Fight Of Our Lives

HAMISH MACDONALD

On every front, the numbers are bleak – 532 new cases in Victoria – a new national daily record – a death toll that’s still climbing, and our national debt at levels not seen since wartime. We are facing huge challenges that will last a generation at least. So, how do we find our ways out of this? We know you’ve got lots of questions tonight, so let’s get you some answers. Welcome to Q+A.

Hi there. Welcome to the program. Thanks so much for joining us. Joining me on the panel tonight: Karen Soo, a business leader in Australia’s largest Chinatown, in Haymarket in Sydney; CEO of the Australian Council of Social Services, Cassandra Goldie; author and journalist George Megalogenis is in our Melbourne studio; strategic health policy adviser Bill Bowtell, one of the architects of Australia’s response to HIV and AIDS; and economist Gigi Foster, who says our border closures are costing lives. And our politicians tonight: joining us, the Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment, Simon Birmingham, in Adelaide, and the Shadow Finance Minister, Katy Gallagher, in Canberra. Would you please make all of them feel welcome.

And remember, you can stream us on iview, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. #QandA is the hashtag. Do please play nicely this evening.

Our first question tonight is a video from Jonty Hall in West Melbourne.

JONTY HALL, WEST MELBOURNE, VIC

Good evening. Clearly, we’re not getting quite the same situation as much of the United States. However, the number of daily new COVID-19 cases in Victoria remains stubbornly high, with the single largest increase in a day recorded just this morning, of 532 new cases. Do we just need more time for lockdowns and masks to work, or are other further urgent measures needed to curb the spread of this virus?

HAMISH MACDONALD

Bill Bowtell, are we dealing with this urgently enough?

BILL BOWTELL, STRATEGIC HEALTH POLICY ADVISER

No, we’re not. And I think, at the outset, we’ve got to differentiate between what’s happening in Victoria and New South Wales and what’s happening in the other states of Australia, and New Zealand. If you take Australia and New Zealand together, about 30 million people. Now, tonight, more than half of that number are living in COVID-free jurisdictions because they saw the problem for what it was and, one way or another, they’ve got to a situation where they’ve eliminated community transmission. So we’re not talking about an Australia-wide problem, we’re talking about a problem that’s emerged in Victoria and in New South Wales, where the strategic decision was not taken, as it was in the outlying states and New Zealand, to eliminate local transmission. Now, the virus will find the weakest link. And, because we didn’t have that strategic goal, the virus has found a way to come back. We were too quick to come out of the lockdown, the first one. We did not advocate strongly enough for use of masks in the transition, and here we are. It’s a very serious situation in Victoria and, I hope, not as serious in New South Wales, but we cannot keep on doing this – we have to stop this thing here and now.

HAMISH MACDONALD

Just to be clear, is it getting away from us, in your view?

BILL BOWTELL

Well, at 350 cases a day, yes, it is. 350 cases a day, 2,000 a week – that means there’s a proportion of those cases who are...people now who are very ill, who are maybe requiring hospitalisation, and a proportion of those who are seriously ill. Now, that imposes immense strains on our healthcare workers, from ambulance drivers all the way through to the doctors, the nurses, the hospital staff and so on, and, by implication, their families. So this is not a good situation. And it’s good to see that the Premier, the Prime Minister, all the resources – the money, the intellectual effort, the facilities – are going to knock this down. So that’s good, that’s tremendous, and we’ve all got to get behind that and bring it down.

The question is, though, do we bring it down to the same low level we had a few weeks ago in Victoria and New South Wales, and then go into another cycle of rinse and repeat and have a lockdown 3 come at Christmas? I’d rather this Christmas was COVID-free in New South Wales and Victoria, like we hope it will be, and remain to be so in the rest of the country and New Zealand. We have a choice now in front of us. The experiment’s been run in real time, from March through till August – now. And we know what works and we know what doesn’t work so well, so let’s get on with it and let’s just knock this thing out.

HAMISH MACDONALD

Gigi Foster?

GIGI FOSTER, ECONOMIST, UNSW

Completely disagree. I feel that, in fact, it’s a fantasy to believe that we can in fact eliminate this virus, whether just in Victoria and New South Wales, or across all of Australia. And there’s no real endgame in sight. If we did eliminate it, then we would have to commit ourselves to living, basically, isolated from the rest of the world until such time as there was a vaccine or some other brilliant discovery came about that would protect us, you know, ad infinitum against this thing. And I just think that’s an unrealistic vision. I think that Australia can follow in the footsteps of many other countries in the world, some of which have not had lockdowns as strict as we had here, such as, again, Sweden, and look at the death tolls in those countries, countries that have had proper first waves...

HAMISH MACDONALD

Just let me pull you up there. Sweden has had 5,697 deaths.

GIGI FOSTER

Absolutely.

BILL BOWTELL

Correct.

HAMISH MACDONALD

Are you comfortable with advocating that for Australia?

GIGI FOSTER

I am comfortable with saying let’s be data-driven in our policy choices, let’s look at what’s happened in other countries. Sweden, yes, asymptoting death count to about 6,000. In the UK, asymptoting to about 50,000.

HAMISH MACDONALD

But the economic pay-off is not there currently. GDP is down almost 7% in Sweden. Unemployment is at 9% as of May.

GIGI FOSTER

Yes.

HAMISH MACDONALD

And the advantage is not there.

GIGI FOSTER

Well, it’s very, very early days, first of all. And, secondly, we’re also having huge economic costs here. And these costs are going to be with us for a generation, Hamish, and people are...

HAMISH MACDONALD

But how can you point to Sweden and say, “There’s the model”?

GIGI FOSTER

Well, if you look at what’s now happening, again, to those death counts, right, they’re asymptoting around the world, in every country that’s had a proper first wave, to somewhere between 0.05% and 0.1% of the population. That translates in Australia to about 12,000 to 25,000 deaths of people who are predominantly elderly and/or immunocompromised. But it is still... It’s a body count.

Now, if we were to let this virus do what it has done in Sweden, which was by no means a ‘no restriction’ situation... There were definitely restrictions on what people could do. There was endogenous reaction by people. They chose to do things differently. If we had that sort of death count here, that would be about 12,000 to 25,000, not 150,000.

HAMISH MACDONALD

In Victoria today there was six further deaths announced, there are 44 people tonight in ICU, 245 people in hospital.

GIGI FOSTER

Mm-hm.

HAMISH MACDONALD

I mean, this is just heartless, isn’t it?

GIGI FOSTER

It’s horrible! And it’s horrible what is happening to people...

HAMISH MACDONALD

So why are you advocating for them to die?

GIGI FOSTER

I’m not advocating for anybody to die. I’m advocating for the least people to die as possible, because what we’re talking about now, what Bill was just talking about, is exclusively about COVID-19 related deaths and suffering. What about everything else that kills people and makes them suffer? My position is that we should consider all of the things that influence human welfare, human livelihoods, lives and quality of lives, whether it’s COVID-19 or something else. Have we even thought about the cost of the mental stress and anguish, the unemployment effects? There is new information coming out of the UK that’s indicated a huge drop in life satisfaction starting in March. If we translate that to the Australian population, we’d be talking about a loss of about 100,000 life years, healthy life years, sacrificed for every month of lockdown here.

CASSANDRA GOLDIE, CEO, AUSTRALIAN COUNCIL OF SOCIAL SERVICE

Can I say...

