How has the the government handled the economic fallout of COVID-19

Correct- it will be a massive bill. I dont think scomo has done anything brilliant just followed the trail but his financials are pretty awful. Pity we cant find a real leader, leadership across the country has been awful. Gutwein and Mcgowan will get a pat on the back but they were on easy street compared to the rest. Be some states who will really suffer and you have to feel sorry for all those business who went broke and people who lost their jobs. The jobkeeper fiasco has yet to play out so a bit of pain to come yet. With good leadership we could have had a death toll of 300 instead of the current 750+

 

This is my view: regardless of how you think we've handled this, we need to expand our field of view and ask how have we handled this relative to the rest of the world? I think we've done comparatively well. It's less about what mistakes we've made and more about how much better we've done relative to other countries. More importantly, how have we done relative to other countries in regards to maintaining human rights. It's easy to beat someone to submission. It's easy to "temporarily" relax our laws and permit / force invasive tracking and so forth. Almost all of our measures so far have been soft; that is, fines and other such incentives. Governments generally use times like this to play on our fears and begin encroaching on our rights - see the Patriot Act post-9/11 in the US, but I've yet to see anything this egregious here. I'm sure some politicians are trying, but I'm also glad we have a culture that is tolerant of protesting and other such mechanisms to try to keep our ideals intact. For example, you know those a-holes protesting against the lockdown? Yeah, scumbags. I could not agree more. But if you can see the bigger picture, their freedom to do so is so critically important to us as a free country. I know many don't see it but it's true. I'm happy with things right now. Yes they could be better, but I'd prefer to be an optimist.