UNEMPLOYMENT TO DOUBLE
According to the ABC, new Treasury figures forecast that the unemployment rate will double in the June quarter from 5.1% to 10% — a number that could have jumped to 15% without JobKeeper — with 1.4 million Australians now expected to be out of a job and a recession effectively guaranteed.
On that note, the World Economic Forum has argued that the government can prevent a recession turning into depression by:
- Foregrounding public health and suppressing the virus (rather than hoping for ‘herd immunity’) until a vaccine is developed and rolled out next year;
- Cooperating with businesses, specifically in the global hunt for a vaccine. Businesses, meanwhile, will need to eliminate ‘competition’ mindsets throughout the pandemic; and
- Taking ‘on large and unprecedented roles in securing business continuity and jobs’, with public debt afforded to those ‘companies and individuals most able to take it on.’
WHAT AUSTRALIA CAN DO POST-CRISIS: According to The Sydney Morning Herald, the federal government will aim to centre agriculture and consider diversifying supply chains post-crisis, while The Saturday Paper reports that the Greens will push for an injection of renewable investment and a Green New Deal.
AUSTRALIA CAN TAKE A SMALL, ISOLATED POST-EASTER BOW
Social distancing and quarantine measures have meant that, after daily peaks of almost 500 cases in mid-March, Australia has averaged around 100 daily cases since last Monday, with weekend figures even dipping below 50.
However, Health Minister Greg Hunt announced yesterday that any easing of shutdown measures would require the following:
- A sustained decrease in cases;
- Rapid response capabilities (specifically around tracing infrastructure, now that confidence is building over ventilator supplies); and
- An exit plan balancing business reopening with at least six months of maintained social distancing measures.
SQUASH IT, SQUASH IT FLAT: In an analysis of new modelling, the Grattan Institute explores how Australia could feasibly follow New Zealand’s plan to ‘eliminate’ the virus by bringing total new daily cases close to zero by the second week of June and mitigate future outbreaks with contact tracing and border quarantines.
PELL FACES NEW SEXUAL ABUSE CLAIMS
Less than a week after his High Court acquittal, The Herald Sun ($) has revealed that George Pell is being investigated over new child abuse allegations.
The paper has revealed that Victoria Police began investigations prior to the High Court appeal over an alleged incident that, reportedly, dates back to the 1970s.
[free_worm]
AHRC, CRAIG FOSTER CALL FOR IMMIGRATION RELEASE
Both Australian Human Rights Commissioner Edward Santow and former Socceroos captain Craig Foster, in an interview with the SBS and debate on last night’s Q+A respectively, have called for a release of all immigration detainees who pose no significant security or health risks into the Australian community.
While Home Affairs rejected similar calls on March 26, Santow and Foster’s concerns follow medical recommendations for community releases from the Australasian Society for Infectious Diseases last month; specific concerns from detainees in onshore centres, Christmas Island, Nauru and Manus Island; and a joint-statement for global measures from the UN and WHO earlier this month.
COULD NATIONAL CABINET SURVIVE COVID?
According to The Australian ($), Scott Morrison has expressed support for a call from Western Australia’s Labor Premier Mark McGowan to maintain national cabinet meetings between federal and state leaders beyond the pandemic and replace the less-frequent, more politicised Council of Australian Governments system.
NSW EXPANDS TESTING TO COVID HOTSPOTS
Following similar expansions to testing eligibility last week, The Sydney Morning Herald reports that NSW will now test anyone with even mild flu-like symptoms in either at-risk areas or sites with unexplained transmissions, including but not limited to Sydney’s inner west, Waverley, Woollahra, Randwick, Ryde, Penrith, Liverpool, Blacktown, Cumberland and Westmead.
HOW THE RENT PACKAGE WORK: The ABC reports that a $440 million rental package, will be directed towards commercial and residential landlords in NSW and — as NSW Fair Trading’s new guide explains — a six-month eviction moratorium and negotiation guarantee for tenants experiencing financial distress.
THEY REALLY SAID THAT?
For only $14,990 less than Pete Evans’ harmonic subtle energy machine, you too can be protected from COVID-19. Just stay home.
