It has taken the deepest economic crisis since the 1930s Depression to force a Liberal prime minister to confront the workplace regulation that makes it harder to support high wage Australian jobs in the global marketplace.

Like Bob Hawke four decades ago, Scott Morrison has used an economic crisis to invite organised movement, along with business, to help the nation build on its COVID-19 suppression to get the 594,000 Australians who lost their jobs last month back to work.