Quite a lot of their staff were affected by the COVID detention in the public housing towers in Flemington and North Melbourne. Now some local businesses and groups pitched in to help people out. Some examples:

• Sikh Brotherhood were the first to start getting food to people in isolation
• SES dealt with getting food and medication into the buildings while following biosecurity protocols
• The local mosque on Boundary Rd coordinated collecting donations and getting them to people
• The guy from Adam’s Fresh greengrocer helped deliver donated food (unfortunately he defaulted on the lease on his shop since then)
• KFL Supermarket called all their affected staff for welfare checks, etc. and to see if there was anything they could do
• CoHealth provided a huge amount of support
• Coles, Woolworths and HelloFresh made regular grocery deliveries for all the affected people, on their own dime

On the other hand, Laksa King didn’t even call any of their staff for a welfare check, and tried to use it as an opportunity to profit. They tried to get people to buy food from them to then donate to their affected staff, then tried to play it as them being generous. It was totally callous and uncaring.

Also notably absent when it actually mattered were the local Việt catholic church Thánh Vinh Sơn/St Vincent’s. They did nothing when people actually needed it, then showed up afterwards.

The whole thing left a bad taste in the mouths of a significant chunk of the Việt community. It was one of those, “now you find out who your real friends are,” situations. The African community, the Muslim community, and “big business” did a lot more to help a brother out than the local Việt community. Also, props to the Sikh Brotherhood for almost instant response, despite not having much of a community connection there at all.