GIGI FOSTER

And that’s just mental stress.

BILL BOWTELL

Oh, really.

CASSANDRA GOLDIE

Can I say, Hamish, that we represent thousands of community organisations on the ground around the country who are doing everything they can to keep people safe, to protect people from the ravages of what happens when you lose your job. It is an extremely serious situation, but there is no question for us that protecting people’s health and saving people’s lives is paramount, and it goes hand in hand with delivering on us getting to the other side of what might be jobs growth. You can’t separate this out. The reality is people...the economy is a group of people. People are making the best decisions they can at the moment, overwhelmingly trying to look after their friends, their loved ones, to try and keep the jobs and business doors open.

But, at the end of the day, whilst this virus is with us, we have to keep focusing on getting the strong health outcomes, and that kind of determination to deal with this, because otherwise confidence – which is the buzzword, the key word on the economy – is absolutely undermined here. And, of course, we totally reject this notion that somehow some lives are worth trading off in this debate.

HAMISH MACDONALD

Let me bring George in. You’re in Melbourne. Do you... Sitting in Melbourne, where the daily death count does seem to be growing, how do you hear Gigi’s argument?

GEORGE MEGALOGENIS, AUTHOR AND JOURNALIST

I’ll put an economics cap on. Let’s assume the market can efficiently allocate death, which is what Gigi’s arguing. I’d argue that it couldn’t, because the minute you let a virus run free, the minute a government says, “You’re on your own,” you get locked down anyway.

CASSANDRA GOLDIE

Yeah.

GEORGE MEGALOGENIS

So consumers avoid shops, they avoid mass gatherings. The second thing that happens if you were to take a ‘let it rip’ strategy is that the hospital system couldn’t cope, and then hospitals are incentivised to not let in people with COVID because it’s going to overwhelm their...their doctors and nurses and orderlies and other workers at...in the hospital. The idea that there is a trade-off makes no economic sense to me because it’s like pretending that you have a pandemic but it’s still 2019, if you don’t have any restrictions.

Australians actually did demonstrate in the first wave, in the first lockdown, that they’re quite willing to be led on this stuff, and were actually pretty good at flattening that curve the first time around. Obviously, there’s been an extraordinary blunder in Victoria and extraordinary series of unlucky events in Victoria too. So, you know, when you look at sort of responsibility... I’m not in the blame game – when you’re looking at responsibility, there are things that were avoidable and there are some things that probably couldn’t have been foreseen in Victoria, and that’s that the thing would move as quickly as it did through the community.

But, as I say, the idea that the market could allocate death better than a health intervention from the government, which prioritises the good health of the country over everything else, just doesn’t add up to me. But it doesn’t add up to me as an economist, because every other country that’s sort of tried to let it rip... And there’s a guy called Donald Trump who’s already given up on this idea. It took him six months to give up on this idea, but he’s just cancelled, just this week, his convention in Florida. Why? Because no-one will go to that event, because they don’t trust the thing while it’s still out there – that is, the virus – and if the government doesn’t have their back, people won’t go out anyway.

So, look, I want to stay in my lane and talk about Victoria when I get the chance, but just the economic argument doesn’t add up to me, because you can’t just say, “I’ll cop 25,000 deaths and I’ll avoid another 30,000.” It’s just not the way the world works.

HAMISH MACDONALD

That’s true, isn’t it, Gigi?

GIGI FOSTER

I mean, the 25,000 versus 30,000 is exactly... You’re making my argument. It’s the 20,000 we’re giving up. If you’ve heard of the trolley problem, right? The trolley problem was where there was a trolley going along and it’s going to hit 10 people unless you change it to the track that hits one. And you can look that one person in the eyes, you know exactly who that person is. Do you change the track? I change the track.

HAMISH MACDONALD

Bill?

BILL BOWTELL

Look, the evidence has been run in real time. The Swedish example is a fiasco. The Prime Minister of Sweden, the other day, apologised for what had happened. 2,000 Swedish expert epidemiologists, economists announced what had happened. The economic outcomes in Sweden were no better or worse than their neighbouring countries.

The idea of locking old people in aged care homes, not allowing them to be treated in hospitals, as became the norm in Sweden, is – or should be – abhorrent. The job of governments is to make people’s lives healthy, wealthier, happier. You cannot do...you cannot segment out one sector of the population and ask them to undergo great misery, suffering, death in the interests – the spurious interests – of saying, “All the rest of us will benefit.” That is not how societies work. And it should not work in Australia. It can be discounted. The evidence is overwhelmingly clear. The debate, in my view, is finished.

We’ve just got to get on with the job of doing in New South Wales and Victoria what has been done in the outlying states and New Zealand. Where would you rather be tonight if you’re in a job...in a...a restaurant owner in Melbourne? Would you rather be opening up tomorrow in Melbourne or in Auckland? Where would the customers of that restaurant rather be – in Melbourne or in Auckland?

CASSANDRA GOLDIE

It’s not to say, though...

BILL BOWTELL

I think they’d rather be in a COVID-free environment.

HAMISH MACDONALD

Alright. Well, let...

CASSANDRA GOLDIE

Bill would be the first person to say, though, that we’ve got to make sure that if you are losing your job, that you’re going to be OK. And, of course, we had what was a really important doubling of the JobSeeker, that lifeline unemployment payment that was delivered in order to give people some sense of security, to keep your head above water, make sure that you’re able to afford some fresh fruit and vegetables, etc...

HAMISH MACDONALD

I’m going to stop you there, because we have a question on precisely that. It’s from Brian Tran in our audience.

BRIAN TRAN

Given...given the situation in Victoria right now, it is clear that many individuals, including my family, will suffer economically from this new lockdown. It is clear that the economic recovery is now a long-term process. Now that many individuals rely on JobSeeker, would the government now support a permanent increase of the Coronavirus Supplement to the current JobSeeker payment rate? If many are still reliant on the program, and we decide to remove the supplement, wouldn’t there be huge repercussions in terms of spending in the economy, as well as many families suffering?

HAMISH MACDONALD

Cassandra, I’ll come to you in a moment, but, Karen Soo, do you worry about taps being turned off already? That’s the argument that’s being made about the changes being implemented around JobSeeker and JobKeeper.

KAREN SOO, EXECUTIVE OFFICER, HAYMARKET CHAMBER OF COMMERCE

Look, I think, you know, this is incredible, the time that we’re in. And I think businesses, particularly small businesses, are just...you know, they’re being led by government on how they can do business, if they can do business. JobKeeper has been incredible for some of them. But they’re also struggling, ‘cause, as you said, you’ve got a lot of people that are unemployed, and then they’re not sure which way to go, too, because of safety. You’ve got, then, some employees that are wanting to stay home and not go to work.

HAMISH MACDONALD

How...how close to the...

KAREN SOO

So there’s a real conflict.

HAMISH MACDONALD

How close to the edge are the businesses you work with, deal with?

KAREN SOO

Look, I’m aware of some businesses that have...that...you know, that would have 250 staff, have got one person on site. And then, I’m aware of other businesses that are...like, like I made mention, co-working in some of the start-up businesses, because they’ve got really tight communities and they’re trusted – they know who’s coming into the places, there’s an understanding of their relationships. They’re actually starting to reform. So, I think particularly for retail businesses that are trying to understand, you know, what is safe, how do they negotiate employment with people that are not wanting necessarily to come back to work ‘cause of the safety issues, and then... But then, they’re needing to function. So I think it’s a very challenging time.

