Seymour DavidDAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): If I could just ask the Minister to set out what this means in practical terms for businesses because we've all had to come to this very late and I won't talk about why that is because it's already been covered but from the point of view of an employer or a business owner of any size they're eligible to apply for a grant of a $1500 lump sum and extra $400 per fulltime equivalent (FTE) employee. If this restriction of Auckland being above level 3 and New Zealand being above level 2 but either of those circumstances could qualify for the whole country to be eligible—if these restrictions carry on for seven days then they can apply for $1500 plus a $400 per fulltime-equivalent staff member and that's a one-off payment that they may be liable to pay back. Now there's a few limits on how much. First of all if you have more than 50 FTEs that's a cap so you can only claim for 50 times $400 and it doesn't matter how many staff a business has. Second of all in order to qualify the business has to have a 30 percent or more reduction in revenue over the seven days that we're under restriction compared with the previous six weeks at level 1—Hon Grant Robertson: Typical week. DAVID SEYMOUR: —typical week over the six weeks prior it seemed to say—and what's more the claim can't be more than the reduction in revenue. I think it's important for people to understand what this means in practical terms. So if lockdown goes for seven days at level 2 or above anywhere in the country a business that has a 30 percent or more reduction in revenue this week over a typical week it can claim $1500 plus $400 per fulltime equivalent employee. But my question really for the Minister is: what does that look like? Is it the case that on Monday this legislation will be passed and they'll be able to fill out the forms with the Inland Revenue Department straight away—is that what happens? Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): So look the intention as I understand it is that this will be available if—and I mean bear in mind we're in the hypothetical. We all hope that we don't have to do this. But Inland Revenue (IR) inform us that they'll be able to have this running I think next Thursday so we would reach—it would be a little after. But once we get to the seven-day point in a normal circumstance people could start making their applications. So we've just got a little bit of time to get it up and running from an IR perspective. More broadly just in terms of the member's question he has articulated it pretty much as it is. It is really important—and this picks up comments by both Mr Bishop and Mr Woodhouse—that we do have a situation in New Zealand where the interdependency of business around the country means that you can spend almost an endless amount of time trying to work out whether you could target by region or whether you could target by the North Island in the South Island and all sorts of things like that. It's just we're completely interdependent especially with Auckland. Obviously in the situation we're currently facing Auckland is in level 3. That effectively means that if you're—as the example I gave either in this debate or in question time—the Nelson tourism operator who contacted me and said I've had a whole lot of Aucklanders cancel." that person feels like they're in level 3 from an economic perspective even though the city they reside in is in level 2. So we made the decision that whichever way you cut it—and Mr Woodhouse was talking about the iterative kind of approach; we did go through that—actually New Zealand is such an interdependent unit that yes you are right. If we have these level restrictions continued through beyond up to the seven-day period then yes all New Zealanders will be eligible for the scheme. As the member rightly points out there is a calculation shift for very small businesses because one of the issues that emerged during the wage subsidy as well was that if we just stuck to the formula you could have an overpayment essentially so therefore we put inside the formula I think it's four times the reduction or the formula whichever is the least. That then gives you the calculation that people will be able to get. For most businesses of a reasonable size they will find it will be 50 fulltime-equivalent (FTE) employees or $21500. Again just my final point in response to Mr Seymour is that for the very large businesses we toyed with the idea of simply excluding them. But actually rather than do that we thought well no because one of the problems you get is a business that's got between 50 and 70 FTEs and then it just starts to become silly to have cut it off completely. As I said in my earlier contribution I don't think large multinationals are going to be running around filling in the paperwork for $21500. The flip side is that an engineering firm that employs 60 FTEs probably will if they can demonstrate the drop in revenue."