The Perantau

Melbourne’s Rollercoaster:

Navigating Lockdowns, Challenges, and Hope in the Hospitality Industry

Transcript

BILLY: Towards the end of 2020, Melbourne has been recognised as having had lifted the longest lockdown in the world. Although it may have seemed that the worst was behind us, on the 27th of May, the Victorian government imposed another flash lockdown due to COVID 19, with Melbourne establishments suffering the most.

BILLY: Cafes and restaurants have had to adjust to the sudden change. Some were hit hard, especially the ones that were just starting out. Kenny Chung had just left his job and was in the process of starting up a new Korean restaurant. Pizza monster. However, plans were halted, and now he has no idea what will happen next.

KENNY: Every plan I made has been delayed. Like, for example, there’s the interior renovation as well, and then another one is we need to hire some employee. But, since this lockdown, so many international students or people who got working holiday visa, they [have] already left Australia. That’s why it’s very hard to employ some worker. That’s, yeah; this [is] damage for us.

BILLY: Speaking to the ABC, Services Australia showed that almost 8, 000 people have received payments from the federal government’s emergency payment scheme as of Tuesday, 8th of June, totalling more than $3.5 million. Not only has this impacted business owners like Kenny Chung, but employees have also taken a hit. Unlike other employees, casuals have no access to sick leave or other leave entitlements, meaning that by being unable to come to work, they have no income at all. Mikaela Ma, a casual at donut shop Daniel’s Donuts, speaks of her and a colleague’s experiences when Melbourne went back into lockdown.

MIKAELA: Personally, my hours weren’t affected as much, but I know some girls whose shifts were cut. So, since lockdown last year, we started doing, um, like one person per shift. And then we just recently, um, came back to having like three people or two people. Because of lockdown, um, we, we went back to, um, working solo. So, yeah.

BILLY: Even if some employees like Mikaela were still able to come to work, they still saw a large decline in customers, potentially affecting the business too.

MIKAELA: Because our store is in common streets, like full of offices, so if there’s no employees, then there’s no customers, so you can totally tell that, um, we’ve lost a lot of customers.

BILLY: Things look bright though, as Melbourne has just announced lifting the lockdown effective Friday, 11th of June. With cafes and restaurants bracing for the sudden surge of physical customers, many are left wondering if this will become the new normal. This has been Billy Adison Aditijanto from Melbourne.

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Originally submitted as coursework for the Bachelor of Arts, University of Melbourne