HAMISH MACDONALD

This was a question, Cass, about JobSeeker, particularly in the longer term.

CASSANDRA GOLDIE

Well, and the huge relief to families and individuals when the government absolutely did the right thing and doubled that JobSeeker payment so that it was, not generous, but enough to cover the basics – you know, you could know that you could put three meals on the table, not one, for you and your family. Of course, there’s over a million people on temporary visas who don’t have access to that yet. And that must be fixed urgently if we’re to take the health crisis seriously, and people’s sense of wellbeing. But that increase now needs to be converted into an adequate permanent social security arrangement, so that every individual and family does have enough.

HAMISH MACDONALD

So, what’s adequate, in your view?

CASSANDRA GOLDIE

And so... We’ve been very clear in saying to the government, “You need to deliver an adequate increase to JobSeeker that is permanent.” For many people, they’re now needing every dollar that they’re getting, and in some cases more, particularly those with children.

HAMISH MACDONALD

So, what’s adequate?

CASSANDRA GOLDIE

So, we’ve said the absolute maxi...minimum would be $185 per week as a base rate increase, but in many cases it will need to be more. Most people need every dollar they’re getting right now. And at the moment, we just need to give people confidence and certainty. So, for now, if the government says, “We don’t want to fix the whole social security system tomorrow,” keep this supplement in place until we convert it into a permanent increase. But what we didn’t need was what the government did, which was to say, “Well, we’re going to cut it $300 per fortnight.” That’s a massive cut to families and also to the economy. And no certainty beyond Christmas about what will happen.

And so, we’re urging the government to make sure that our social protection, social security, is adequate and permanent, because the reality is, Hamish, we had over 800,000 people who were unemployed before COVID. We had 70% of those people who had been unemployed for over a year – terrible – on a brutal $40 a day. We’ve now actually broken through that shocking treatment of people. And right now – and we talk about confidence, we talk having people’s back – that is one of the clear things that is within the government’s control to fix, and we should just do it.

HAMISH MACDONALD

Let’s put that to the government. Let me bring in Senator Simon Birmingham, who’s in our Adelaide studios tonight, and Katy Gallagher, the Shadow Finance Minister, who is in Canberra tonight. You heard it very clearly there, Senator Birmingham – this cut that is coming to JobSeeker, $300 a fortnight from what it is currently, will impact not just those people, but the economy as a whole. Why are you taking that money out?

SIMON BIRMINGHAM, MINISTER FOR TRADE, TOURISM AND INVESTMENT

Hamish, we’re putting enormous additional resources into the Australian economy. We’ve seen an injection of some $164 billion of direct financial assistance, the vast majority of that flowing through in terms of direct household assistance through JobKeeper and the additional JobSeeker payments. Now, the additional supplement that was there for JobSeeker continues through, as it currently is, all the way through until, essentially, the end of September, and then continues still as an additional supplement, not at the same rate, but still an additional supplement, all the way through until December. And we’ve made very clear that we...

HAMISH MACDONALD

And that’s the question – why are you reducing it? What...? I mean, you’re aware of the implications for the individuals, but also the broader economy. Why...why cut it?

SIMON BIRMINGHAM

Hamish, we’ve always been clear that these were temporary supplements. Now, we’ll have a look at what needs to be the case beyond December as we get closer to that point in time. We’ve also made further changes to ensure that if people are able to get a few hours of work on top of that JobSeeker payment and that JobSeeker supplement, they’re able to keep more of that money. It’s an important additional reform, knowing that for many people just getting those few hours back of a casual job is going to be so important to them as a step back into...into the economy. So we’re trying to put extra flexibility there, respond to the circumstances they are there.

As always, there’s still the additional payments of family tax benefit for people with children, of rental assistance for those in rental accommodation, that flow through on top of those payments as well, which ensures that for the vast...for the vast majority of recipients, they do receive additional payments there in addition to the base payment and the supplement that’s continuing right through the rest of this year.

HAMISH MACDONALD

Katy Gallagher, does Labor support this move?

KATY GALLAGHER, SHADOW MINISTER FOR FINANCE

Well, Labor certainly supports the fact that people aren’t going to be cut off at the end of September, which is what the government originally intended. We argued for it to be extended. The government has extended it. We welcome that. They’ve made some changes and tapering off some of those payments, you know, cutting JobSeeker and JobKeeper. We have to understand more about how...what lies underneath those decisions, how Treasury has advised the government about why that cut is appropriate, what it means, how JobSeeker interacts with some of those...as Simon said, you know, you’re able to earn some extra money, what the likelihood of that is. So we certainly welcome the extension. We couldn’t have a situation where we’ve got 1.6 million people on JobSeeker and 3.5 million on JobKeeper and just have that money stop at the end of September. How it rolls out, based on what we’re seeing with some of the issues in Victoria and New South Wales, what that means, whether it’s enough in terms of income support, remains to be seen. And we’ve got some work to do on the COVID Committee to get to the bottom of some of those Treasury assumptions.

HAMISH MACDONALD

OK. Next question tonight is from Liam Matthews, who’s live in Abbotsford, Victoria. What’s your question, Liam?

LIAM MATTHEWS, PUBLICAN

Hi, everyone. I co-own two small businesses in Melbourne and it’s a current...it’s a common feeling amongst my peers that trickle-down economics simply doesn’t work, and when larger companies are given grants or tax concessions, that money can just be used to build wealth. These opinions, coupled with the changes to JobKeeper and JobSeeker, make us feel that the government is out of touch with broader business, and we have real fears about our future. Surely, now is the time, where the government is making day-by-day changes and decisions, that they could be looking at future tax amendments that would better suit small to medium businesses and tax larger businesses better.

HAMISH MACDONALD

Katy Gallagher.

KATY GALLAGHER

Well, sure, you know, I mean, one of the issues with last week was we heard the government say, you know, “The economy’s grim, the budget’s under enormous pressure but...you know, here it is, but we don’t know what we’re going to do about it.” And that’s one of the issues we had with last week’s figures. We think the government should have a plan. It should put a proposal on the table. Labor will engage with that. Whether it’s around some changes to tax, whether it’s around extra stimulus, whether it’s around targeted training and extra support to get people into jobs, we want to engage with the government with a recovery discussion, but at the moment there’s nothing on the table and last week we were told, “Well, you can wait till October to find out.” And, in the meantime, 240,000 people – these are Treasury figures – 240,000 more people are going to lose their jobs in the lead-up to Christmas.

Well, we say that’s not good enough to the government. What is your plan? How are you going to support small and medium business, and how are you going to get people into jobs, protect those that have them, and look after families that are really doing it tough? And at the moment, you know, it’s the sound of crickets coming from the government. There just isn’t a plan on the table to engage with.

HAMISH MACDONALD

Senator Birmingham?

SIMON BIRMINGHAM

Look, I reject, really, the tone of the question there. The assistance we’ve provided to date has been absolutely squarely targeted at either individuals and households or small and medium businesses. We’ve provided payments of up to $100,000 targeted to small and medium businesses. None of that going to big business – all of it going to the smaller end of town, to help those businesses survive. We’ve provided JobKeeper, as I said, as part of $164 billion worth of direct financial assistance, and that’s scaled. No matter what the workforce is, it’s there for the number of employees, and every single dollar passes through a business, whether it’s a big business or a small business, into the hands of those employees to support them.

