Barista Szilvia at work at Madisons cafe on the Gold Coast When the coronavirus pandemic hit Australia in March 2020, about 900,000 Aussies lost their jobs as restaurants, pubs, and shops were shut down to stop the deadly disease from rapidly spreading throughout the nation. Centrelink queues all over the country snaked around the block as the economy was plunged into recession for the first time since the early 1990s. The shock forced the government to unleash an unprecedented wave of spending including doubling the JobSeeker payment and introducing the $89billion JobKeeper wage subsidy - the most expensive policy in Australian history.