Professor Brett Sutton
Who are you going to trust, Victoria’s chief health officer or the ‘gaze into the sun’ chef peddling a magic noise and lightbox currently under investigation by the TGA?
READ ALL ABOUT IT
Ruby Princess kitchen ‘feeds a further fiasco’
Unions divided on coronavirus retail closures
Trump retweets call to fire Fauci amid coronavirus criticism
Darwin council could waive rates for struggling homeowners, landlords
Brisbane riverfront house at centre of PNG corruption probe
Australia Post considered once-a-week letter deliveries in confidential review
OPEC deal ‘too late’ to prevent oil glut
Anti-Corbyn Labour officials worked to lose general election to oust leader, leaked dossier finds
THE COMMENTARIAT
Coronavirus: Champion of the left has plaudits for conservative PM — Ben Oquist (The Australian): “I did not vote for Scott Morrison. But like so many Australians I am willing for him to succeed in the fight against COVID-19. And he is. The squashing of the curve to date has been one of the great public policy successes of our time.”
The poor bear the burden of the coronavirus downturn, but inequality is not inevitable in Australia — Andrew Leigh (The Guardian): “The best cure for discrimination is a low jobless rate. This means that if the unemployment rate spikes upwards and then takes some time to recover, then it will be marginalised workers who pay the price.”
Life and death in the ‘hot zone’ — Nicholas Kristof (The New York Times): “Terror, pain and loneliness mingle in the air with the coronavirus in the ‘hot zone’ of the emergency department at Jack D. Weiler Hospital in the Bronx. The room is jammed with patients whose frightened eyes peer above their oxygen masks as they struggle to breathe, feel that they are drowning, wonder if they will ever again see loved ones.”
HOLD THE FRONT PAGE
JobKeeper promises to be a fraud. Just another scummo deceit. So we will see sharp social division, as people who had felt reassured realise they’ve been sold out – and lost perhaps a month’s JobSeeker!
“We will give millions of eligible businesses and their workers a lifeline to not only get through this crisis, but bounce back together on the other side,” morrison said. “This is about keeping the connection between the employer and the employee and keeping people in their jobs even though the business they work for may go into hibernation and close down for six months.”
In fact, eligible employers can pick and choose those they want subsidised, obviously first those with the largest leave entitlements so that they can use JobKeeper to write off or write down the entitlement by using a Duties Direction to cut their rate of pay, then use a JobKeeper Enabling Direction to make sure they don’t earn more than $1,500.
As we know the two million most marginalised workers are deliberately excluded – a million casuals and a million visa workers of the worker-import programme started by Liberal PM John Howard in 1995.
Cuts to rates of pay and conditions will thus be systematically entrenched over the six months of JobKeeper. IT Minister Christian(!) Porter is working hard to do likewise with the already stripped-back “Modern” Awards.
morrison is astutely marketing himself. We need to take more care not to be taken in.
Once again too we see the snouts in the trough given by the political privileges of the sectarian private school sector.
Two blatant forms of favouritism appear in the (currently withdrawn) exposure draft Rules:
(1) Private schools can pocket the JobKeeper payments as long as they suffer a 15% decline in earnings, while all the rest of us have to suffer a 30% drop, and
(2) Government schools plus councils are completely excluded from the JobKeeper scheme; thus, again, we see the morrison Kleptocracy/Misgovernment hatred of public sector workers.
Well, in the Catholic sectarian school system, poverty does subsidise privilege.
“Anti-Corbyn Labour officials worked to lose general election to oust leader, leaked dossier finds”
This “leaked dossier” is a partisan compilation of factional point-scoring from the Corbyn camp, trying to blame anyone but themselves for the catastrophic state of the Labour party they controlled completely for years. Crikey is generally good at pointing out the failings of such documents. It would have been better to say “… leaked dossier alleges”. It is far short of enough credibility or independence to say it “finds”anything.
I fail to see how JobKeeper will stop job losses at all.
It subsidises those still working – likely the people that wouldn’t have been laid off with or without the package being passed.
People who are laid off are not covered.