HAMISH MACDONALD

But, with respect, Senator, this was a question about what you will do going forward, and the point’s been made by Katy Gallagher that there is not a clear plan from the government and we’ve been told to wait until the Budget.

SIMON BIRMINGHAM

Well, I...I reject that too, Hamish, because, coming forward, we’ve got...

KATY GALLAGHER

But it’s true, Simon.

SIMON BIRMINGHAM

..we’ve got just in place... Just in place, we’ve seen, in terms of taxes, which was part of the question as well, a tax cut focused on small and medium-sized businesses for company tax. Not for big businesses, but for small and medium-sized businesses. There are other tax cuts flowing through to households and individuals. Now, on top of that, we have announced additional funding for skills, additional funding into the construction sector, additional funding to make sure that Australia is a more attractive place for films and entertainment to occur as massive employers in those sectors. We have been working through, sector by sector, carefully, to make sure that we are stimulating future economic activity, and we’ll build on those plans in the Budget to come, as part of our ongoing consultation. This is not a, you know, ‘unwrap it – here is the plan and the solution’. This is about dealing with the biggest economic challenge the world has seen since the Great Depression, and we’re going to continue to release plan after plan in terms of the details for each sector, the details for the different parts of the economy as to how we lift skilling in this country to meet the needs of the future, and just today, the Prime Minister announcing the new input...

HAMISH MACDONALD

I can see Katy Gallagher...shaking her head furiously there. You say there is no plan. The senator says there is a plan.

KATY GALLAGHER

Well, I just think, I mean, Simon’s really good with the talking points and rolling off the money and the budgets and how much has been allocated, but at the end of the day, the government’s own figures show that 240,000 more people – that’s on top of the 800,000 people who have already lost jobs – are going to lose jobs in the lead-up to Christmas. So, their plan – if they have one, according to Simon Birmingham – isn’t good enough, because that’s another quarter of a million people who will end up on the unemployment line, and we are saying there has to be a plan around jobs. And where is it? Last week, you issued your update and there was nothing. There was nothing other than...

SIMON BIRMINGHAM

And, Katy...

KATY GALLAGHER

..a white flag that said, “Oh, well. 240,000 more jobs are going to be lost.” And I just don’t think that’s good enough.

SIMON BIRMINGHAM

Katy, in the last two weeks, we extended JobKeeper, we extended JobSeeker, we announced the plan for the entertainment sector, we announced the skilling package.

KATY GALLAGHER

But this is on top of that, Simon.

SIMON BIRMINGHAM

And we also released... So, this is really important, Katy. We also released the Treasury forecast that showed 700,000 Australian jobs have been saved as a result of our intervention...

KATY GALLAGHER

Yes, and we welcome that.

SIMON BIRMINGHAM

..and action. Now, unemployment...

KATY GALLAGHER

We absolutely welcome that.

SIMON BIRMINGHAM

Now, we created more than 1.5 million jobs before the pandemic hit as a government. We’re determined to get back on course of doing that. But this pandemic was certainly not of our making, not something anyone could predict, and we’re going to work day and night to try to help Australians through the crisis, save their lives, save their jobs where we can, and then rebuild new opportunities in the economy as we emerge from it.

HAMISH MACDONALD

Let’s take our next question. It’s...

KATY GALLAGHER

Well, we look forward to hearing about it.

HAMISH MACDONALD

..a video from a Year 11 economics class at Shellharbour Anglican College, in Shellharbour in New South Wales.

YEAR 11 ECONOMICS CLASS, SHELLHARBOUR ANGLICAN COLLEGE, NSW

As Year 11 economic students, we will have to pay back the massive amount of government debt. We want to know by how much the current JobSeeker and JobKeeper payment will increase our tax burden in our future years.

HAMISH MACDONALD

Simon Birmingham.

SIMON BIRMINGHAM

Well, our aim is to make sure that we grow the economy, not to have to increase taxes on Australians. What we want to do is keep that tax burden low, because we know that’s necessary to grow the economy. That’s what...

HAMISH MACDONALD

But the reality is, this is...this is a generation that is going to be, in part, paying off this debt for most of their working life. That’s the truth of it, isn’t it?

SIMON BIRMINGHAM

And, Hamish, as generations following World War II faced enormous government debts that had been incurred then, and the solution was economic growth, not higher taxes on those generations. And that’s why I’m...

HAMISH MACDONALD

Let me just bring some of our panel in on this, Senator Birmingham. George Megalogenis, what would you say to these young students?

GEORGE MEGALOGENIS

It’s a very good question. So, the thing I’d say is, I wouldn’t worry about the debt so much at the moment, because the debt is only, you know, about a third of the total size of the economy. It’s about 36% of GDP. The reason I’m using that number is to put that number in perspective. The interest bill on that debt is less than 1% of GDP. So, the money that the government has borrowed essentially to protect jobs and to...and to sort of save the health of the nation can, as you look forward to the next 10, 20, 30 years, be reinvested in the economy and should be able to return something more than 1%. In fact, if they can’t get 2%, 3% or 4% or 5% return on that, they’re not even trying.

But I think the more fundamental question is what does the government think comes after this pandemic and the recession that’s attached to it? So, this is the...this is the single biggest shock to our standard of living since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Now, Simon alluded to what happened after the end of the Second World War. Well, essentially, what happened coming out of the Depression is that the government decided that it needed to be more active in the economy. And I think, when you look at the last 30 or 40 years – and you might have learned it in your economic class – that we’ve been...we’ve gone through a period of globalisation and deregulation, where the government did less and the market was trusted to do more. Now, that era is pretty much over, and it began to fracture and unravel with the global financial crisis of 2008-2009. And now, of course, this pandemic, coming out of this pandemic, the idea that you just turn the tap on again and let the market settle everything after the...after the virus is eliminated or we’ve found a vaccine doesn’t seem to add up to me.

So, the question is not, you know, what you do with the debt from one year to the next. It’s what the government thinks its role in the economy is in the next 10, 20 or 30 years. And I think you’d be more confident of the future if they knew what they wanted to do with their part of the economy, and as I say, I think they’re going to need to be more active. And the other point – if you think back to the ‘30s, the commitment that both sides of politics made... In fact, I do feel for Robert Menzies. If he could hear this conversation, he’d be rolling in his grave at the moment that a Coalition government accepts an unemployment rate of 10%. What happened to both sides of politics through the Depression and into the Second World War is that they set a goal for full employment and they achieved it for the next 20 years. So, that’s the vision you’d be looking for. You wouldn’t be... You wouldn’t be arguing the toss at the margin about an extra $10 billion here or an extra $10 billion there. You’d actually be looking for a plan for full employment. Now, if you couldn’t pull off full employment...

HAMISH MACDONALD

Gigi’s nodding...

GEORGE MEGALOGENIS

..you’d have to explain why.

HAMISH MACDONALD

..nodding furiously here. You agree?

GIGI FOSTER

Oh, I completely agree. I mean, I think George did a very good job setting out the argument of why we wouldn’t worry about debt per se, and indeed it is the growth and the...the involvement of the government in stimulating the economy out of the recession that we need to look for now in the next, you know, five years or so. And if I were a Year 11 student, I wouldn’t be as worried about the debt as I would about what’s happened to my schooling in this...in this COVID disruption.

