We can all be proud to be part of our team of five million that has worked hard to eliminate the COVID-19 pandemic from our shores.
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Going hard and early has put us in a good position – what we’re doing is working and the numbers speak for themselves. As I write this column today, we have had zero new cases for two consecutive days. While that gives us hope, we still need to be cautious.
Now’s the time to lock in the hard-won gains and not allow the virus to bounce back. If we can, we need to continue to stay home and save lives.
We’re heading in the right direction and this next phase is about keeping on top of the virus as we to begin rebooting the economy while keeping New Zealanders safe.
The COVID-19 pandemic will have a significant impact on New Zealand’s economy but none of us can predict the full effect of it. However, I can assure you that our Government is moving quickly to help New Zealanders stay in work, and to soften the blow for Kiwi businesses. As we know, many within our Kiwi Indian community are business owners.
Our first economic response package was launched 18 days after the first case of Covid19. It was one of the largest economic packages at the time, given the size of our economy. Most countries we usually compare ourselves to, took about 40 days to put a similar package in place.
We took immediate action to cushion the economic blow by protecting jobs, incomes and businesses. The wage subsidy scheme we introduced has now helped 1.65 million people.
Businesses accessing the scheme must still undertake best endeavours to pay employees 80 per cent of their pre-COVID income. Where that’s not possible – in particular where a business has no activity whatsoever due to the shutdown and workers are not working any hours – they must pass on at least the whole value of the wage subsidy to each affected worker.
Businesses must undertake to keep employees in employment for the period of the subsidy. There is no cap on the overall subsidy a business can apply for; essentially, every affected businesses in New Zealand can get help paying the wages of all of their workers, no matter how big or small they are.
Last week, we announced extra support and resources to ensure as many New Zealanders as possible are in work or preparing for work. This is an unprecedented global event, and it will have a significant impact on our economy. The Government is pulling out all the stops to protect the health of New Zealanders and the health of our economy.
We’ve gone hard with our health response, and now we’re going hard with our financial assistance.
We launched an initial economic response package to help people stay in work and reduce the blow for business. We then added a mortgage deferral scheme for individuals and SMEs (as agreed with the banks), added a Business Finance Guarantee Scheme, and are making temporary changes to the Companies Act to help keep affected businesses going and employing New Zealanders. We’ve recently introduced a significant package of tax reforms that gives businesses more than $3 billion in tax refunds as they deal with the economic impact of the virus – the single biggest government support package to businesses via the tax system in modern New Zealand history. We’ve worked with banks to help guarantee finance to businesses that need it.
The Ministry of Social Development is delivering a suite of employment service initiatives to help New Zealanders who have lost their jobs, get back into employment. These initiatives include opportunities for upskilling, thirty-five new employment centres across the country, working with employers and job seekers and a ‘Keep New Zealand Working’ online recruitment tool for people directly impacted by COVID-19, who are not on a main benefit, that connects them directly to the employer – this is available for migrant workers as well – and it also provides online training courses.
Our economic response includes wage subsidies, funding boost for health, leave and self-isolation support for workers who cannot work, income support packages for our most vulnerable including doubled winter energy payments, redeployment package, business tax changes and many more. Our upcoming Budget will focus on kick-starting the economic recovery. More on that soon.
-Priyanca Radhakrishnan (List MP based in Maungakiekie, Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Minister for Ethnic Communities)