further Management Measures) Bill (No 2) and here we are on the second reading. As has been traversed already throughout this debate in the previous reading, we support this bill and we support the measures that this bill seeks to outline in the eight pieces of legislation that it seeks to address.

I do just want to touch on a couple of issues, of course, from the Green Party—you know, what else we could have considered. Well, I think in this bill, again, looking at the GST refunds, which would’ve made a dramatic difference to the business community—up to $100,000 based off the GST that they were paid in the six months to January. The other thing which Alastair Scott, my colleague, in one of his final addresses talked about was the depreciation of fixed assets. I think, actually, that’s a really important issue—to encourage businesses to continue to invest, to continue to upgrade at a pretty tumultuous time. The depreciation of fixed assets could have been another measure where we could have looked at the way in which that depreciation was depreciated over the lifetime of that asset.

Those were a couple of things that we would have liked to have seen addressed that relate directly to the bill. Now, also on the other side, they talked about the other measures, and Deborah Russell talked about the other various measures that have been implemented by this Government to address issues for small business. She talked about the wage subsidy. Well, that comes off this time next month. So as far as we can see—and we were absolutely supportive of that wage subsidy—but in one month’s time, that is a policy that’s going to be no longer in effect.

The second is around the support for the export and tourism support package. Well, Mr Speaker, I don’t know if you have gone and spoken to a tourism business, but I’ve got many in my electorate and they’ve told me that the support’s not been enough. And we’ve heard there’s just been a petition that was submitted on behalf of the many thousands of people that were caught up in the changes that were made in the lockdown who are directly affected in the tourism sector, particularly the travel and tourism operators. And they are calling out for more support and more help during these tough times. So to say that the Government’s actually done a lot for business, well, we haven’t quite seen it in the real world.

So those are the remarks that I have. As I said, we support the changes that have been proposed, but they don’t go far enough to addressing some of the deep-seated challenges that the business community will face over the next 12 to 24 months and we’re going to need to see a lot more from this Government on that. So we commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to make a final contribution to this COVID-19 Response (Further Management Measures) Legislation Bill (No 2). We support this bill because the National Party supports jobs. We know how important jobs are to our communities, to our families, and it is the businesses that have been impacted that create those jobs. So we, of course, will support any measures that will go into giving them some extra support.

As I’ve noted earlier in my contribution, businesses needed the support a lot earlier, and, of course, we welcome the changes that are in this bill in terms of taking off some of the pressure in terms of the auditory reporting and also in terms of the ACC regulations. But, ultimately, businesses did want some support earlier and they wanted some support in terms of what would have been helpful. Instead of giving them support with getting more into debt, they actually wanted some support just to cover that period.

The wage subsidy, I have noted—and as a previous Government member has said, there were other supports that were put in place, and I did acknowledge the wage subsidy. Of course, business owners were very grateful for that, but, again, if you understand how a business works, the wage subsidy is there to ensure that the employee is looked after, but there are also a significant raft of other costs that the businesses have to cover as well that are not covered by a wage subsidy. So, as I said also, it would have been a sign of support for businesses to have done some other things like delay the increase of the minimum wage, just to give them some breathing space and allow them to just get back up and to recover. Sadly, a lot of businesses haven’t been able to recover, and we have seen in recent weeks more businesses folding and significant job losses.

So again, it would have been good to have some support earlier, but we do welcome some of the changes that have been included in this bill around tax, around ACC, and around reporting, just to take some added pressure off, but we believe that there could have been more done to support businesses. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Bill read a second time.

In Committee