HAMISH MACDONALD

So, Katy Gallagher, are you prepared to consider a totally different role for government going forward – a totally different view of debt – as is being suggested here?

KATY GALLAGHER

Well, I think, in terms of the debt and the debt debate, what we’ve seen in the last week is... And, you know, the hypocritical status from the government on debt. You know, it was terrible when it was Labor’s debt, but now we have this debt, it’s entirely manageable. I would hope that what comes out of this is a bit of more honest political discussion about debt, the role of government, the need to invest in the economy, particularly on...from the public when private investment is weak or disappearing, and that’s the situation we’re in now.

I... The only other point I’d make, Hamish, on that, is two-thirds of the debt we’ve got at the moment was borrowed before COVID-19, so it can’t be written off as pandemic-related. But also that every dollar that is spent now, that is borrowed, needs to deliver an outcome for people – that’s whether it saves jobs, creates new jobs, puts food on the table for families that have no income. That is what we need in terms of government investment and government spending, and we need some honesty about it from the government, and about what’s manageable.

HAMISH MACDONALD

Senator Birmingham, the argument that’s been put by George is essentially you’re tinkering at the edges here and sort of failing to meet the big challenge. Do you...do you acknowledge that?

SIMON BIRMINGHAM

No, I don’t accept that, Hamish. I don’t accept either George’s claim that we somehow are accepting of a 10% unemployment rate. First and foremost, we’ve tackled this pandemic to save the lives of Australians. And by and large, Australia has been incredibly successful – with challenges, as we acknowledged at the head of the program, around Victoria.

Secondly, we’ve worked to try to save the jobs and the economy of Australia, ensuring firstly that we help individuals, families, households to get through it, but also that we’ve preserved that productive capacity by ensuring we haven’t had massive business failure. I mean, what’s often not acknowledged is that JobKeeper, together with rent relief, together with repayment relief for many businesses has been about trying to avoid massive failure, which would have meant, if it had occurred, that when we reopened the economy, businesses weren’t even there to re-employ Australians. And we’re seeing that sort of disruption in other parts of the world. We’re better placed to come through that.

But there’s a huge task ahead of us – we acknowledge that – to get Australians back into jobs. That’s why we’re turbo-charging investment in skilling over the next couple of years. It’s why, as I said before, we’ve targeted other sectors to...to make sure, in the construction sector, and investment in infrastructure, and investment in creative areas of the economy, that we are going to be stimulating more jobs. And we’re not going to stop there. We’re continuously working now with industry to see where else we can directly engage, through government policy settings or otherwise, to make sure we get it right.

HAMISH MACDONALD

Senator...

SIMON BIRMINGHAM

And that’s not one simple thing or one simple plan. It’s lots of different pieces of the puzzle that will be an ongoing piece of work for months and years to come.

HAMISH MACDONALD

OK, we’ll say goodbye to the politicians at this point. Senator Gallagher, Senator Birmingham, thank you very much for joining in...

KATY GALLAGHER

Thank you.

SIMON BIRMINGHAM

Thank you.

HAMISH MACDONALD

..this conversation tonight. Our next question is from Dominic Meagher in the studio audience.

DOMINIC MEAGHER

Thanks, Hamish. Minister Birmingham just mentioned that the pandemic is not of our own making, but one of the things that IS up to us is local transmission. And one of the drivers of the current outbreak in Australia seems to be that a lot of people are not really taking the situation very seriously, or as seriously as they should, getting fairly lax in the way we follow or the way we enforce the public health guidelines. Given that we have a national emergency – a national public health emergency – should there be a framework of civil or even criminal liability for undermining public health orders or for inciting people to ignore instructions related to the national health emergency?

HAMISH MACDONALD

Bill Bowtell.

BILL BOWTELL

I think I learnt, in the days of HIV and AIDS, that, while it’s very tempting to come down with the full force of the law to try to moderate people’s behaviour, it’s pretty counterproductive. In those days, we had to persuade people to change their behaviours and sustain behaviour, and in relation to HIV – say, with sex – that meant, at two o’clock in the morning, there was not going to be a policeman moderating the decision between two people about whether to use a condom.

Now, we’re faced with much the same problem here – that we have to persuade people to change behaviours, and some people are resistant to that, but they have to be persuaded, they have to be brought into it, and they have to understand, on their own behalf, why they’re doing this and why it’s in their interests and the community’s interests. So, while I appreciate what the questioner’s trying to say there, I think there’s got to be a social pressure that falls behind the behavioural changes we need.

HAMISH MACDONALD

But, George, you’re seeing it there in Melbourne. Obviously, people are adapting very quickly to the masks, but people are also reacting to it – you know, storming into a Bunnings, for example, or, you know, filming themselves at a border check. This sort of stuff, when people are making huge sacrifices themselves, is horrifying to many people, isn’t it?

GEORGE MEGALOGENIS

Hamish, can I go with the vibe on this thing? Victorians were all in for lockdown for about six or seven weeks, and then they started making their own rules. They were sort of detecting loopholes. They sensed that the political class was about to declare mission accomplished. And I know it became very difficult towards the end of that first phase of the lock-up, and, in fact, I know Dan Andrews, when he did lift the restrictions, we’d sort of already lifted them off ourselves.

That was...that was phase one. Phase two – this one’s been much more problematic, I think, for the government, partly because, you know... Right up front, let’s acknowledge the blunder in the hotel quarantine. So, the virus got out. Now let’s acknowledge the responsibility at both the federal and the state level, especially at the federal level, on aged care, and also the industrial relations framework that sends people to work when they’ve got symptoms. So, these are...these are...these are big issues. But there’s one thing – and I want to draw back and maybe play the journo and throw a question back to Bill, if I could.

HAMISH MACDONALD

Go for it.

GEORGE MEGALOGENIS

One thing that...one thing that seemed to be missing at the start of this was that the Victorian government... And this is the government you would have assumed would have got this more right than any other state government, because it was socially progressive, it identified with multicultural communities, it identified with vulnerable communities. But the messaging, uh...about, you know, “Wash your hands, maintain social distance, and if you...if you’ve got a dry cough, go and get tested,” that message was very top-down. It almost assumed that you had to be tuned into ABC 24 every day to see the Premier and the Chief Medical Officer deliver that message.

Now, there are a number of communities didn’t hear that at a peer-to-peer level, the way I think the AIDS campaign was. You need to hear these things from someone in your own community that you can trust. Now, I’ll give you a counterfactual.

HAMISH MACDONALD

Just on that, George, before you...

GEORGE MEGALOGENIS

I’ll just give you a very quick counterfactual. Bachar Houli, Richmond footballer, unfortunately, his mum got sick and she’s not well. The little message he gave to his community to get tested, that had – and the club has now got some media monitoring done on it – up to 24 million... up to 24 million media users were in a position to see that thing on internet, print, radio, and to hear it on radio and in TV. When you...when you...when you localise the message, when you get down at a community level and tell the community on its terms what you need to do, I think you get much better outcomes than the things we’ve seen. Now...

CASSANDRA GOLDIE

And can I say…

HAMISH MACDONALD

Just...

GEORGE MEGALOGENIS

Granted, we’ve made some mistakes, but we need to learn from these mistakes.

