The Australian wasteland

Ian Rogers

An unemployment rate of 8.75 per cent this time next year, and twice full employment target for Australia is one grim forecast in yesterday’s mini-budget. In June the ‘effective’ rate was 11 per cent.

Leaving barely anything new for the big day - the studied placement of all the elements in the propaganda sheets to entertain the capital market - Josh Frydenberg’s Economic Statement will struggle to make a lasting imprint.

The immense level of the Australian government’s debt - but not nearly monumental enough - became the focus.

As for the whole of it, a riot.

The flaming virus is everywhere, infecting everything. A captivating, confounding and ruthlessly mutant economic shock for now has suspended Australian finances, morals and messaging in the Liberal Party nowhere land.

As for the undertone that deficits are dishonourable, deviant and unfair on our descendants: I thought we’d worked out we had best abandon all those old tropes.

The get-up-and-go side of things, the evangelism, the self-help and an all-Australian eruption of competent business endeavour …. this will slot in sometime.

But the mini-budget is a squib, merely preventing nationwide business collapse and making-do on the grand strategy.

A few weeks ago one of the better business surveys, from YouGov, found 80 per cent of all businesses have thought about throwing in the towel, winding up and selling out for whatever the owners can get.

These conversations must be taking off all over again and among firms in Victoria, the severity of the curbs must be lifting this ratio to horrid levels.