Terry McCrann: Governments must order us out of recession
Unless and until Victoria — one-quarter of the national economy, to say nothing of 6.5 million individuals — is released from home imprisonment, the national economy can’t get back to healthy activity, writes Terry McCrann.
Terry McCrann
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Government — the federal government in particular — ordered the economy into recession.
Only government — but now it’s the six state governments and one in particular — can and indeed must order the economy out of recession.
That ‘one’ is of course Victoria. Unless and until one-quarter of the national economy, to say nothing of 6.5 million individuals, is/are released from home imprisonment, the national economy can’t get back to healthy activity.
The other states and especially the ‘hard-border’ ones of Queensland, WA and SA must also ‘order’ their (and the national) economies back to life. But the pivot is Victoria.
The damage Victoria was doing to itself and to everyone else was shown by the ABS figures on jobs Tuesday.
Between the start of the national lockdown in mid-March through to early September, a staggering 8.5 per cent of the jobs in Victoria have been lost. That’s over 10 per cent of the private sector jobs.
The next worst state was Tasmania, down only 4.3 per cent. But through August Victoria was dragging everyone back.
Victoria lost 0.8 per cent of its jobs in the two weeks to September 5. NSW and Queensland both lost 0.3 per cent of their jobs.
Yes, WA, SA and Tasmania did not lose jobs over these two weeks but their increases were barely positive.
Critically, importantly, none of this includes the 3m-plus jobs on JobKeeper. As I’ve written, we are now in a race between Victoria and JobKeeper winding back.
Originally published as Terry McCrann: Governments must order us out of recession