CASSANDRA GOLDIE

George, this is a theme that we have heard over and over again from community organisations and community partners, that we really need to learn from the very best of what Australia did in responding to the HIV/AIDS crisis, which was about putting front and centre the groups who have most at risk to help lead the communication, the planning. Not a top-down approach. To have that as genuine partnership with those community... Community leaders are really wanting to be a part of the solution...

HAMISH MACDONALD

I need to bring Karen to...

CASSANDRA GOLDIE

..and it’s been patchy about to what extent... Even on the basic communication plans, we’ve had that kind of replicated this time around. It’s been much more top-down, and many people have been excluded from it, and trust is really key.

HAMISH MACDONALD

I need to bring Karen Soo in on this, ‘cause you’ve got some strong views about the way this has been handled, but also the way stigmatisation has impacted certain communities.

KAREN SOO

Yeah. Look, I think the pandemic, like, there’s obviously been... When we talk about multicultural communities, obviously there has been a surge in racism. And what we’ve found is... I mean, in the US, it’s 10 times. For American Asians, it’s increased by 10 times. And I think in Australia, it’s about a 30% increase in particularly targeting Australians of Asian descent.

But I think the challenge with the pandemic is that it’s an incredibly emotionally charged time. There’s a lot of fear, there’s a lot of uncertainty. But it... You know, what we are seeing, however, is individuals walking into shops or graffiti on their houses because they are Australian and they are of Asian descent. And we’re seeing... I think what we’re saying here is...

HAMISH MACDONALD

What’s some of the stuff you’ve seen? ‘Cause you’ve shared it with us. I mean, it’s extraordinary.

KAREN SOO

I’m hearing, and I’m... You know, there’s a lot of racism forums going on at the moment. Again, everybody... Like, there’s a lot going on in society. We’re just saying this particular... The... I think what’s happening is we’ve got politics... geopolitics is going on. We’ve got a place which represents... is the multicultural centre of Australia, Chinatown, which has been incredibly affected, because I think people then have associated a place with a pandemic.

And in addition to that, you’ve then got individual people of Asian descent being targeted in, like... just in the streets or in the shops. And so people are associating a pandemic with a place and with a person. And so we’ve almost got a very heightened, emotionally charged period that...that really should be bringing people together, having a sense of social wellbeing and care. But, look, I mean, mental health is also an issue that’s associated. So, yeah, there’s a lot going on.

CASSANDRA GOLDIE

There’s been a lot of advocacy to try and get an anti-racism strategy in place from the very beginning – well before this, anyway.

KAREN SOO

Yeah.

CASSANDRA GOLDIE

These are moments when these issues flare up...

KAREN SOO

Are going to come up.

CASSANDRA GOLDIE

..in communities, and we can either become more and more divided or we actually can really take this very seriously that we’ve got choices about which futures we set off on here. And, you know, I was really struck by that question by the young people as well. You know, the sense of somehow we’re pitching young people against older people, and it will be through bringing young people into the discussions, making sure that they see the facts as well, they are grappling with these big debates too.

You know, if we were going to do something... ‘Cause we can succeed with this. I’ve got no doubt about it. We’ve got every resource available to us to do it. We’re a very privileged country in that way. We could deliver a greener future, a more secure future, with the right sort of social protection so young people knew they’d have a place to live, they would be guaranteed of a job. That’s the kind of thing that would motivate, rather than what is often very bereft discussions about debt and deficit, as you know.

HAMISH MACDONALD

Well, on that point, let’s take our next question. It’s from Andrew Stabback.

ANDREW STABBACK

Thank you, Hamish. It’s a question for all the panel members. At a time when a global... when the global and Australian economy and society is facing the most challenging health-driven economic downturn that could well become not only our deepest recession, but possibly a depression lasting a generation, at a time when the Governor of the Reserve Bank, Dr Philip Lowe, who is not someone who is known for hyperbole, is almost begging the government to use the fiscal heavy weapons when money is so cheap and reform so important, why is the Treasurer reverting back to the narrow agenda from before the pandemic when it wasn’t working, and why has the Treasurer and PM become so timid?

HAMISH MACDONALD

Gigi Foster?

GIGI FOSTER

Look, it’s a good question, and I actually think we should be... As we say in economics now, everybody is a Keynesian. We should be stimulating our way out of this recession as much as we can, and I think we have very creative ways that we haven’t yet seen exploited by the government that I’m hoping we’ll see something about.

HAMISH MACDONALD

Like what?

GIGI FOSTER

Well, for example, the HECS scheme, which is something I may have spoken about last time I was on this program, which Bruce Chapman invented. He was the architect of the scheme that we use to put people through university here in Australia now. You could have a variety of that scheme, but customised to businesses or individuals now, coming out of the pandemic, not sure what their future looks like. But you want the government to be able to shoulder the downside risk of that uncertainty so you can set up an income-contingent loan scheme or a revenue-contingent loan scheme that enables those businesses to invest with some certainty that they’re not going to face the downside risk if it doesn’t come good. And that would be a nice...a nice direction.

Another thing that the government could do is actually style itself to be even more of a social democracy than it is now, and establish something like a universal services package for people. I think this will be better actually than just giving money out. A universal basic income has never appealed to me particularly, because it’s throwing money at a very complex problem. And one of the sources of the complexity often is just overloaded responsibility on families that don’t have the resources to cope.

So, for example, universal childcare would be something I’d love to see in this country, and it’s something that’s done in a couple of countries in Europe, and it works reasonably well. It’s got both an employment benefit, because the...the parents can go back to work, and an educational benefit, because you can invest and you can also train people for those jobs. So, in addition to the kind of green revolution type jobs that I would like to see, that’s an area where I think the government could do very well to borrow right now.

HAMISH MACDONALD

So, does this argument, or this position that Josh Frydenberg, the Treasurer, has put about, you know, admiring and respecting Maggie Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, and taking inspiration from them…does that hold water in terms of trying to build our way out of this moment?

GIGI FOSTER

Look, I think it’s unfortunate, in some ways, that he chose this moment to invoke those names, ‘cause it’s going to generate a backlash. At the same time, we know that the private sector is the place where the highest profits are earned, and that creativity and innovation often are...are nurtured and developed in the private sector. And I think we do need to get the private sector back in business, and we can’t just keep handing out money and expect that that will paper everything over.

The discussion we’re seeing today shows how difficult it is to actually get the economy moving again once you’ve stabbed it in the stomach. And this is one of the reasons I’ve been against the lockdown. Stabbing it in the stomach has huge effects, and they’re human effects – it’s not just about money, it is about people’s lives. It’s about crowded-out healthcare, it’s about mental stress. It’s about so many different effects on our children and that generation that will be carrying these effects for... for their whole lives.

HAMISH MACDONALD

Bill, I feel you need to respond to that.

BILL BOWTELL

Well, again, look, the best investment we can make in this country, we should ask Dr Lowe, and put $5 or $10 billion into what’s needed in the next two to three months to knock this thing out in New South Wales and Victoria.

HAMISH MACDONALD

Could we do it?

BILL BOWTELL

All of these other things are just process questions that...

HAMISH MACDONALD

I mean, you’re sort of talking about elimination again. Can we actually achieve it?

BILL BOWTELL

Well, for three weeks, between May and June, the dates, New South Wales had zero community transmission. I don’t understand why people think this is some pie-in-the-sky objective. New South Wales, with a very strong public health response to its very great credit, has had...had three to four weeks of no community transmission.

