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2. Better tax breaks for small businesses especially where GST comes into play with food. Restaurants are revenue machines for the government. We buy GST free produce with a limited shelf life, pay to process it, pay to market it. They take 10% then they also want a cut of our profit, a bit cheeky I think. 3. The government needs to help small businesses compete with the bigger mainland companies to assist Tasmania to retain its relaxed old world charm that brings in the tourist dollars. Small bottle shops like ours will never be able to beat the big guy owned by giant companies like Woolworths. I’m sure the State government could come up with a plan to at least help us be competitive. And just how many new bottle shops does Tasmania need? Surely a restriction in the amount of licences issued would put a stop to the monopolies closing down family run businesses.
Deloraine is situated on a tourism trail. Have you noticed many visitors coming into your hotel and what are they most eager to see in our state? From the end of October onwards, Deloraine gets lots of tourists coming through. We are less than an hour from the spirit dock so we are for many tourists - either one of their first or last stops in Tassie. Cradle Mountain and the great lakes are what most people coming through here, are looking for, but we also get quite a lot of people coming to Deloraine to base themselves for either part or all of their stay as we are well situated. Do you have any other plans for the property? Plenty, because we are on a corner block with little/no room for expansion we need to maximise the space we have so it works for us. We have renovated five of the nine rooms and will get the rest done in the near future. We would also like to
possibly move the restrooms from the main bar at some stage to enlarge the bar area as well as making them more accessible to our dining room patrons. We also have some space set aside out the back which will hopefully soon be renovated into a beer garden. Do you miss NSW? Because of the way Robyn, Tom and myself work together means that we can travel back home whenever we either need or want too, Newcastle is just a short flight away so no not really, we love it here. How many staff does the venue currently employ? Other than the three of us we have two bar staff, four kitchen staff and a cleaner that works six mornings a week. If the state Government could change three things for the benefit of the industry what would you suggest they be? 1. Penalty rates are a major issue, they were introduced to encourage people to work extra time not for people to work less and get paid more. We would like to see (especially in our industry which revolves around weekends) a minimum of around 35 hours before an employee gets paid penalty rates. That way the people doing the hard work all week get the benefit rather than businesses being forced to either short staff or staff with under qualified cheaper labour which would build a stronger industry.
December 2016
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