31/03/2026
An Open Letter to State and Federal Governments, The RBA and Our Treasurers. Peter Malinauskas, Anthony Albanese,
There’s a moment, every now and then, where you sit back and think…
Are we actually looking at the same economy?
Because from where we sit on the floor, in the kitchens, behind the bar, doing the rosters, paying the invoices today’s RBA announcement doesn’t just feel disconnected.
It feels tone deaf.
Let’s call it what it is.
Removing card surcharges in isolation, in this environment, is not cost relief.
It’s cost redistribution.
And right now, there is no capacity left in the system to absorb it.
If you want context, here it is not from theory, but from operators across South Australia in the last week:
Costs are up 29% on average
Revenue, enquiries and bookings are down 32.5%
64% of businesses are seeing fewer enquiries
53% are dealing with cancellations
75% are very concerned about the next three months
That’s not sentiment.
That’s signal.
And layered on top of that, we’ve got rising fuel costs, supply chain pressure, labour increases, insurance, energy… and a customer who is more cautious, more price-sensitive, and booking later than we’ve seen in years.
So let’s be really clear about what happens next.
When you remove a surcharge, you don’t remove the cost.
You remove the visibility of the cost.
And that cost goes somewhere.
It goes into:
Menu prices
Reduced trading hours
Smaller teams
Deferred investment
Or businesses simply not making it through winter
Because right now, operators are already doing everything they can to hold the line.
According to the same survey, 42% of businesses are absorbing costs and working on reduced margins just to stay competitive
That’s not a sector with room to move.
That’s a sector already stretched.
This isn’t just a cost issue. It’s a confidence issue.
We are watching behaviour shift in real time.
Customers are:
Booking later
Cancelling closer to the line
Spending less per visit
Asking more questions before they commit
And operators are making decisions with less certainty than at any point since COVID.
So when policy decisions are made that add pressure without addressing the underlying cost drivers it doesn’t stabilise the system.
It destabilises it further.
What’s missing here is alignment
We don’t expect perfect conditions.
We’ve proven that.
But what we do need is alignment between:
Monetary policy
Government policy
And the lived reality of running a business in 2026
Right now, those three things are not lining up.
And small business is carrying the gap.
So here are the questions that need answering
Not in six months.
Not in a review.
Now.
If surcharges are removed, what is being done to actually reduce the underlying cost of payments?
What modelling has been done on the impact to small business profitability not just consumer optics?
How are state and federal governments working together to support an industry facing simultaneous cost and demand pressure?
And critically what is being done in the next 90 days to stabilise confidence in the visitor economy?
Because that’s the window we’re in.
Not next financial year.
The next three months.
From the floor,
This isn’t written from a desk.
It’s written between services.
Between supplier calls.
Between rostering decisions.
Between trying to work out whether you push price, cut hours, or hold the line and hope.
This industry is resilient.
It always has been.
But resilience isn’t infinite.
And right now, what we’re asking for isn’t special treatment.
It’s recognition.
Of the conditions.
Of the pressure.
Of the cumulative impact of decisions being made in isolation.
Because here’s the reality
If businesses go under, or scale back:
It’s not just numbers on a report.
It’s jobs.
It’s communities.
It’s main streets.
It’s regional economies.
It’s the backbone of the visitor economy.
We don’t need perfect policy.
But we do need policy that understands the environment it’s landing in and maybe just maybe ban the financial institutions for charging the processing fee in the first place.
Right now, this one missed the mark.
Simone Douglas
On behalf of operators feeling it in real time