HAMISH MACDONALD

What would we have to do to get there? What would we have to do?

BILL BOWTELL

I think we will have to look very seriously at all the measures required to lock down for the last time, not to repeat this cycle of...the Groundhog Day cycle, if you like. We know that it works. We know that it’s worked in Western Australia, where they haven’t had community transmission since the 12th of April.

And I think, really, the Australian people, when they went down into the first lockdown, really thought that they were doing what New Zealand was doing. They were making the sacrifice. It was the commitment and solidarity of the Australian people at that time that drove community transmission down to extremely low rates. The question we have to ask is, why at that time was the government not bold enough, ambitious enough to transform that achievement into a permanent situation as happened in New Zealand and in the outlying states?

HAMISH MACDONALD

Let’s take our next question. It’s from Natalie Ng in the studio.

NATALIE NG

Hi, panel. As a small bar business operator in the CBD, I think our main concern is the second lockdown. What do you think the second lockdown will actually look like, and what do you think that impact would be on the hospitality and tourism industry?

HAMISH MACDONALD

Let’s just step through this. You’ve got a small bar.

NATALIE NG

Yeah.

HAMISH MACDONALD

You’ve reopened. You survived the first time round by doing delivery...

NATALIE NG

Yeah.

HAMISH MACDONALD

..stuff. I mean, if there is another lockdown, do you think you’ll go bust? Is that the reality?

NATALIE NG

Oh, it’s always, like... There’s always a potential for it. And I do feel when Gigi was saying... And it’s so scary, and I’ve seen many of my staff, and it’s such a small community as well… I’ve seen a lot of mental health issues, a lot of students having to go home because JobSeeker is just not there for them.

HAMISH MACDONALD

So, do you find yourself being torn between these arguments?

NATALIE NG

Exactly, yeah. So, it’s... I’d like to kind of get maybe, like, a clearer understanding of what the second lockdown would look like, and how that would impact a small business like mine.

HAMISH MACDONALD

George, you’re in Melbourne where there is a second lockdown. How hard is it?

GEORGE MEGALOGENIS

It’s actually... To be honest, it’s knocked the stuffing out of the...out of the state. And you could...look, you could see it in Dan Andrews’s face when he presents every day. In fact, I’ve...I’ve got a lot of respect for what he’s trying to do at the moment, but I think he feels what we feel, that a second lockdown is a form of policy failure. And we shouldn’t be in this position. Unfortunately, we are, and we’re going to have to tough it out.

But the difficulty, Natalie, when you look at what second lockdown means, second lockdown... look, I hope New South Wales doesn’t go through to second lockdown phase, but if they do, the only heads-up I can give you is, insist that your government give you a little more notice than the Victorians got, because the sense we got in Victoria was, “We’re going to try a couple of things before we go back to hard lockdown. Whoops, this thing is out of control now.”

Now, I know it’s tricky with the data, especially if there’s a silent transmission. I mean, this virus, and the really problematic thing...the diabolical thing about this virus is it still hasn’t properly declared its hand. You know, it can hop from person to person without making either party sick. We don’t know what the long-term effects, health effects are for those who survive it. And we don’t know if you can get it again. So, there are all these things that...that are still unknown in the handling of this crisis.

So, as I say, if you have to go to a second lockdown, just hope the government gives you some notice, just hope your customers look after you, look after your staff, but whatever you do, try and hang on. I wouldn’t give up now because, at the other end, if you can hang on, I can guarantee you the thing that happened for those few weeks when we were open again in Victoria... Everybody rushed back, essentially, to their favourite small business to say, “Welcome back.” So, I hope you don’t have to go through it.

HAMISH MACDONALD

Karen, you must know so many businesses that are in a similar position to Natalie. Are you scared of the prospect of a second lockdown?

KAREN SOO

Yeah. I think everybody is scared about it. I think we do agree that safety and the lives of everybody is more important, and the civic duty that we have as a community. And I think the opportunity has been, during this time, that the communities have really rallied together, and they really do want to support and care for each other.

And we’re fortunate that, you know, I think there is that... Other businesses are coming together to help each other. You know, we’ve got one of the restauranteurs... A couple of the restaurants, because they’re not opening due to safety reasons, they’re now freezing with the local supermarket and working together. So, I think it’s an opportunity to collaborate, innovate, and try to do our best pre – potentially – a second lockdown. I think it’s... Yeah, it’s going to be challenging. Very challenging.

HAMISH MACDONALD

Bill, do you say to Natalie, “Look, you... If this happens, if the numbers spike in New South Wales, like they did in Victoria, you’re just going to have to deal with it?”

BILL BOWTELL

Well, of course. I mean, the virus doesn’t obey Australian political rules. It isn’t a nice virus. It obeys the laws of physics, chemistry and biology. It finds the weakest link, as it did in Victoria. Hopefully, it won’t in New South Wales, but it could at any time. And if we’re prepared to kid ourselves that there is some stable level of coronavirus able to be maintained for the foreseeable future, well, that’s just not borne out by any evidence or facts. The virus is either going up, or it’s going down, and hopefully, out. They’re the two choices. We know what to do now, after four or five months of experience, to knock it out in Australia and New Zealand. It’s not pie in the sky.

GIGI FOSTER

Bill, can I...

BILL BOWTELL

Knocking it out would make the life of people who run businesses a lot more predictable, a lot better, and we would see the sort of recovery that we’re seeing now in New Zealand, that’s taking place in Western Australia and in...where Simon Birmingham is from, in Adelaide.

GIGI FOSTER

Can I just ask you, Bill, what is the ultimate endgame here? Because I’ve not heard, on any politician’s lips, the idea of, “Oh, let’s maybe open the borders at some stage.” And, you know, in typical years, the dollars that we get from international tourism and international education that feed into our economy are very substantial – we’re talking about maybe 5% of GDP. That’s not nothing.

BILL BOWTELL

No.

GIGI FOSTER

That’s, like, comparable to the amount that we’re losing in this recession at the moment.

BILL BOWTELL

Well...

GIGI FOSTER

And I’m wondering, you know, so suppose, in a year, we have somehow done as you’re suggesting, which I don’t actually think is possible, but if, somehow, we did, and we have no coronavirus, or we have nobody sick or dying from it anyway... We probably have some people who are walking around who have had it. When...? You know, do we just say, “Well, too bad for all those hoteliers who were servicing the international tourism community”? “Too bad for the university sector, which has lost so many casual staff, and so many fixed-term staff, so many students, and, you know, so much revenue”? And we just say, “Well, too bad. We’re no longer going to have...”?

CASSANDRA GOLDIE

I don’t think anybody is saying, “Too bad.” We need to protect people. We absolutely need to make sure that if you lose your job in the end, that what you end up relying on is going to be enough to keep your head above water. We need to try and keep as many jobs going as we possibly can, and we need to have an open mind about the future of JobKeeper. We can be flexible about that. I think that’s absolutely right, and we’ve said to the government, “You must be careful about the way you transition out of JobKeeper, because we are not out of the woods yet.”

