Freedom Day in the UK announces life back to normal

Holly Stearnes 

Well, the UK has Freedom Day coming right up. What will this mean for small businesses throughout the UK? For more though, let’s bring in Bill Lang from Small Business Australia. Bill, great to see you, as always.

Bill Lang 

Hi Holly, how are you going?

Holly Stearnes 

Good. Now let’s talk about this upcoming Freedom Day. What will that actually mean for businesses across the UK?

Bill Lang 

Yeah, so Freedom Day happens in a couple of weeks from now to third week in July. And the UK that’s been in some pretty serious sort of lockdown now for a number of weeks is going to open up quite dramatically. So things are warming up from a summer time of the year with respect to the UK, there’s a high vaccination rate in the country, over 50% of people are fully vaccinated. And so what the UK government’s have said, look it’s summertime, the small businesses need their customers back, those businesses want to see the customer. So particularly hospitality dancing venues, all of those sorts of things going to be open, and people will be able to go to them, see those business owners, generate some revenue and be mask free.

Holly Stearnes 

Incredible. So essentially, for what just one day, everything will completely go back to normal just for that one day,

Bill Lang 

Well for more than the one day. So that’s Freedom Day when it starts, that’s the UK is opening back up, it’s getting back to as close as you could get to, with what you would have gladly COVID Normal.

Holly Stearnes 

Incredible. Do you think this is something that other countries, for example, Australia could be looking on to when we see those high rates of vaccination? We could potentially be at that stage, right?

Bill Lang 

Yeah. Well, the the federal government Australia is has laid out sort of four phases to get there, but there’s no real timeline. There’s still a month or so they’re saying before they actually have any targets. So that sort of talked about what they’d like to achieve in terms of a destination. But there’s no specifics around specific goals. So it’s still fuzzy and every every Australians looking for some light at the end of the tunnel, but it’s not too clear yet, how bright the light is and how close we’re getting, but at least something has been described with respect to this four phase plan.

Holly Stearnes 

Let’s talk about that four phase plan. What is in it for businesses, right across the nation? Is it positive news, what would you have liked to see?

Bill Lang 

Well, I think the thing about the four phase plan is for businesses and small businesses they want to see, they want to see implemented, let’s get through phase one as quickly as possible. They’re talking about Christmas time. So here we are, like we’ve got, you know, Christmas in winter coming up in terms of July. But there’s another six months until we actually get to Christmas. So it needs to happen much faster. So what every Australian wants to see is, look, how much vaccine do we have? Where is it? How can we book in easily? How can we go and get it so that we can get to you know, in the case of the UK, the same 50% fully vaccinated, summertime, we’ve got to get going. And and I think the same urgency exists here in Australia, we need some more action, and we need more clarity. So everyone can see exactly where we’re at, and know exactly what they can do to get us there faster.

Holly Stearnes 

Absolutely. And in regards to businesses, I mean, you obviously know, you’re at the forefront of this hearing firsthand from businesses who are struggling. Businesses cannot keep going in and out of lockdown, can they?

Bill Lang 

Absolutely not. And this is one of the challenges in our Australian sort of Federation structure where it’s literally the premiers of the states, making decisions and they’re saying they’re making decisions based on what the Chief Health Officer said they’re talking about the best health advice. But they really should be thinking about what’s the best overall strategy for all Australians, as opposed to what they call the Chief Health Officers, they call the CHOs, and a lot of the politicians are saying behind the scenes that CHO runs the show, but none of these Chief Health Officers were elected by anybody. And I’ve never seen, you know, any health professional that would agree on any one thing. So even when you go and see doctors, it’s like, you know, go and get a second opinion. But there are people here called the CHOs and what we’re hearing is what the CHO says goes, they run the show, and our political leaders are saying, well, it’s the best health advice. But yet many small business families have already had to close their business. They’ve already sold their homes. And, you know, as we’ve heard many times on Ticker, there’s a much broader set of health implications around mental health and different surgeries and screening test. It’s all been getting delayed as a result of these lockdown. So it’s a big problem.