Josh Frydenberg brokers COVID-19 crisis talks with business leaders and Victorian government

CEOs of some of Australia’s biggest businesses will hold COVID-19 crisis talks with the Victorian government as panic buying fears grow.

Victorian Treasurer Tim Pallas.

Chief executives of some of Australia’s biggest companies, including the major supermarket chains, will hold crisis talks about Victoria’s spiralling COVID-19 outbreak with the state’s Treasurer Tim Pallas on Wednesday evening.

Business leaders are demanding greater clarity from the Victorian government about Melbourne’s stage four restrictions, particularly Premier Daniel Andrews’ edict of forcing supermarket distribution centres to slash their workforces by 33 per cent from midnight on Friday.

The move to reduce workforces at distribution centres threaten to disrupt the supply of groceries, the demand of which has soared during lockdown, fuelling fears of another wave of panic buying, despite Coles and Woolworths reintroducing shopping restrictions.

The meeting between Mr Pallas and business leaders comes after direct intervention from federal Treasurer Josh Frydenberg.

Business leaders aired their concerns in a teleconference on Tuesday night with Mr Frydenberg. Mr Frydenberg raised their concerns with Mr Morrison, and then contacted Mr Pallas, who agreed to meet with business leaders at 6pm on Wednesday to thrash out their concerns.

“Can I put on the record our thanks to Treasurer Frydenberg for acting on our concerns so quickly,” Business Council of Australia chief executive Jennifer Westacott said in an email to BCA members.

Woolworths chief executive Brad Banducci has already asked the Victorian government for more details about how the tougher lockdown would apply to its supply chain given the closure of some manufacturing and the forced slowdown of the meat industry and deliveries is threatening to cause disruption.

The Australian understands a senior Coles executive, who was on Tuesday night’s call with Mr Frydenberg, has similar concerns.

Melbourne’s Bourke Street Mall is almost deserted after stage four restrictions were introduced on Sunday night. Picture: Andrew Henshaw

Mr Banducci said the supermarket operator was seeking clarification from the Victorian government over its planned stage four lockdown rules, which require a sharp reduction in output across the state’s meat industry from Friday, while noting the closure of manufacturing could also hit its other suppliers.

Abattoirs must also cut their workforces by 33 per cent as part of the effort to limit Melbourne’s rampant spread of COVID-19. Meat processors have been drawing up contingency plans to divert livestock to regional abattoirs and possibly interstate to ensure the wave of livestock coming from the “spring flush” can be processed and the continuity of supply chains.

“We are hoping that between managing the workforce and moving things around to different abattoirs to process animals in different places – that would be something the industry would be wise to do,” Victorian Farmer Federation vice president Emma Germano said.

“And then potentially it might look like interstate abattoirs potentially picking up or absorbing any of the extra animals that may not be able to be processed in Victoria.”

Meatworks will need to prepare safety plans addressing the risks of any potential coronavirus outbreak, including staggered shift times. Abattoir workers must also wear medical-grade personal protective equipment, be regularly temperature checked, with employers ensuring sick employees stay away.

While the cold dry air, long shifts and employees working closely together on factory lines are fertile conditions for COVID-19 to spread, some meatworks have successfully kept the virus out of their operations.

Warrnambool-based Midfield Meat, which employs about 1300 people in southwest Victoria, enforced its own strict regulations months before the government introduced the new restrictions.

“We have run it real tight since about March and kept ratcheting up and up,” Midfield Group general manager Dean McKenna said.

“It’s been absolute take no prisoners. If we say we are going to do something, we do it, meaning everyone is in face masks, everyone is social distancing, everyone is wearing gloves.

“We are very close to our workforce. We communicate with our workforce regularly, face-to-face and via electronic means.”

Mr McKenna said staff even were required to sign a statutory declaration each Sunday night or Monday morning ahead of the working week, declaring if they had been exposed to people or areas with COVID-19.

“If there was an issue, we’d stop them all coming to work.”