Melbourne Cable Park director takes drastic measures to get through coronavirus crisis
The director of a popular water park has stood down 30 staff and resorted to selling its outdoor furniture and leftover food to help settle accounts as it closes up. And he’s called for more action to help struggling businesses in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis.
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A Melbourne water park managing director who feared his business would be shut for good following the coronavirus crisis has urged the government to put small business expenses into hibernation.
It comes after Ian Clark from Melbourne Cable Park Bangholme was forced to stand down 30 staff and resorted to selling the venue’s picnic tables, outdoor cinema bean bags and left over ice creams to help pay for bills following the forced shutdown of the park.
But after writing to Mordialloc state Labor MP Tim Richardson and Environment Minister Lily D’Ambrosio, the state government agreed to six month’s rental relief and then doubled its support to 12 months which included a refund for what the business paid in January and February.
“We received confirmation from the state government — our landlord — that our request to have our rental waived for the next six months was approved and they extended this to 12 months,” he told Leader.
“It was like a beacon of light … this provides us with the financial cornerstone for us to prepare a plan to rebuild our business, but more importantly restored confidence emotionally and psychologically.
“It was a message of confidence that the government knows the importance of small business.”
But the Beaumaris father of four said it was “critical” that next steps were being taken to protect small businesses which were closed, including putting their expenses into hibernation.
“This can’t simply be a payment holiday where the expense is payable down the track. It must freeze costs such as insurance, rates, interest, telephone and electricity,” Mr Clark said.
“No level of government support can save jobs and the economy if closed businesses are expected to continue to have expenses when there is no ability to earn income.
“To survive this economic shutdown we have to introduce unconventional socialist style changes never seen before to freeze expenses where needed to match the existing freeze on businesses earning potential.”
Last week, Mr Clark applied for the federal government’s $250,000 loan support program however his request was denied because the Commonwealth Bank did not class the park as a “small business”.
He said there was a “huge conflict” in what the Federal Government was telling the public it was doing in relation to the $250,000 loan support program.
“We wrote to our bank to find out what support we could get and how we could access the $250,000 loan facility … we told them that we hoped we didn’t need to use it, but wanted to know if it was ready for us to use to support wages with,” he said.
“We were told that it would be a new loan facility and that we would need to draw the full $250k amount at one time.
“We were told that our bank would not provide the government’s support loans because we were not classified as a small business.”
Mr Clark had since received correspondence from Commonwealth Bank that the treasurer’s office had been in touch and would investigate the claim.
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He urged struggling small business to contact the state government and hoped the federal government would soon design a framework that could lead to the hibernation of expenses.
“(Despite the support we’ve had) there’s long way to go to get back on our feet but I want to share with other businesses that they can survive,” he said.
“The government knows how important small business is to the economy … it will just take a little while for them to design the support needed.
“Other people in the same boat need to know that they are not alone.”