Best-case scenario only hope of emerging from this
Victorian businesses have got the certainty some of their representatives have demanded. It is the certainty of devastation and not just in hospitality, retail and tourism, writes Terry McCrann.
Terry McCrann
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Victorian businesses have got the certainty some of their representatives have demanded. It is the certainty of devastation and not just in hospitality, retail and tourism.
If you’ve managed to somehow survive the past six months, have I — as in your Premier — got a deal for you.
Have another three months of it; at least, another three months.
The thing business owners and operators, and indeed all 6.5 million Victorians need to understand is that this is the official best-case future that business, and indeed all Victorians, now face.
It is the best-case future — stretching into and through 2021 — that has been mandated by government order for all of us.
It’s what we get if all goes to Premier Daniel Andrews’ plan and the virus shrivels and dies according to the computer instruction.
If it doesn’t, if human slippage intrudes, we will get tougher and more extended restrictions than Sunday’s so-called “road map”.
I don’t know how great swathes of business employing tens of thousands of Victorians can survive this “best case” future. They certainly won’t survive anything tougher, or longer, if the Premier doesn’t get, doesn’t allow, his “normal family Christmas”.
Victoria has committed to keep one quarter of the national economy locked in crippling recession.
By doing so it helps keep the other 75 per cent of the national economy in — albeit somewhat less punitive — recession as well.
That said, the other states and most prominently WA and Queensland — Tasmania frankly just doesn’t matter — are doing their bit with their ludicrous border closures.
At least Premier Andrews has an “aspirational” Christmas target; Queensland’s Annastacia Palaszczuk won’t even commit to that.
Apart from the devastation her border closures are doing to her state’s tourism industry, they could help kill the Virgin airline she has spent $250m of her taxpayers’ money to stay in Brisbane.
Victoria’s recession-maintaining lockdown will now also collide head-on with the federal government’s cuts to JobKeeper and JobSeeker at the end of the month.
This will further whack business — and jobs and incomes — from two sides.
Businesses will now have to sack workers. Those sacked workers and even those still getting JobKeeper will have less money to spend.
Originally published as Best-case scenario only hope of emerging from this