Councillor Chris Milne, Councillor for Hutt City Council recently posted into The Offical Lower Hutt Community Notice Facebook Page highlighting the increasing struggle of local businesses. The post read as follows:
Councillors receive a lot of emails from residents. Here’s one which highlights a very worrying situation. My reply is below.
Subject: Discretionary sales drop over 80% as Govt tells people to stock up with supplies for the Omicron wave.
Hi Councillors
If the NZ Public continue to hold off spending for another 3 or 4 months, expect most of the discretionary business in the city to be closed.
Discretionary business needs a strong counter voice now.
What can the Council do as officials and through the PR machinery of the council, and connections to help this.
If the Stanley Street Campaign could be re-run, this would be a counter voice to alert people they need to support discretionary business or lose them.
We have 7 staff that will be out of work in a month – and a for lease sign on the building. Multiply that across the entire Hutt City. Those on State and Council wages could be supporting those that are not.
Hi [redacted]
Thank you for your message.
These are very trying times for everyone who does not have a secure taxpayer underwritten income. I would hope that Council could put out some supportive messages about buying local and so on, but of course buying local just means that a business somewhere else suffers a reduction in income.
What we really need is a return to normality, as is now occurring in some countries in Europe. This means an end to mandate rules and for each person to determine for themselves what level of risk they wish to assume. Those who want to shelter from home can do, leaving everyone else to get on with their lives. The culture of fear needs to end.
Over the weekend, in driving rain, I spent two hours talking with protestors at Parliament. They are, in the main, people like yourself, except they have already lost their jobs and businesses. Many are vaccinated but have suffered from the loss of staff and business turnover associated with lock downs and mandates.
Everyone I talked with came from out of Wellington – from Whitianga, Pahiatua, Gisborne, Raetihi and so on. No one that I encountered enjoyed the security of a government funded job. Notably absent were the 120 well paid people who work in the building very close by, whose job it is to engage with citizens such as these who have a genuine point to make and ought to be heard.
The people protesting live in the precarious segment of the economy – they work hard, but they have no endless pit to tax and borrow against.
As elected councillors we should all remember who pays our bills and how much of a struggle they are enduring.
Best regards
Cr Chris Milne
