Corona virus: Australia's economy faces unprecedented setbacks

For many in Australia, the bush fire catastrophe now seems a distant memory as the corona virus pandemic takes this country deeper into the unknown.

The "miracle economy" that avoided recession during the 2007-2008 financial crisis, avoided the worst of the 1997 Asian financial crisis as well as the lancing of the dot.com bubble is in deep trouble.

The Black Summer fires were adding to an escalating economic malaise but the corona virus has inflicted a jolting collapse. In one week about one million Australians became unemployed.

Within days the center-right government had unveiled Australia's biggest ever economic package - A$130bn ($80bn) is to be spent on keeping six million people, or around half the workforce, in jobs.

So far, direct government aid to businesses in response to the virus is approaching A$200bn, or about 10% of the nation's income, or GDP. This has never happened before.

Tim Harcourt, from the University of New South Wales Business School, says the Job Keeper allowance is a throwback to more collaborative times.

"The wage subsidy idea is Australian in the sense that we've got this tradition of the trade unions and the employers working cooperatively with the government. They have  been working on this almost as a tripartite approach, which brings us back to the Australia of the '1980s and '1990s," he told the BBC.