Brendan, please stick to the accounting. You are just so much better at it.

Cont. Every western-style economy rests on just two support pillars, energy and capital! Just two and just those two!

In any recovery, traditional price-gouging, tax-avoiding, profit repatriation will ensure the rapid recovery and debt reduction, will be stymied for literal decades and banana republic economic outcomes!

The business as usual and cronyism that has so marked various patently corrupt administrations cannot be allowed to reemerge, nor deals done with vested interest, that does not serve the best service to the national interest!

Moreover, we cannot socialize the losses and privatise the profits, if we would actually recover anything like lost ground. Nor can there be the sweetheart deals that are rolled out by corrupt governments for a privileged, if undeserving, Hotel Bravo, elite!

All the impediments to cheap clean safe nuclear energy must be removed ASAP and the government to employ an expert who is up to speed with MSR, SMR, thorium and retasking that as nuclear waste burners, using waste we are paid annual billions to accept.

And preference, tax breaks, tax holidays and grants reserved for new energy co-ops that will force fierce competition for market share, along with the rapid uptake of new for us, tried and tested technologies!

And continue that theme across the entire economy in the sure and certain knowledge, we'd be employing the one economic measure that not only survived the Great depression mostly intact but enabled unprecedented prosperity to assist unparalleled growth and debt reduction!

Make every one dollar do the work of seven or more and return a profit of at least $2.50 for every dollar of government money helicoptered in to cooperative capitalism startups.

Which must have competent managers and adequate operating capital to avoid dying on the vine!

And founded on the best practice principles of private enterprise and free-market capitalism with no peer! That's is how we reclaim our economic sovereignty going forward! No question!
Alan B.

Steele

You write:

A government can be receiving the best advice in the world but if they do not listen to it as happened with the Trump administration then it is rendered ineffectual very quickly.

True. But Trump is not alone. BoJo too ignored the severity for a while. My point is that Brendon Murphy and his deputy (not to mention the state equivalents) are not first rate. Hence their opinions are not the best. For what it's worth, I think the Victorian socialist, Andrews, has a first rate health minister Jenny Mikakos, who calls out bad behaviour from medicos when she sees it.

You write:

It took a while but I think the Morrison government is hitting the right note in what is completely new territory for any recent government. Sure there have been mistakes, a couple pretty huge, and we unfortunately have lost the chance to eradicate it, but still we are luckier than most.

I agree that the PM is doing well now, but let's not delude ourselves. Our 'great' record is for a winter morbidity where we have summer and autumn casualties. My money is on the situation getting far worse as we mosey on towards Aug/Sept and that the current lockdown will be extended by many months.

Anyone thinking it'll be lifted soon is enjoying one too many scotches.

What a pointless bit of scribble !

I don't agree with the cash splash of the Morrison govt. Morrison and co. have done a back flip re Newstart/JobSeeker payments. Not long ago he absolutely refused to raise the Newstart payment by even $10 a week; now, he has doubled the payment. The $750 payment to senior pensioners supposedly vulnerable Stay at Home; most stores are closed and why would a senior go out shopping at risk of a fine.

Francesca,

The jobseeker allowance was doubled to stimulate the economy as the govt knows the money will be spent into it. Same with the $750 bonuses. Stop whining when I pay the tax and you spend the money! (....and BTW, I provide free public housing because I'm stupid enough to have a rental investment that my tenant has stopped paying rent on knowing he can't be evicted. I have a mortgage on that and my bank has been so kind as to capitalize the interest to get me through). Just stop bitchin', already! (PS From my bitter experience, landlords are given short shriftin the courts when up against a tenant, and this will be exacerbated by covid).

Meanwhile, I wouldn't judge Trump, Morrison, Adern, male leader, female leader, transexual, any leader, on the basis of deaths per capita at this point in time. I find Trump as amusing and alarming as anyone, but the US health system hasn't been overrun, with enough oxygen and beds for all and the 10% chance of recovery (or less) on a ventilator for all who have needed the option. His sin, according to all those with the 20/20 hindsight, is not putting 330M people into lockdown to emulate NZ, as if this is an option in the land of the free!

The virus is patient and will do you long or slowly, flat or in waves. It will exact its pound of flesh in terms of mortality per infection, regardless of how the curve is shaped. The smart move is Sweden's, which some will point to as a failure at this point with higher deaths per capita than neighbours (as expected through its strategy, of course), and having a male rather than female leader.

In the final washup, Sweden will have a lower mortality per infection than the rest of the world, and will have maintained a working economy thoughout.