“We are proud kiwis and have worked all of our lives, with the past 15 years in hospitality.

As business owners, the last 2 years of lockdowns with the constant changes to Covid measures & restrictions have been horrific to be honest.

Firstly, it was 2 weeks to flatten the curve, then never-ending lockdowns, and more recently 2 shots for summer. Now with these mandates, we can see no light at the end of the tunnel for our business and for many more. So many businesses and families are suffering.

We have all re-mortgaged and hung on as long as we can, but the reality for kiwi businesses – for those who have not been forced or coerced to close already – is now hitting and it’s hitting hard.

Our government, who makes the rules, is oblivious to how hard and unsustainable this new reality is.

Throughout this, they have continued to be paid weekly regardless of what they demand of kiwi businesses. They have completely lost their grip on reality. Mentally and physically, it is exhausting trying to make ends meet.

Do businesses enforcing the mandates and vaccine passports realise that once the boosters have been mandated, it is likely that less than half of the population will be eligible to attend your businesses, making business harder than ever?

Have you seen what’s happened to Israel? Less than half of the double jabbed opted to be boosted.

This is an attack on small business and has nothing to do with public safety.

If public safety were really a risk, a ‘red traffic light’ would see all business closed and wage subsidy implemented. The mandates thrown on the hospitality industry. late November 21 saw three legislation changes within one week. As a direct result of this, many hospitality businesses were forced to close and there were suicides.

Why isn’t mainstream media talking about this?

In actual fact, these mandates are not even lawful. The Covid 19 Health Response Act states that orders must not breach the 1990 NZ Bill of Rights Act. The hospitality mandate itself doesn’t even have a penalty, it is only mentioned in the Order and there is a blanket exemption for any PCBU to exempt unvaccinated to work as the government can’t actually order the entire country to be vaccinated-this would be plain slavery. The PCBU or business owners have been tricked into coercing their staff into being vaccinated so that the government are not liable for the vaccine injuries and deaths.

When will the business owners wake up and stop this madness? We the people have the power!

We have worked under the click and collect system to comply with the rules since Aug 2021, but it is now totally unsustainable, and our reality is we are now out of money.

Our staff also can not survive under the current regime. They are all struggling to pay rents and survive. We currently have 19 staff that rely on us to pay their wages. We have so much love and respect for our team. Without their loyal support, we wouldn’t have the business that we have today. These people are amazing human beings whom we are proud to work alongside of, and there is no way we would ever fire any of them for making a personal health decision. Half of our team are double jabbed. The rest along with us, all want to see the long-term safety stats first which is not yet available for mRNA treatment-and will not be until 2076 due to Pfizer applying for an extension to release data. We understand this and we do not want to be responsible for coercion nor endangering our staff – not to mention we would be breaching the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 by failing to acknowledge the hazard-the Pfizer C19 ‘vaccination’.

With any medical treatment there is risk and with risk must come choice, not force.

Lots of our staff are young and they all know people that are suffering from adverse reactions which is now an official warning of by the Ministry of Health and Ashley Bloomfield for Myocarditis and Pericarditis – each person getting inoculated must be notified of this prior to vaccination, legally. With time we have also learnt that the jab does NOT stop transmission; so why are we forcing people into this experiment with never-ending boosters known to decrease immunity? New Zealanders have been told that it was ‘2 jabs for summer’ however, the reality now is a never-ending booster programme. 

 We have had people arrive and tell us that they have had their two shots but don’t want never-ending boosters, and don’t support the “show your papers” controls. They feel lied to. So:

• How many boosters per year is it going to take to keep these vaccine passports valid?
• And what happens to those who don’t comply with this?
• Are they then considered non-vaxxed and only worthy of the scrap heap?
• Why are the doctors being silenced?
• Why are social media accounts of the vaccine injured being censored?
• Why are these issues not debated with best practice and treatments instead of the one-sided narrative?

We know for a fact the MoH office is a propaganda generating machine. This all chills us. If anyone speaks out on this topic they are labelled anti-vaxxers.

How can we be considered anti-vaxxers? Both of us have had all our childhood shots.

Brendan lost his spleen three years ago in a mountain bike accident and it was recommended he repeat all of those vaccinations. So he did, however, he had a severe reaction to one of these and ended up with shingles that lasted for months and severe fatigue for the next 12 months.

Despite this happening to us I am still pro-choice, and we want to be on the right side of history.

We cannot stand by and allow this medical apartheid by locking out families without a vaccine passport, and the “show your papers to enter” mentality.

We have had people at our restaurant sit down; kids with grandparents and the mum burst into tears at the joy of a family being able to go out and have a meal together and not be made to feel like leapers excluded from society. We have also had vaccine-injured people in that have had one jab and are now suffering and definitely don’t want the second but have been denied an exemption and then lost their jobs. The heartache and the mental anguish is nothing that New Zealand has ever seen before.

The damage from this will be seen for years to come.

The families and friends that are dining together in our restaurant have been a mix of jabbed and unjabbed. For unjabbed families, these mandates have ended all hopes of being part of society. Kiwi kids can no longer sit their driver’s licence, go to a library, go to the movies, eat out or compete in an increasing amount of sports. This is segregation and discrimination, and it does not sit well with our moral compass.

It is completely wrong, and it is not who we are.

We are a nation that cares about each other. Remember ‘one people one nation’? What happened to that? This divide and conquer mentality is wrong. Fellow kiwis we need to unite. This traffic light system is destroying businesses. It was 2 weeks to flatten the curve and now it has now been 2 years of hell. The UK, Japan, 12 states in the USA, the Czech Republic, and Spain have all dropped these insane mandates. The US Supreme Court has halted the implementation of OSHA’s (our equivalent to Worksafe) Vaccine or Test Rules, calling them an overreach of authority. We simply need to learn to live with the virus, get NZ back to work and rebuild our society. Stop the insane fear and narrative for a virus that has a 99.9% survival rate for most groups of people.

Sadly, we expect our business will be shut down by the Lone Star franchisor as we did not follow these unreasonable and inconsistent mandates as instructed by our government.

We are unsure what the future holds but we know we have done the right thing.

We wanted to give people a safe space where they could come in with their loved ones and once again experience some normality without the fear of being judged or discriminated against.

To the 300 plus phone calls we have received daily and simply have not been able to get back to – we do apologize. It has been insane how busy we became overnight. We are so humbled by the support, kindness and love shown by so many kiwis who are pro-choice. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts. Lone Star Franchise gave us 10 days to remedy our situation and become fully compliant. If we didn’t then our franchise agreement will be terminated. This is set to happen this Wednesday 27 Jan. In NZ you are no longer fit to run a business if you choose not to take the jab. That is New Zealand’s new reality. What of OUR FUTURE With heavy hearts we sadly don’t know what else we will face in terms of government fines, losing our business, our home, along with our incredible and loyal staff that will need to join the ever-growing unemployment queue. 

We stand to lose everything, but we have taken a stand as proud kiwis and we are prepared to take one for our team of 5 million. Many more of us need to stand and unite and say enough is enough. The Covid Response is an overreach and its impact is killing more people than it is saving. Together we must unite and say no more.

Please don’t let our sacrifice be for nothing.“

Transcription provided by Stephanie Cowie.