And thirdly, we need to invest in great jobs. Great jobs. So, in case... Let’s hope your business doesn’t go down, but if it does, that you’ve got the next future being presented to you. We need great work done in care services. We’ve got 100,000 home care packages to be delivered. Great businesses there – profit, not-for-profit, mixed approach to it. We’ve got fantastic jobs in a green energy future. These are the things... The OECD is saying it, Hamish. The IMF is saying it. We should be investing, and use the fiscal levers, frankly, not going back to Reagan and Thatcher...but creating the new future that we really can – through a very, very tough time – have a sense of hope and optimism that, “If this business doesn’t work this time, I’ve got a next phase of what it could look like.”

HAMISH MACDONALD

OK. Let’s take our next question tonight. It’s from Sue Hayward.

SUE HAYWARD

With the rest of the world still being severely impacted by the virus, it seems that our new normal is going to be with us for an extended period of time. This means that many, many businesses will not survive, and it makes me wonder what will happen to those people who can’t run their businesses, to people who can’t generally get employment, or to people who can’t enrol in study. And even if you enrol in study, will there be a job at the end of it? Does this mean that our society is going to change forever? And if so, in what way? What will it look like?

HAMISH MACDONALD

George?

GEORGE MEGALOGENIS

Sue, if the government let the market figure out how many jobs it could create through this new normal – and it’s not really...these aren’t normal times, these are quite difficult times – you’re going to have elevated unemployment for a long, long time. So, traditional recessions, the unemployment rate, if it gets to 10, it stays there for a couple of years. If this is something deeper than a...than a hard landing, if it’s closer to a depression, and you’ve got the unemployment rate at 10% or more for five or six years, you can’t let that happen as a government. Doesn’t matter what side of politics, or it doesn’t matter, you know, who’s...who are your heroes from previous generations.

So, the question, to my mind, is now, especially now that money is cheap for government – they should be in a position to show you the rate of return on what they borrow. So, they should be able to tell you what it is I’m doing with this money. So, let’s get through this particular phase. Let’s not worry so much about JobKeeper, JobSeeker. These arguments... these are six-month arguments. These are sort of, you know, in the eye of the pandemic storm. You’re asking a question about what the future looks like, and the future that allows the unemployment rate to stay high is not a future you’d want to sign up for as a country.

So, this sounds very old-fashioned, and royal commissions, we’ve probably got too many of them, but you’d probably need a decent... Well beyond politics, you probably need a decent inquiry into what a full-employment society would look like in Australia, in the next 10 years. Shoot for that, and figure out where everyone fits into that particular conversation. The alternative is...look, the alternative is that you and I might be able to figure out a way to, you know, earn 30% or 40% of what we used to earn from home. We might, you know, scrimp and save a couple of things, we might sell our record collections, or our book collections, or whatever, but that’s not a life you want the next generation to have to not look forward to. As I say, I think, as difficult as this time is, if the ambition is set at full employment, a lot more things become possible.

HAMISH MACDONALD

Gigi Foster?

GIGI FOSTER

I mean, I think, yes, we want an ambition of full employment, of course. I mean, that’s what we expect of our governments these days. But the notion that, somehow, the government should decide, you know, how many jobs in which sectors, and then push for that through its own policies, rather than having the private sector kind of discover where jobs are necessary to be. I mean, that sounds more like kind of a centrally planned system, and we know that that doesn’t really work, so it’s a collaborative system.

GEORGE MEGALOGENIS

No, no, except... Gigi, except just for the two-thirds of the economy at the moment that isn’t functioning...

GIGI FOSTER

Mm.

GEORGE MEGALOGENIS

..within that idle labour, there’s a lot that the government can redeploy in its own name.

GIGI FOSTER

OK, so I agree with you that...

GEORGE MEGALOGENIS

Men in construction, men in infrastructure.

GIGI FOSTER

..there are wonderful, you know, historical examples, like the Green New Deal, and, you know, with the kind of situation after the... In the ‘30s, which is something you were talking about before, the government and the UN...

GEORGE MEGALOGENIS

Yeah, yeah.

GIGI FOSTER

..you know, put out a huge amount of fiscal stimulus in the form of jobs for people who didn’t have jobs because they’d lost them, and I think this is a great idea. We have plenty of opportunity to do that. All I’m saying is that, in the longer run, if we keep our borders closed, right, until there’s a vaccine, if there ever is a vaccine against this thing...

BILL BOWTELL

The thing is...

GIGI FOSTER

..we have a restructured industrial mix in Australia. There’s no two ways to think about that. We have to think about a new model.

BILL BOWTELL

The greatest... The greatest enemy here is nostalgia and looking backwards. The Australian economy, the 30 years of the boom have gone. They have disappeared. They were the product of a plan that came in in the 1980s, the Hawke-Keating government, and the subsequent reforms. That’s gone. The assumptions that underlie that plan have evaporated – the globalisation, the international economy functioning, as we used to know it.

So, now, we need plan three. The third plan since the war. And that will take all of the intellectual capacity that we have in Australia, the commitment of the Australian people. They have got to buy into it. And the economy that will be born now will be very different than the economy that we have been used to. We can do it. We can make a better economy.

The question of borders – look, in the world, the coronavirus caseload is going up like a rocket. There will be no opening of international borders, as people seem to think there will be. We saw in the last few days, in Europe, where they opened up the southern borders in Spain, and then they had to shut them down again because – guess what – the virus kept going up. Now, we have problems, also, with the Australian borders. I cannot see the outlying states opening up to a situation where we have coronavirus cases of the level we have in Victoria and New South Wales. I don’t see Western Australia doing that, yet the federal government is in court at the moment trying to force the West Australians to open up.

HAMISH MACDONALD

We are running out of time. I just want to give a final thought to Karen. Do you see anything in the future that looks more positive than what they’re describing? Do you have any reason for optimism at this stage?

KAREN SOO

I think...I think this is a time for... This universal pause enables us, as a society, to really review what’s important. And I think, as all people, I think it’s really created a lot of equity and parity. So, everybody’s now looking at the homeless, is looking at multicultural societies, it’s looking at everybody to say, “How do we work together? How do we move forward? And how do we ensure that everyone can have a future together?”

And I think it’s going to, hopefully, be... I am quite optimistic, I think it’s an opportunity that businesses will review and innovate and work together – look at local communities. We’ll be very local-market driven until the borders are open. Once we are safe enough to function in a new way, that will be... Like, there’s going to be a new way to operate in business.

CASSANDRA GOLDIE

And that’s exactly the plan we’ve put forward – local employment plans, investing in social housing, stopping people from being homeless forever...

KAREN SOO

Yep.

CASSANDRA GOLDIE

..energy jobs, you know, local investment where communities, private sector, local community leaders, multicultural communities come together with government and forge the future plans on a very big country where regions... At the moment, we’re very regional, aren’t we? That’s the kind of approach we need, not centralised planning.

HAMISH MACDONALD

OK. I think we’ll leave it on that note. A huge thanks to our panel: to Karen Soo, Cassandra Goldie, George Megalogenis, Bill Bowtell and Gigi Foster. Please put your hands together and thank them.

And thanks to those of you that are here in the studio. We really appreciate you coming in tonight, and for sharing your questions. And to those of you at home, who are submitting questions in the hundreds, sometimes thousands, each week, we’re really grateful, and we will try to continue getting to as many of them as possible.

Next week, we’re going to meet those preparing our hospitals and guiding our COVID response. We’re going to put your questions to the medical experts and those on the front line. Do stay with us for that. Goodnight.