Ted Evans, the Commonwealth Treasury secretary who was in the thick of the economic policy reforms of the 1980s, famously said of 1990s joblessness that Australia could choose the level of unemployment it was willing to bear. Sadly, Mr Evans died last month, just as the mandated social distancing response to the COVID-19 virus was wiping out a staggering 594,000 jobs.

Initially, Australians have had no choice in this. Astoundingly, more than six million of them are now on a JobKeeper wage subsidy, the world’s biggest in GDP terms, but which is now exhausting the $130 billion budgeted for it and is unsustainable beyond its six months. And a staggering 2.7 million Australians either worked far fewer hours last month, or have simply bailed out of the workforce.