Plan to get 1 million back to work

The majority of businesses should be up and running in less than two months by following a comprehensive set of protocols approved by the national cabinet.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and territory leaders have met to plan how to get 1 million Australians back to work.  A three-stage approach has been proposed to lift restrictions with the overall goal of having a sustainable COVID-19 safe operating economy by July 2020.

“Just having low number of cases is not success, particularly when you have a lot of people out of work. That is the curve that I’m looking to address now. We have had great success on flattening the health curve and that is great and we all wanted that but it has come at a price and we have to now start balancing that up.” said Mr Morrison.

The National COVID-19 Coordination Commissioner is working with the Government to develop a series of tools including a website dividing businesses into 23 industry sectors each with their own safety precautions to facilitate the reopening businesses. The idea is to have cafes, restaurants and retail stores open imminently as part of the first stage of easing restrictions.

The Treasury data below was presented to the Cabinet to emphasise the need to reopen business and schools, the data also includes the observation of the $4billlion cost a week for the economy.

The Reserve Bank of Australia Governor Phillip Lowe believes a strong economic recovery is possible for Australia but has warned “On the other hand, if the lifting of restrictions  is delayed or the restrictions need to be reimposed or household and business confidence remains low, the outcomes would be even more challenging than those in the baseline scenario.”

This is a summary of the article ‘Let’s get 1 million back to work’ by Phillip Corey | The Australian Financial Review – AFR | Wednesday 6^th May 2020.