THREATS of a second wave have been around for months, but always in the context of a second wave of COVID-19. The real second wave, however, will not be defined by new cases. 

It will be a wave of realisation, when Australians finally understand what has been done to the economy and to their livelihoods, for the sake of 100-plus lives. 

Early projections, many wildly wrong, forced difficult decision-making and our leaders made tough choices. The medical experts became the sole point of guidance as governments helmed SS Australia through the rough seas of the Covid health storm and did so with minimum losses and with some passengers even cheering.

For many Australians lockdown life has not been as bad as expected. The government’s billions provided shelter. Some luxuries that seemed really important pre-Covid were correctly prioritised, and life now goes on without them, at least for a while.

But we’re not in a safe port yet and now our ship enters a strange new sea, an ocean of massive debt – more than all but a few have ever experienced.

Worse, the financial swells are still rising. And worse again, no forecasts seem to be available or at least released for public consumption.

SCREAMING

By now the media should be screaming for details of the financial damage done to businesses, to banks, to our lives, to our country.

But news and commentary is still based on questions such as where we can holiday, when the borders will open, when will stores open again, when can we go to the pub for a beer or to a restaurant for a meal?

Sadly, these are lifestyle issues and play no part in the approaching financial tsunami.

The comfort of constantly being told of the great job we did to beat Covid has lulled us into a feeling of complacent success, and made us unwilling to even bother asking of governments the big questions:

• What is the final cost to the economy?
• What will Australia owe and how will that have to be serviced?
• What is the likely final unemployment?
• How many small businesses will close down?
• What will a house be worth in a recession?

These estimates must surely have been made by Treasury because that is what they are paid to do; why they are still employed and not on Jobkeeper or Jobseeker.

However, we have every right to be very, very worried about Treasury estimates when the obviously impossible results to a survey were missed as the survey results came in.

TERRIFYING

If Treasury, in extraordinary haste, still felt confident enough to tell Australia it would cost $130b, rather than say “some estimates based on unconfirmed survey results” – if Treasury could stand by a $60b mistake until the Tax Office proved it wrong, then how can we trust them to tell us what lies ahead financially?

So we are now left with three options about the economic reality. All are terrifying:

1. Governments know the financial damage but are scared to tell us.
2. Governments actually don’t know – due to the complexity of the issues and the speed at which they were forced to react.
3. The truth lies somewhere between.

If the answer is 1 or 3 then Governments should tell us, and risk the reaction. Delaying it will not help people prepare.

If it is the second, and Treasury actually doesn’t have a clue, then SS Australia is not only wallowing in those rising seas, but is rudderless. To quote Seneca: If a man knows not which port he sails, no wind is favourable.

Governments State and federal should control the message and release details of the likely damage done, as accurately as possible, before businesses and individuals realise themselves what they have lost, when the country has only had the equivalent deaths of a six-month road toll.

If that realisation occurs first at voter level – and if it is as bad as it could be – then our leaders will be thrown down from their pedestals. And then there will be new questions including: Why did I have to sacrifice my business, so much from my savings, from my income, from my super?

Why was the burden totally borne by the private sector? Why did the politicians and bureaucrats give up nothing?

That’s when blame will be hammered home.PC

NEIL FLETT