1.Harvey Norman stores are made up of small business owners (franchisees ) 2. you state "they closed their doors, mainly due to lack of bank finance... you know the banks stop lending to small business, crucifying that sector..."
This is very true as small businesses that needed to get further creit for cash flow due to down turn in sales were left high and dry by banks because of the GFC. They couldn't get money themselves so couldn't lend it out. They introduced extremely strict lending criteria and if you didn't have asset backing from outside of the cash flow and assets of the business they weren't lending. I was fortunate to have assets in my home so managed to see it through before selling the business at a considerably lesser price than would have got pre GFC.
As much as I disagree with the $900 hand out it did no doubt help some retailers that weren't in a cash poor situation.
I think much more should have been done to support small business in this country but that isn't exclusive to the response to the GFC or in fact exclusive to labor and I don't think we can blame Labor for the banks tightening lending.
