360 Degrees: We asked about your vaccine expectations

Bring it on!

Yes, definitely! The preliminary indications from countries overseas who have started vaccinating have shown a massive decrease in numbers of people hospitalised from COVID-19, and a massive reduction in their likelihood to contract COVID-19.

While it will take a long time to vaccinate everyone in Australia, I believe we’ll start to see financial benefits immediately.

We will (hopefully) see fewer shutdowns of states – meaning businesses can stay open and try to get back to their normal trading.

Economic growth is always dependent on positivity in the business community. People tend to spend more cash when they feel positive and when they hear that business conditions are improving.

While many businesses and many people have been struggling for a while, there are also a lot of businesses that have been doing very well and there is a lot of cash sitting in accounts across Australia ready to be spent in the coming months.

We may end up seeing a tidal wave of pent-up demand explode across Australia if the vaccine has positive results.

Bring it on!

Timothy Munro

CEO and founder,
Change Accountants

Keeping pace

Yes, I think the vaccine will definitely help the business community to thrive. Recently, I was doing some reading and came across this information from the ABS that has been compiled up to the end of December quarter, the report talks about the state of recovery of the economy.

The federal government announced in its delayed budget, it would start to return to focusing on business stimulus once the unemployment rate is lowered to 6 per cent, according to ABS it is 6.6 per cent as at end of December 2020.

An interesting fact is that revenues have been steadily increasing since July 2020 and businesses are hiring more in December than in previous months. It is really interesting to see these positive changes.

Now with the introduction of a COVID-19 vaccine to Australia, I feel we will be able to keep up with the momentum that we have already gained since July 2020 and small businesses will be able to run a successful and sustainable business. 

Sheeja Kumar
managing partner,
Qualita Business Accounting

Sigh of relief

Australia has escaped the worst of the pandemic through good management from our federal and state governments and, in the main, when compared with other countries we are ahead in both low death and infection rates per head of population and our economy is ahead of many countries.

Further, with the vaccine about to be rolled out nationally we can look forward to some positive news moving forward. Generally, the stock market is a pretty good predictor of where the markets will end up, as it looks into the future and we are seeing a strong recovery in both the US and Australian stock markets.

If we were to draw some lessons from the past when the world suffered the Spanish Flu in 1918 and 50 million people perished, what followed was a massive economic boom.

Coupled with that are governments “printing” an enormous amount of money and the difference between now and the GFC where the money supply stayed within the financial system.

This time around we are seeing large scale infrastructure around the world. We are also seeing many large companies who held back on paying dividends who are now starting to pay these dividends to their shareholders, which in turn will assist the economy recover.

The Millennials are coming of age and starting to consume such as buying cars and houses and furniture and electronics, and as a group they are larger than the Baby Boomers who instigated the last great boom coming out of WWII. The coming of age of the Millennials coupled with the internet of things, artificial intelligence, 3D printing, robotics, renewables, cryptocurrencies and precision medicine will fuel the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

A world post COVID will involve the following:

1. A greater uptake of all things digital. COVID fast tracked that transition that had already started, but it moved it at light speed where a large part of company staff worked from home and will continue to do so.
2. The evidence of this is the price of real estate in the regions has boomed as people find they can live further away from the cities where homes were more affordable and only come to the city from time to time.
3. Post COVID most companies will use a hybrid version of this where they may spend a few days in the office and the rest of the week working from home.
4. Our clients will become more accustomed to using video conferencing such as Zoom rather than coming into the office… this has extended into other industries such as telemedicine.
5. Even though herd immunity may get achieved after several years of the vaccine, many of the rules around cleanliness will remain.
6. There will be increased cyber security as COVID was a major driving factor in the uptick of cyber crime.
7. There will be a long period of low interest rates and low inflation due to technology advancements driving down the cost of production.

We will all breathe a very grateful sigh of relief when we can say we have moved past COVID-19, but like any major historical event we will see the ramifications for years to come.

We just need to stay alert and agile and be prepared to adapt to the changes as we head into a very different world post COVID-19.

Edward Chan
non-executive chairman,
Chan & Naylor