The government has rushed through legislation that would see businesses get a cash injection in some lockdown situations.
Under the scheme announced in December businesses that can prove a 30 percent drop in revenue over a week due to a Covid lockdown can qualify for a wage subsidy of up to $400 per full time worker.
That's to a maximum of 50 full timers and the business would also get a one off $1,500 payments.
The kicker is lockdown at alert level 2 or higher has to run for at least seven days before the Covid-19 resurgence scheme fires up.
Deputy PM, Finance Minister and Sport Minister Grant Robertson discusses the details with Lisa Owen.
Meanwhile, Russell Gray is the president of Good Group, which owns casual and fine dining restaurants in Auckland and Queenstown like Botswana Butchery and Dirty Laundry.
He told Checkpoint that while anything that helped his industry was "good news" it was disappointing the subsidy would kick in only if the lockdown lasted at least seven days.
"I guess the biggest issue is that from the time the lockdown was announced, business started to dry up and in Auckland in particular going to level 3 effectively from midnight [on Sunday] we lost 100 percent of revenue immediately and yet our costs remain.
"We still keep paying wages, we still keep paying rent, we still have to pay for the stock that we bought."
While the government was showing its willingness to help businesses, the seven-day restriction was wrong.
"I don't know who came up with that figure, but a day, two days, three days, that's sort of irrelevant. The losses start occurring immediately the lockdown is announced so the subsidy should kick in immediately."
He said the government knew the pain began for businesses straight away because if the lockdown lasted seven days, the subsidies would be backdated to the first day.
Gray said while taxpayers would fund the support, business owners paid tax and GST and the wages of their staff. "And it's important that subsidies are being put in place for a reason - to keep business going during an unprecedented pandemic."
In his view the hospitality industry had been amazing in the way it had adapted to ongoing challenges, but at the end of the day if restaurants were told to close there was little they could do until they were given the all-clear to reopen.
