5. Question No. 5—Small BusinessHon TODD McCLAY (National—Rotorua) to the Minister for Small BusinessQuestion No. 5—Small Business5. Hon TODD McCLAY (National—Rotorua) to the Minister for Small Business: What official estimates has he received if any of small business failure and job loss as a result of the level 3 and 4 COVID-19 restrictions?Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance) on behalf of the Minister for Small Business: On behalf of the Minister official estimates of the type that the member is asking for are not available at this time. The member will be aware that Treasury has recently provided scenarios for the public showing how the economy could respond in the future to a range of different COVID-19 response levels and obviously this includes a range of levels of unemployment. We can say that as at last week 33000 more people had applied for the jobseeker benefit since 20 March. How many of those are related exactly to small and medium enterprises is not currently available. We also know that at least 70 percent of the $10 billion wage subsidy scheme has gone to small and medium enterprises. We will continue to work with SMEs and representative organisations to support them.Hon Todd McClay: Will there be direct cash-flow grants to help small businesses meet mounting cost pressures and growing debt to reduce the number of businesses that fail and the resulting avoidable job losses?Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: As evidenced by the many initiatives we've already put in place that support small and medium enterprises we continue to look for ways to do that again in the future.Hon Todd McClay: Will there be direct financial assistance for small businesses and landlords to help them with their lease and rent arrears to reduce the number of businesses that close and resulting avoidable job losses?Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: As the Prime Minister indicated earlier the suite of measures we put in place have been to this point fairly universal. There is now the opportunity for us to work with small businesses and particular sectors in the economy on what the best response is to support them to get through this. We remain committed to ensuring that as many New Zealanders as possible stay in work and as many New Zealand businesses as possible continue to operate.Hon Todd McClay: Why can supermarkets open under level 3 restrictions but butchers and greengrocers cannot?Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: As again the Prime Minister has already said today level 3 is still a restrictive level. We are still trying to limit the number of interactions there are between people. We of course are seeing a very large number of businesses open for contactless commerce today and judging by things that I've seen in the media many businesses are taking that up as are many customers.Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern: Can he confirm that during level 4 we unfortunately did have cases of COVID-19 within essential services like our supermarkets thus proving how important it was to reduce down the potential contact of too many individuals outside those essential services so we could manage as best we could any potential transmission?Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Yes I can confirm that and indeed that's a subset of the overall view that most small businesses in New Zealand take which is that if we can do this once and do it right that means we can get back to a new normal of commerce that looks much more like what we've seen in the past.David Seymour: Has the Government then considered it might have reduced the spread within essential services such as supermarkets if people were able to access butchers bakers and fresh fruit and vegetable stores instead of driving further to bigger more crowded stores such as supermarkets?Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I already answered this in my earlier supplementary question. The whole point of both level 4 and level 3 is to reduce the amount of contact that people have with one another and to break the chain of transmission.David Seymour: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. He has not addressed the question. The question was not whether we're trying to reduce transmission but whether a particular policy would—SPEAKER: Order! Order! It was addressed right at the beginning.Hon Todd McClay: Why has the Government given $50 million in relief to the media but not delivered any specific direct financial assistance for small business?Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I utterly reject the second part of that question. Billions of dollars is going out to support small and medium enterprises both through the wage subsidy scheme and also the various other initiatives we've undertaken.