Shop owners and workers have united to beg the Morrison government for a rescue package for the retail sector as revenues dive amid the coronavirus crisis.
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With Australians being urged to stay close to home and tens of thousands already losing their jobs, the Australian Retailers Association and SDA union have written to Scott Morrison to ask for help.
"The COVID-19 crisis currently gripping Australia has created the most challenging trading conditions ever faced by retailers in our country's history," ARA chief executive Russell Zimmerman and SDA national secretary Gerard Dwyer wrote.
"Employers and employees alike are now staring down the barrel of mass unemployment and face the terrifying prospect of being unable to pay mortgages, rent and put food on the table for their kids."
Mr Dwyer said discretionary spending had simply fallen off a cliff so Australians weren't heading to shops.
They want a retail-specific rescue package, including wage subsidies, underwriting of loans and a government guarantee of rent payments or for the government to work with landlords to reduce rents.
Some 1.3 million Australians work in the retail sector, many of them younger people, women and seniors.
Already, tens of thousands of people have found themselves jobless after swathes of the hospitality sector and gyms were closed down on Monday in a bid to stop the spread of the coronavirus.
The tourism industry has already been shattered as international travel dwindled and now all non-essential domestic trips are off too.
Organisations as diverse as Qantas, Virgin, Michael Hill Jewellers, the NRL and AFL, and Tasmanian hospitality giant Federal Group have stood down workers.
Thousands queued outside Centrelink offices for the second day in a row and the welfare services online portal was again overwhelmed with demand.
And economists are predicting much worse to come, saying there could be 814,000 Australians losing their jobs over the next three months.
The government has doubled the rate of the jobseeker payment - previously called Newstart - with a coronavirus supplement and has relaxed some of the criteria to allow casual, sole traders and some non-citizens who lose hours or income to access it.
Australian Associated Press