Business leaders call for calm and more rapid tests as Omicron rages across Australia

Business leaders want governments to avoid ‘overreaching responses’ and implement more rapid testing to combat rising Covid numbers.

Woolworths CEO Brad Banducci says more than 20 per cent of workers at the supermarket chain’s warehouses are in isolation. Picture: John Feder.

Australian businesses have told all governments to “hold their nerve” against “overreaching policy responses” and instead make Covid-19 rapid antigen tests more freely available to combat spiralling infections from the highly infectious Omicron variant.

The latest outbreak has heaped pressure on supply chains and small businesses, which have been forced to close or severely limit operations after staff have been placed in isolation.

Woolworths chief executive Brad Banducci told customers on Friday that more than 20 per cent of staff at the supermarket’s distribution centres and 10 per cent of store employees were absent from Covid-19, triggering shortages of some essential grocery items.

Business leaders say rather than restrict parts of the economy, state and federal governments should make rapid testing more available to ensure only infected people were isolated.

Mr Banducci said supermarket shortages were being driven by staffing and logistics – not panic buying like the toilet paper crisis at the start of the pandemic.

“Unlike the surge buying of early 2020, who could forget the toilet paper, this is because of the number of people in our supply chain in isolation – from suppliers to truck drivers and distribution centre team members – which in turn is causing material delays to store deliveries,” Mr Banducci said. “NSW is currently the most affected, although we are seeing impacts across the whole country, and it’s not yet clear how soon the system will come back into balance as we move through the Omicron wave.”

The federal government will subsidise rapid tests for people on lower incomes but has ruled out making them completely free across the broader population. This is despite continuing to pay for pathology testing, which costs taxpayers almost nine times more.

Business Council executive director Jess Wilson said living with the coronavirus meant making “risk management tools like rapid testing a part of our business as usual”, and if they could not be provided for free then should be tax deductible

“We’d support moves to make sure the tax system recognises this. While many large businesses are already using rapid testing to keep their people safe and our recovery on track, reducing the barriers for small businesses doing the same should be considered,” she said.

Alexi Boyd, Council of Small Business Organisation Australia chief executive, said rapid tests should be free to ensure businesses stay open.

“It‘s a lot easier for a small-business owner to say to a worker ‘don’t come into work’ because he tested positive than it is for that worker to come to work and infect an entire shift of staff and in that small business to be knocked out for a week,” she said.

“And that‘s what we are hearing increasingly from our members.

“Hair and beauty and hospitality industries in particular – I feel as though that’s the first wave of industries that are being hit incredibly hard by worker shortages, which have been our number one issue for the last few weeks. But this is made all the more worse by the lack of availability of rapid antigen testing in the community.”

Health authorities in NSW reintroduced some restrictions on Friday, banning singing and dancing in hospitality venues and joining Victoria in suspending elective surgery.

Ahmed Fahour, chief executive of Latitude Financial, said overarching policy responses to the latest outbreak had the potential to cause longer term damage to the economy.

The former Australia Post boss said Australia needed to stay open.

“I know it‘s hard to do in the middle of an outbreak, right now it seems pretty scary,” Mr Fahour said. But at the same time, you look at the potential opportunities that we have, they are actually still there.”

For Mr Fahour, who is preparing to get his vaccination booster shot, the biggest worry is the prospect of choking off skilled migration or immigration over a period of years.

Labour shortages are already being acutely felt across parts of the economy which is disrupting retail, transport, hospitality and farming.

“It‘ll be the policy behaviours to deal with Covid that people think is necessary for the short term, but actually undermines the economic fabric of what drives prosperity. And we need a supply of labour that has fuelled this economy since World War II”.

For now Mr Fahour’s customers are still spending on the back of pent up demand. The surge in spending through November and December was bigger than expected.

“People are getting out there, they‘re going to get on with their life, and they’re sick and tired of being hermits,” he said.