Latest / Early Edition with Ryan Bridge / Alistair Boyce: Backbencher Pub owner on the impact of working from home on Wellington's economy

Transcript

Alistair Boyce: Backbencher Pub owner on the impact of working from home on Wellington's economy · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Get back to work. That's the message from the government
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: to civil servants and affairs of productivity, loss, diving off
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: and CBD cafes and restaurants going to the wall. Lots
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: of your texts on this first though, Alistair Boyce, Oh sorry,
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: here's Nichola Willis.
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: Choosing not to come to your physical place of work
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: does have an impact on your team and your wider community.
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: If it's possible for you to work in the office,
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: you should.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: Alistair Boyce is the ban backbench of pub owner and
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: he's with us this morning. Good morning, Alistair, good Ryan.
• 0:32
  Speaker 3: Good to hear from you again.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, good to have you on the show. Tell me
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: will this make a difference?
• 0:37
  Speaker 3: Oh? Absolutely, We've really been missing our our key clients
• 0:43
  Speaker 3: from the public sector. But we're fubably with Nikola Willis
• 0:46
  Speaker 3: and what she's saying and we also agree with it.
• 0:49
  Speaker 3: It's about the outcomes of the public sector. It's not
• 0:52
  Speaker 3: all about getting Wellington moving again, because there's some other
• 0:57
  Speaker 3: real vicious problems going on in the Wellington microeconomy. Absolutely
• 1:02
  Speaker 3: apart from the civil servants with the work from home saga,
• 1:07
  Speaker 3: what do you think?
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: And we'll get to those in a sect. But what
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: do you think has been more damaging the civil service
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: cuts from National or the work from home policy that's
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: been lingering since COVID.
• 1:19
  Speaker 3: Our work from home without a doubt.
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: And what are the other issues you're talking about in Wellington?
• 1:25
  Speaker 3: Well these are more related to our dysfunctional city council
• 1:29
  Speaker 3: where they destroy our businesses. And as you know, most
• 1:35
  Speaker 3: small businesses do try and get locations on arterial routes
• 1:40
  Speaker 3: and busy foot traffic streets. But what they've done with
• 1:45
  Speaker 3: all these streets has rip them up, put in cycleways
• 1:49
  Speaker 3: and cut us off from our customers. And the next
• 1:53
  Speaker 3: one they're planning to do it all the way on
• 1:55
  Speaker 3: Courtney Place, which will cut out cars as well. The
• 1:58
  Speaker 3: other thing I've cut out is a huge, huge amount
• 2:00
  Speaker 3: of car parks. And they've done roadworks on theorial routes
• 2:04
  Speaker 3: and formed in keys to Classic which will be going
• 2:07
  Speaker 3: on for some years. And they'd already done at a
• 2:12
  Speaker 3: key and that those roadworks took about eight months. Multiple problems.
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: How much have your rates gone up?
• 2:20
  Speaker 3: Oh, that's the other thing. The disposable income of Wellington
• 2:25
  Speaker 3: citizens and residents is now coming to an all time low.
• 2:30
  Speaker 3: So most of us have endured over twenty percent increase
• 2:34
  Speaker 3: in rates this year. The long term plan is patently ridiculous.
• 2:38
  Speaker 3: It's got over ten percent, over fifteen percent and increases
• 2:42
  Speaker 3: despite the Maya telling us that decreases then increases planned
• 2:45
  Speaker 3: for ten years, is never going to be a decrease.
• 2:49
  Speaker 3: And what this does kills the wider economy so that
• 2:54
  Speaker 3: they don't have the disposable income for the hospitality and
• 2:57
  Speaker 3: retail centers, and they don't come in to town because
• 3:00
  Speaker 3: they have access and parking issues.
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I won't ask you the question, Alistair, but
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: I would hate to think. I would hate to imagine
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: what the combination of all of these things is doing
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: to business, the value of the business in Wellington right
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: now as well. Thank you very much for your time
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: this morning. Appreciate you burning up earlier with me, Alistair,
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: Boyce backbencher, pub owner.
• 3:19
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• 3:23
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• 3:24
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• 3:27
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