Coronavirus: Recovery tsar Andrew Liveris ‘bearish on economic optimism’

Coronavirus recovery tsar Andrew Liveris has suspended his usual optimism to present a bearish outlook on the Australian economy.

Former Dow Chemical boss turned coronavirus recovery tsar Andrew Liveris. Picture: Lyndon Mechielsen

Former Dow Chemical boss turned coronavirus recovery tsar Andrew Liveris has suspended his usual optimism to present a bearish outlook on the Australian economy.

Darwin-born Mr Liveris, who advised the Trump administration on manufacturing policy and now sits on federal and Northern Territory COVID-19 recovery taskforces, says the economic hit from the pandemic is far from over and governments should plug the consumption gap with targeted stimulus.

“If I had to be portrayed as a bull or a bear, I’d probably be more on the bear side,” he said.

“That’s because we’re still a long way from having a notion of a vaccine, and therefore consumption is going to be severely dampened for most of the next year or two or three.”

Mr Liveris said consumption “will have to be reinvented … You’ve got to keep the economy going but controlled, which means consumption will be low, which means investment is the path forward.

“If you think about recovery to post-COVID levels, it will look different … to the pre-COVID economy. I do believe we are a couple of years away from seeing it in full, which is why these programs are urgent.”

He called for growth-boosting investment, particularly in industrial development and energy, and urged governments not to repeat mistakes from the global fin­ancial crisis when “we put lots of money to work that wasn’t ­productive”.

Mr Liveris was speaking remotely at an event in Darwin where, with Territory Economic Reconstruction Commission co-chair Paul Henderson and Chief Minister Michael Gunner, he helped release the unit’s first ­report.

Mr Henderson, a former Labor leader and unionist, attacked government red-tape and argued for the Territory to “roll out the red carpet to the private sector across Australia”.

“We’ve got to make this the easiest place in Australia to start a business and run a business, and that’s going to require a cultural shift across the public sector,” he said.

Mr Gunner accepted the report’s 15 recommendations, adding that his favourite was developing “electricity superhighways” using HVDC cables.

Mr Liveris‘s silver lining in the coronavirus crisis was the opportunity for a “reset” to position Australia more competitively.

“For the first time in a long time, I’ve seen us open to the idea we haven’t invented everything here in Australia — that we can actually bring things in and learn them and apply them,” he said.