It's amazing how a few employers putting 1500 into a form, instead of 1, can change the colour of your day, if you are a government feeling the weight on your shoulders of carrying the wages of 6 million workers at a cost of $130 billion.
Those employers putting in how much each worker was expected to get from the Government's JobKeeper scheme, rather than how many of their workers were going to get it, had made the cost and employment fallout of the pandemic look even more terrible than it was.
Until Friday that is, when someone noticed the problem and the number of people on the scheme was sliced by 2.5 million and its cost to "just" $70 billion.
It's an immense relief of course, though no-one is suggesting it changes the underlying realities of the economic outlook with employment still forecast to reach 10 per cent. And it doesn't change the politics.
If you were looking for some markers of how COVID-19 may have changed the way politics is conducted in Australia, two of our more fraught issues provided them this week: energy policy and industrial relations.
What they seem to show is that pandemic produces a combination of some significant shifts around the edges, some urgent new pressures to actually address long-running sores, and quite a lot of "as you were" rhetoric and non-action.
'Quite a lot about gas, not a lot about coal'
In the case of energy, there has been a flurry of activity, including the release of the King Review (the final report of the expert panel examining additional sources of low-cost abatement), leaked advice from the COVID commission advising the Government on an economic comeback, and the Morrison Government's Technology Investment Roadmap discussion paper "that will bring a strategic and system-wide view to future investments in low emissions technologies".
A pragmatic summing up of all the words involved would be "quite a lot about gas, not a lot about coal".
Look, there were the usual hoary old chestnuts that rear their heads every time the Government has another attempt at re-booting the energy (and, dare one say, climate change) discussion: carbon capture and storage, soil carbon sequestration, nuclear power, blah, blah, blah. The Government has even re-discovered the potential joys of electric cars, after the whole unfortunate "Labor will steal your ute" diversion last year.
But what seems most significant is the lack of kowtowing to coal, beyond some talk of upgrading existing coal fired power stations. Some people might see this as either reasonable, or still too much coal. But to those watching the quivering contortions of the Coalition on coal, and all that talk about high efficiency, low emission coal plants just last year, the silence would seem to be deafening.
So we have a significant, if relatively quietly made, change in rhetoric on coal, some greater urgency in thinking about affordable power generation for industry — given the sudden focus on the fact we may have to actually, like, make more things — and then quite a lot of what we have heard time and time again.
This last bit, unsurprisingly, notes that renewable energy is already the cheapest form of energy and will remain so well into the future, though there needs to be a confidently-based transition fuel in the meantime.
As analysts have pointed out, much of the roadmap bears a striking resemblance to a 2017 paper with a very similar name: the Low Emissions Technology Roadmap.
A judgement throws a spanner in the works
The good news for those weary of the energy policy wheels spinning with little traction, but many acronyms, is that the subject is unlikely to get much air space, other than a general mention of gas, when the Prime Minister delivers an address at the National Press Club on Tuesday.
Scott Morrison will be talking economic recovery and what will drive it, with a heavy emphasis on industrial relations.
There are two aspects to the industrial relations debate at present that prove an interesting test of the COVID politics. The timing of one of them is completely outside the Government's control and goes to the heart of the issue exposed by the pandemic: the casualisation of the labour market.
On Thursday, a full bench of the Federal Court made a ruling on the common understanding in law of what constitutes casual employment.
Until now, it has been that casuals are those paid an extra 20 to 25 per cent loading in lieu of permanent employee entitlements. But now the Court has defined them by their pattern of work instead, finding that a worker, ostensibly a casual under his contract, but with regular and predictable shifts, is entitled to permanent employee benefits.
Depending on your perspective, this is a judgement that could either have economically catastrophic consequences, or will hardly affect anyone.
It is certainly the case that it applies to a particular set of circumstances involving a labour hire company in the mining industry. And the judgement upholds another one made in a separate case two years involving the same labour hire firm, Workpac.
Beyond that, some employers were arguing the retrospective decision could result in employees going back to "double dip" and claim backdated benefits for years of work and that it could apply broadly across sectors like hospitality and retail.
Others, including the ACTU, insist that it should be seen clearly as a "loophole that labour hire companies have been exploiting to undermine job security and pay".
For now, the Industrial Relations Minister is keeping his powder dry, awaiting indications of whether the case may be appealed in the High Court, but not ruling out legislation to try to clarify the matter.
For it does raise inevitable questions about just what does constitute casual work in the broader workforce, at a time when the weak links of so many workers to their place of employees — as casuals — has cut such a conspicuous swathe through the economy and people's lives.
Morrison's test on Tuesday
The casualisation of the workforce — and insecure work — has been a big issue for the unions for some years but it is one that now has immense bite across the economy.
What makes the Government's ultimate response to this issue is that it seems determined to maintain the spirit of cooperation with the unions that has built up through this crisis, a determination which has seen it this week officially put the contentious "ensuring integrity" bill — which would make it easier to deregister unions and union officials — in the freezer.
That makes the question of how Morrison presents himself on the industrial relations issue next Tuesday all the more interesting.
Both unions and employers have long expressed their dissatisfaction with the enterprise bargaining system set up by the Keating Government.
What was once a system designed to help break industrial relations out of centralised wage fixing and allow for flexibility at the individual enterprise level has now itself become ossified.
Unions argue it is not fit for purpose in an economy much changed over the past 25 years from large workplaces to small ones where the bargaining power of individual employees is much reduced.
Employers argue that layers added to the system — such as the "better off overall test" — have made it unworkable.
It's become easier for many to go back to the industrial award system which was supposed to gradually wither in significance and scale over time and so which also has its problems.
The Government insists that it wants to step right away from the antagonistic politics of WorkChoices, and step back to allow employers and employees to work out how a new system should work.
The Government's role, sources say, is just setting up the process for achieving that.
The question therefore will be what mix of significant change, urgent new pressure, and "as you were" will emerge on Tuesday, and how it will drive the political battleground between now and the next election.
Laura Tingle is 7.30's chief political correspondent.
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