The reality of small business owners

Brent Norling writes:

Dear Jacinda,
As an insolvency-specialist lawyer, I see a high volume of business owners who are really struggling and many who ultimately fail and lose everything. 
These hardworking New Zealanders often do everything for their businesses. 
They are their own product/service developer, finance department, marketing department and sales department. 

They are the HR department, the general manager, the mentor, the quality control officer, the IT department, the administrator and bookkeeper… 
The list of tasks they perform each week to keep their companies going is endless. 

And we have a few hundred thousand of them.

What I’m getting it is, being in business is hard. 
But you may not appreciate that. 
Because if you did have a basic understanding of SME (small-to-medium enterprise) life, there is no way that you would be acting the way that you are. There is no way that your Government would have the policies that you do.
For example, you are making it difficult for New Zealand SMEs to employ foreigners for roles Kiwis don’t want anyway. You are increasing employee costs for business owners who aren’t even paying themselves a living wage.
You are making it harder for employment relationships with changes to the trial period provisions. You are increasing costs to business by tampering with fuel costs. There is uncertainty over the tax position of SMEs and how that could play out. 

Almost no Ministers have ever worked in business, let alone a small business. So no they don’t understand.

Business owners have an extremely stressful role. They literally risk everything. Their assets, their time, their physical health and their mental health. They do it because we are great optimists in New Zealand. They do it for the nest egg. The better future for them and their loved ones. 
And if they are successful, they will contribute in a very important way to our economy and they will provide employment to many New Zealanders who don’t want to or can’t run a business. 
So, why do you and your party wish to make life even more difficult for hard working Kiwi business owners? 

Because unions fund the Labour Party and vote in Labour Party selections.