CHIEF Minister Michael Gunner saw snaking queues form outside Centrelink after increasingly strict coronavirus lockdown measures forced businesses to shut and thought: “F**k me that’s my fault”.

With just eight days until Territorians are granted a second wave of the most significant pandemic restriction rollbacks in Australia, Mr Gunner has revealed exclusively to the NT News how he’s dealt with the biggest crisis since World War II.

The NT’s three-stage way out means pubs and cafes will reopen on May 15, with restrictions, and by June 5 most lockdown measures except gatherings of 500 or more people will be lifted, including the resumption of team sport.

Mr Gunner admits implementing the nation-leading road map has proved more stressful than enforcing the lockdown, which was “bloody hard”, as Territorians were now at the front line of ensuring the “new normal” doesn’t lead to a dreaded second wave of infections.

“I think we’re setting the Territory up to protect ourselves from a second wave, but that’s the scare factor for me. Coronavirus is still present, we’re not immune,” he said.

“Closing down was bloody hard … I was very stressed about having to say to a business, I’m sorry you’ve got to close your doors because of the coronavirus. I knew the impact that would have. Then you saw the dole queues out of Centrelink, that was a pretty awful couple of days.”

CHIEF’S ‘NEW NORMAL’

Asked to chart his 2020 stress levels, Mr Gunner said between his heart attack in January, the Johnston by-election at the end of February, the coronavirus pandemic hitting Australia proper in March, the birth of his son Hudson and a looming election in August, the graph was a straight line.

The Chief Minister says there’s a “pre-Hudson” era and the chapter after April 9, which involves many nappy changes on top of a stacked meeting schedule.

National Cabinet, a roundtable of Australia’s state and territory leaders, has reduced its weekly meetings from three down to one or two since forming in March, though they remain in constant contact through their own WhatsApp messenger group.

“It’s kind of weird, it’s a different life,” Mr Gunner said.

“It became essentially a relentless series of often high-stakes meetings.”

This includes cabinet meetings, daily updates from the emergency operating centre, meetings with NT’s small business advisory group that is responsible for the multimillion-dollar survival fund, and speaking to businesses around what flexibilities could be put in place to save them from collapsing completely.

Nationally, about 728,640 employers have formally registered for the JobKeeper wage subsidy scheme so far, covering a total of 4.7 million workers.

In the NT, 4021 organisations are seeking help from the $130 billion JobKeeper scheme and, as of yesterday, 532 Territory businesses had been paid $11.9 million out of the NT Government’s $50 million Small Business Survival Fund.

The NT Government has announced stimulus measures worth $400 million, including the oversubscribed Home Improvement Scheme that had to be more than trebled from $30 million to $100 million.

Territory debt was projected to hit $6.2 billion this final year before the pandemic, and the size of the coronavirus-crater will remain unknown until Treasury releases full financial details in late July or early August.

REVENUE ‘WHACKED’

Mr Gunner, who’s faced significant pressure from his opponents to open up the NT’s books to voters prior to the August election, believes the Government’s expenditure will be “handleable”.

“What we don’t know yet is the revenue hit,” he said. I know we’ll be whacked.”

About 70 per cent of the NT’s revenue comes from the GST, and the size of the pool won’t be known until the Federal Government releases its budget in October.

Locally, Mr Gunner argues no one can reliably say which businesses will be operating in September, how many people they will employ and in turn how much payroll tax the Government will receive.

Queensland’s treasurer has flagged an estimated $4 billion hit to its revenue, while WA has warned its forecast surpluses may be wiped out completely.

Neither state, both of which are heading into election cycles, have been able to say definitively how bad their budgets will look

“What Territorians get a chance to do this election … (they) get to choose which government they want to make the budget decisions that have to be made post-coronavirus, that’s their choice,” Mr Gunner said.

Crises tend to favour governments, with recent polling revealing WA Premier Mark McGowan is enjoying an astronomical 89 per cent approval rating and even Australia’s least popular premier, Queensland’s Annastacia Palaszczuk, sits at 55 per cent.

Extrapolated, Mr Gunner is expected to head into the election more popular than ever.

“They say a week is a long time in politics; I’m not sure what a week is in the time of coronavirus – that’s a year,” he said.

“It’s still more than three months until election day, a lot can happen.”

BORDER CONTROL

Restrictions on travel in and out of the NT’s “biosecurity bubbles” will be reviewed on June 18 but interstate border restrictions are set to remain in place for longer.

Mr Gunner has ruled out opening borders exclusively to SA and WA, despite the low levels of COVID-19 cases, arguing South Australia’s “porous” border with Victoria and WA’s cluster in the remote Kimberley region just across the NT border posed too high a risk.

Coincidentally, two of the three coronavirus restriction rollback stages have occurred over long weekends, with the next public holiday scheduled on June 8.

But any speculation June 5 could be made a public holiday has been ruled out.

“No, I think that lends itself to getting ahead of ourselves … we haven’t conquered coronavirus,” Mr Gunner said.

“We’ve done well in the Territory, you can say we’ve crushed it, but coronavirus is still present. I think it’d be fair to say as well that any boss who sacks their worker for not turning up on June 6 is probably a mug, or a bum.”