ONE of the most telling tales of the past four months has been the incredibly difficult journey thousands of businesses and their employees have embarked upon as they are battered from post to post by the pandemic.
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Unemployment lines have grown longer. There have been devastating scenes of people who have lost their job lining up outside Centrelink for assistance, and the Bendigo CBD has resembled a ghost town at times as the community listened to the advice from authorities to bunker down and stay at home.
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These economic woes are a necessary symptom of a society doing its best to dodge the worst of the pandemic - which would otherwise mean more cases, more people in hospital, and sadly more deaths.
Yesterday came another reality check with confirmation more than 10,000 people in the Bendigo electorate are currently being supported by the JobSeeker payment, a figure that will continue to rise as the virus takes its toll.
The government support offered to our most vulnerable citizens was woefully inadequate before this pandemic.
It's difficult to reconcile it being any easier to survive on the meagre amount of support provided when this is over, and we should stop kidding ourselves about anything other than this.
Finally, the alarming jump in case numbers - more than 30 across the state yesterday, point to another concern for the state, and the looming prospect of harsher restrictions if the virus cannot be contained, and if people don't continue to do the right things.
No matter how many lockdowns and border checkpoints we have, no matter how many businesses look to adapt to survive this crisis, if we as a community don't follow the rules, we can only be confident things will get far worse.