Letâs focus on keeping local businesses afloat
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February 14, 2021 â 10.30pm
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Credit:Illustration: Michael Leunig
To submit a letter to The Age, email letters@theage.com.au. Please include your home address and telephone number.
COVID-19
Letâs focus on keeping local businesses afloat
I am dismayed to be back in lockdown but given the circumstances and possible consequences â a significant and rapid spread of a highly virulent strain of the virus â I am prepared to do what it takes.
It is not helpful for various industry bodies to be quick to tell me what damage this will do to an already battered Victorian economy. What would be helpful is for these organisations to use their considerable communications expertise to tell me what I can do to help local businesses that are hit hard. The government is being nimble in introducing restrictions. We
No-blame inquiry
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The Age, email letters@theage.com.au. Please include your home address and telephone number.
No-blame inquiry
There is much to support in Jeff Kennett’s views on a national inquiry into Australia’s performance during the coronavirus pandemic (‘‘Virus royal commission has much to recommend it’’, 30/12 ). Kennett’s view that an ‘‘educative’’ inquiry is needed because there could be another crisis in the future and lessons needed to be learnt may well be prescient.
If a royal commission or other inquiry is eventually held, its chair and counsels assisting need to be independent and of the highest quality. The inquiry should have a no-blame culture and as Kennett says, an educative focus, learning from both the things which were done poorly as well as the things which were done well and the inquiry’s outcomes should produce templates for nationally co-ordinated disaster plans, border closures, testing regimens, isolation crit