A team of economists should be working on how to create the long-term support that the economy might need in case a preventive shot or cure for COVID-19 proves elusive.

If Australia resumes mediocre growth after the pandemic passes, our youngest and most vulnerable citizens will pay the biggest price.

The diplomatic deep-freeze is just the start. Beijing is already laying the groundwork to ditch its reliance on Australian exports.

Bond sales to the Reserve Bank would allow stimulus to continue without busting the budget or raising taxes.

One way of avoiding a W-shaped recession is by giving more migrant workers a pathway to permanent settlement.

Women returning to work are faced with punishing disincentives in the childcare system. It is in dire need of review.

A cold turkey ending to JobKeeper and JobSeeker would mean a double recession. But that is a risk that the government can avoid.

If the Australian economy is to emerge from hibernation stronger than when it entered the hole, the way we go about our economic lives will need to change.

Among the many economic casualties of the COVID-19 crisis is the federal budget. A projected surplus for this financial year will now be a combined deficit during the year and next of well over $250 billion.

A cavalier attitude of too many young people towards COVID-19, on display on warm Sydney days at Bondi Beach last week, has forced the hand of governments to close down large parts of the Australian economy.

Even postponing a budget surplus for the next financial year is likely to mean a lingering recession.

Already the shrieks of outrage have sounded in response to Anthony Albanese’s announcement that Labor is committed to a target of zero net carbon emissions by 2050.

Without an arms-length process to control federal sports grants, vote buying will further erode trust in politics.

The big trading partners are mulling a carbon tax on Australian exports, which could send the economic costs of climate inaction through the roof.

Economists need to reimagine wages policy. Policies developed from textbooks for the 1980s are not appropriate for the 2020s.

As a result of chaotic policy making, Australia has a looming energy crisis. As long as the federal government’s obsession with new coal-fired generation continues, a stable policy framework will remain out of reach.

Beyond the Castle-like “vibe of the thing” it’s important to examine the material benefits China enjoys from its status and the damage it is inflicting on our two countries and the rest of the developed world.

A young professional woman who has left work to have children is penalised heavily when seeking to resume her career. Australia couldn’t have designed a more inequitable tax and transfer system for working mothers if we tried. 

Depending on how deeply the rivers of gold are flowing from China, the various policy options open to the government might put the political promise of a budget surplus at risk. But pursuing a surplus at the cost of jobs and wages would have its own political consequences and is likely to be economically irresponsible.