Australian Hotels Association calls for help to get hospitality sector back on feet after COVID-19 shutdown

The Australian Hotels Association has called on the McGowan Government to compensate the hospitality sector for helping ensure the State’s coffers continue to be filled by mining royalties.

Despite the end of the lockdown on Monday, hospitality businesses such as Market Grounds remain closed this week because they are unable to turn a profit under the McGowan Government’s 20-patron COVID limit, which won’t be lifted until Saturday at the earliest.

AHA WA chief executive Bradley Woods told The West Live it was “totally unaffordable” for many venues to operate with such a miniscule capacity.

“The cost of operating will far exceed the revenue that they could achieve,” Mr Woods said.

“Importantly, it’s not just businesses that will lose out here, it’s tens of thousands of people working in the sector across Perth and Peel, who may not have work this week.”

Mr Woods said the hospo sector was willing to play its part in keeping WA COVID-free, but there was a disparity in how evenly the responsibility and lost revenue was shared across the State’s various industries.

“We’re not the only ones affected — gyms and entertainment centres; cinemas and theatres are also affected ... it is a broad spectrum of the service sector of Western Australia,” he said.

“And it’s not unreasonable to consider that by them being closed they are in effect reducing spread, which is what the purpose of all of this is, in order to keep the royalties flowing to the State Government from the mining sector.

“FIFO continued to operate over the weekend, which is great, it’s supporting our economy, but, at the same time, we want to see some support for those sectors that have been hit so hard by the lockdown.”

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The impact of restrictions is being more keenly felt without the safety net of JobKeeper, so Mr Woods urged the Premier to do better than the $500 credit the State Government applied to power bills in its last attempt to provide compensation to small business.

“That didn’t really touch the surface,” Mr Woods said of the credit scheme.

“Across the hospitality sector, the tens of thousands of workers that are going to go without wages this week, and those businesses — a $500 credit off their power is just not going to cut it.”