Hotel SA October 2023
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Red Tape...<br />
We’re Strangled<br />
By It!<br />
From the President<br />
DAVID BASHEER<br />
Every incoming Government - State<br />
or Federal - comes in with a mantra<br />
of reducing red tape for business.<br />
And then they all proceed to<br />
increase it.<br />
The growth of regulation and<br />
compliance in our industry remains<br />
a constant and exhausting battle.<br />
<strong>Hotel</strong> operators are frustrated and<br />
overwhelmed by the uncoordinated<br />
approach taken by too many local,<br />
state and federal agencies, none<br />
of whom seem capable of even<br />
speaking to each other.<br />
Many new obligations have left us<br />
not only bewildered but result in us<br />
having to pay the cost of mopping<br />
up unintended consequences. So<br />
often, our smallest family operators<br />
have been asked to have a back<br />
office rivalling the size of BHP<br />
or Santos.<br />
The realities of running a small<br />
business mean you are knee deep<br />
in operations all day. Once the<br />
kids have been put to bed, and<br />
tomorrow’s school lunches made,<br />
you do your payroll, pay your<br />
accounts, and familiarise yourself<br />
with the latest round of regulations.<br />
In isolation, the Federal<br />
Government’s new Food safety<br />
standards (3.3.2A for those who<br />
enjoy bureaucratic speak) seems a<br />
reasonable impost. But we already<br />
have heavy compliance obligations<br />
with local and state governments.<br />
With this new layer of obligation,<br />
what is being removed? Were these<br />
new training obligations crafted<br />
in full knowledge of what hotels<br />
already are required to do?<br />
Last month, Fair Work officials from<br />
Victoria came to Adelaide for three<br />
days and raided (and I use that<br />
term accurately) a series of western<br />
suburbs hotels and restaurants.<br />
Bemused owners, managers and<br />
staff were left wondering what they<br />
had done wrong, not realising the<br />
raids were merely random. Really?<br />
That is the most effective manner<br />
for all to go about running our<br />
businesses?<br />
The Malinauskas State Labor<br />
Government came to office with a<br />
mantra of being business-friendly.<br />
Their two budgets to date have<br />
supported that mantra, with no<br />
new taxes, a focus on the labour<br />
shortage and a strong appetite<br />
for events.<br />
But what is very business unfriendly<br />
is the ever-changing landscape<br />
around our compliance obligations<br />
in liquor and gaming. These are<br />
two heavily regulated products, and<br />
we totally accept a need for strong<br />
compliance. However, the goalposts<br />
keep moving and our members<br />
- especially our smaller members -<br />
are struggling to keep up.<br />
“The growth of<br />
regulation and<br />
compliance in our<br />
industry remains<br />
a constant and<br />
exhausting<br />
battle.”<br />
For example, the onerous<br />
obligations recently added around<br />
loyalty customers does very little to<br />
support the mantra of a businessfriendly<br />
Government.<br />
During Covid, we become<br />
accustomed to Government’s<br />
controlling our businesses.<br />
As challenging as it was back<br />
then , we accepted we were<br />
living in unparalleled times and<br />
banded together to protect our<br />
communities.<br />
Rather than have a peaceful reset<br />
after Covid, Governments are now<br />
forming an appetite to unreasonably<br />
remain in our businesses.<br />
That appetite does nothing for<br />
productivity or business confidence.<br />
It simply sends a message that<br />
doing business is getting harder<br />
and harder.<br />
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