Andrews ‘apologises’ and sets up mini-boom
WELL, Victorian Premier Dan Andrews finally got around on Sunday to delivering the apology to 6.6 million Victorians and one person north of the Murray – former NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian – that I had called for last month.
Of course, he didn’t do it with words. Victoria’s “Great Leader” is not big on admitting mistakes or being generous in spirit – mostly, because he can never, well, “recall”. In this case, he clearly would not “recall” saying back in August that he didn’t want Melbourne to “end up like Sydney”.
Most Victorians with a brain – that is to say, those not among the “I stand with Dan” rabble – looking back on the wreckage of six lockdowns and 263 days (by Friday) of shuttered shattered lives, would say in response: “If only.”
No, Chairman Dan “apologised” by finally copying what NSW has done. They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery; I’d say that imitation is also Chairman Dan’s form of apology.
But in the mean-spirited way that’s his trademark, he still had to impose some Andrews-style final pain on Victorians. Yes, he’s junked his and Chief Medical Officer Brett Sutton’s roadmap, and instead copied the NSW roadmap, but with some residual pain for a week or so for 6.6 million Victorians.
This delivers one big thing and poses one big question. Victoria joining NSW in opening up locks in – as opposed to lock down that Victorians in particular had learned to survive – a strong, a very strong, November-December for the economy.
You couldn’t ask for better timing, in that sense.
November-December is always a very big time for the economy. Premier Andrews, with a “little bit of help” from Premier Berejiklian and her successor Premier Perrottet, have just made it, well, “huger”. We have yet to see how badly the economy did in the September quarter. The GDP numbers come out early next month.
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said last week Treasury now estimated the national economy will have shrunk at least 3 per cent in the September quarter, thanks to the VictorianNSW lockdowns of more than 55 per cent of the national economy. That compares with the (totally unprecedented) 7 per cent slide when the entire Australian economy was locked down through the June quarter of last year.
We will now see in this current December quarter a super-charged version of what happened when the Australian economy – excluding Victoria and its 25 per cent share – came out of lockdown in the 2020 September quarter. Then the economy surged back 3.6 per cent; this time it’s likely to be more like 5-6 per cent.
It will prompt the usual cackle of “expert idiots” to proclaim we therefore avoided recession – we didn’t get two successive quarters of negative growth.
It will mean that the Australian economy in the December quarter will essentially be back to where it was exactly two years earlier, before Covid, in the December 2019 quarter.
We will have essentially “stood still” for two years – while adding a truckload of debt and a lot of business and personal pain. This also now turns the focus to state border closures.
Once we get into November we will have effectively a series of ropedoff economies operating separately where we used to have one Australian economy.
Somewhat bizarrely Victoria-NSW will have gone from being lockeddown together to letting it rip together. You have to say this about Premier Andrews: when he flips, he flips big time.
Queensland is taking baby steps to opening its borders, but WA seems determined to stay all-but sealed off from the other 23 million Australians – almost as if it’s physically sheared off from the land mass and drifted off into the middle of the Indian Ocean.