Uncertainty still lingers around the potential for lockdowns

Jackson Williams – Ticker News

How much ongoing uncertainty still lingers around lockdowns, the potential for lockdowns because we saw one just in, I think roughly the past fortnight in Brisbane, finally tomorrow, restrictions there will be using?

Bill Lang – Small Business Australia

Yeah look, I think there’s a lot of people that feel more confident about potentially travelling to a place like New South Wales as opposed to some of the other states.

But there’s still a lot of uncertainty because we even saw here in Victoria, that Valentine’s Day lockdown came from nowhere, no warning, imposed straightaway, five days, lots of small businesses having to lose a lot of money as a result of that.

So until we see the clarity, we don’t see any government saying there will not be a future lockdown, or you will always receive, you know, three or five days’ notice of that taking place until we get some clarity around that and some firmness, of course, many people are still uncertain.

Jackson Williams 

Just overseas now to the US to the UK. In countries with high vaccination rates, how are small businesses faring? I guess everyone’s different? It depends on the specific sector.

Bill Lang 

Yep, you would have seen with the UK like the pubs are back open again, it’s been a sad week for many people that are fans of the Royals and with the passing of Prince Philip, but people are back out and about there because there’s almost 60% of the population have now had at least one vaccination.

So they’re moving towards this thing called herd immunity, where the more people that have been vaccinated, the more people that are less likely to catch COVID and less likely to share COVID and that builds the confidence of customers and people, citizens to get out and about and the businesses, particularly those that have been closed over there for 12 weeks to reopen and welcome their customers back.