We need a voice

At Alpha we bring people together. Every day we are a part of people’s lives, their best times, the celebrations, reunions and major life events, and their worst, during times of loss, stress and sadness.

I’m not saying we get it right every time, but we try our hardest every day, it’s how we have chosen to spend our days, support ourselves and prepare for our future.

I am writing this to speak up. It absolutely scares me to do so. But we have to. What I am saying goes against the grain of popular culture in this country at the moment. But it is my reality, and it is the reality for many more like me.

The actions of the government do not alight with their ethos of ‘be kind’ ‘we’re all in this together’ and we’re a ‘team of five million’ .

If the people in your ‘team’ who have overwhelming paid the cost so that the majority could feel safe and secure, if those people have been abandoned to pick up the pieces on their own, then how can it?

Were the people of Christchurch told to ‘Pivot’ and solve the ‘problem’ they had themselves? And if they couldn’t was it inferred they had somehow bought it on themselves? And if that had happened would we have stood by and let it?

Then why now? What is it about our situation in travel, tourism and hospitality that makes this ok?

If a year ago a virus had evolved that was transmitted by diary cows, and all the herds in New Zealand had to be immediately destroyed, leaving those farmers and their families without livelihoods and income, overnight…. facing an unknown future with years to rebuild all that they had worked for….would we have told them to figure it out themselves, while we celebrated our ‘success’ on the world stage?

We did ‘figure it out’. We dug deep, we ‘hardened up’ and faced the grief of what we had lost, alone, without help, or understanding. If we spoke up, or spoke out we were shouted down, we were labelled ‘unpatriotic’ and asked if ‘we wanted people to die’. We were told we deserved it because we had committed the crime of being business owners, so on some level this was our just deserts.

So we stayed quiet and got on with it.

We sold everything we could, we said goodbye to the majority of our people and we started again and focused on the Domestic market like we were told to. And we rebuilt a foundation. And then every time we are ‘locked down’ we do it all over again.

The aftershocks keep coming. And we keep picking ourselves up, over and over again.

It’s 4am on Monday morning on the 15th of February and I’m exhausted and I’m begging for help. I’m asking for our sacrifice to be acknowledged. And above all I’m asking for compassion.