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The Victorian government has now removed ambiguous information on its stage 4 restrictions fact sheet that had seemingly provided a carve-out for sole practitioners.
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Victoria government removes ‘sole operator’ carve-out
07 August 2020
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An earlier version of the Victorian government’s list of permitted work premises had included an opening statement noting that “sole operators can continue to operate, if they do not have contact with the public, or with people other than those persons living in their primary household”.
The line has now been removed in an updated fact sheet, with a disclaimer noting that the fact sheet may be amended and updated with approval of Victoria’s chief health officer.
Institute of Public Accountants general manager of technical policy Tony Greco said the original information had created confusion among the profession, with some taking it as an indicator that sole practitioners were still allowed to travel and work in their office, despite accounting services not listed as a permitted work activity.
“The updated Department of Health and Human Services fact sheet has now removed reference to this statement and has reaffirmed that the lockdown applies to accountants and there is no carve-out for sole practitioners,” Mr Greco said.
The confusion had also led to the peak accounting and bookkeeping bodies writing to Victoria Premier Daniel Andrews for clarification, as well as to ask for flexibility for practitioners to travel to their workplace to retrieve mail or access physical files.
The Victorian government has yet to respond to the request, but Mr Andrews seemed unmoved when queried earlier this week.
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“If everyone who had an emotional, powerful, well-argued case, if I said yes to everybody, then we’d have more people at work in August than we had last month even under stage 3,” Mr Andrews said.
“This is really tough, and I take no pleasure in having to make these really difficult calls, but if I don’t make these decisions, we won’t drive down the number of people moving around the community, and we won’t drive down the number of cases, and, indeed, the number of people who are dying.”
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