Former Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce says Australia “needs to start stepping out” of coronavirus restrictions immediately or risk a “severe recession”. The International Monetary Fund recently announced the world was headed for the worst financial year since The Great Depression and the national treasury forecasted unemployment would rise to 10 per cent.
Mr Joyce said “a severe recession could have an incredible impact on people’s opportunities to have a job and have a future”.
“I think we have to take into account the small shops… and work out how to act in a responsible way and give them a business at the same time,” he said.
The united effort to slow the spread of the virus on the health front will be offset by an economy saddled with approximately a trillion dollars worth of debt, he told Sky News host Andrew Bolt.
“One of the perverse things is we are probably doing it with borrowed money (which) comes from China, the place where the problem started in the first place”.
Mr Joyce said while the Australian people have diligently worked to comply with social distancing restrictions, the government’s new contact tracing app “goes a step too far” and people “are not going to use it”.
Image: News Corp Australia
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