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Steven Hamilton, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University; Bruce Preston, University of Melbourne; Chris Edmond, University of Melbourne, and Richard Holden, UNSW In recent weeks a growing chorus of Australian commentators has called for social distancing measures to be eased or radically curtailed. Some have claimed the lives saved by the lockdowns are not worth the damage they …

Katherine Gibney, The Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity and Jodie McVernon, University of Melbourne The unprecedented restrictions Australians are living with are working, so far, to curb the rise in new COVID-19 cases. Nationally, on average around 50 new COVID-19 cases were reported each day in the week leading up to April 15, compared with a peak of …

Martin Berka, Massey University New Zealand has the most stringent COVID-19 policy restrictions in the world, matched only by Israel and India, according to Oxford University’s coronavirus government response tracker. The current level 4 restrictions have brought the number of cases down, and I am delighted the government acted quickly and strongly. But the newly announced level 3 conditions remain …

Brendan Coates, Grattan Institute and Jonathan Nolan, Grattan Institute Less than a month after restrictions first took effect, Australia appears to have contained the spread of COVID-19 more successfully than we could have possibly imagined. But we’ve done so at unimaginable cost: large swathes of the economy have been shut down, leaving the livelihoods of millions of Australians on hold …

Tim McCready has been crowdsourcing a list of upcoming webinars relevant for NZ business. Many of these have been created to give advice to business and fill the gap that has been left without face-to-face events. The spreadsheet can be freely edited if you are aware of a webinar that should be included in the list.

Tim Groser addresses the US/NZ Partnership Forum in Auckland, 30 June 2015. Full speech provided below. I would like to thank our two co-chairs, the Hon Simon Power, Chair of the NZ-US Council and Stu Van Soyoc, President of the US-based counterpart organisation for assuming joint responsibility for the Partnership Forum. I think it is a great idea for us …

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Richard Shaw, Massey University New Zealand’s general election is currently set for September 19. Under ordinary circumstances, campaigning for the election and two referenda that will take place alongside would be heating up by now, but the country is three quarters of the way through a comprehensive level 4 lockdown. The first question is whether the election should take place …

  Andrew Linden, RMIT University and Warren Staples, RMIT University The economic heart attack induced by COVID-19 has revealed an ugly truth – many very large companies have too little cash to ride out sharp downturns. Cash flow variability, and the inability to retain earnings to buffer that variability, is one of the most common reasons small businesses fail. Because …

Emil Temnyalov, University of Technology Sydney and Peter Siminski, University of Technology Sydney   COVID-19’s impact on the Australian labour market has been dramatic and multifaceted. Some sectors of the economy have been almost completely shut down by government order. The demand in many industries has collapsed, while a few others have seen an increase. As many as one million …