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Speaker 1: Good morning and happy Friday. Welcome to the Daily OS.

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Speaker 1: I'm Zara, joined as always by Sam and we're here

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Speaker 1: to take you through the top stories of the day.

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Speaker 1: A lot of tennis. But Sam, what are we deep

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Speaker 1: diving in today?

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Speaker 2: We're going to be chatting to our newest journalist at

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Speaker 2: the Daily Os, Tom Crowley. He's done some really interesting

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Speaker 2: research this week into whether we're putting ourselves into lockdown.

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Speaker 2: It's a fascinating chat. But first to tennis news, and

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Speaker 2: the Victorian government has announced audiences at the Australian Open

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Speaker 2: will be capped at fifty percent capacity amid a surge

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Speaker 2: of COVID nineteen cases. The capacity limit will not apply

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Speaker 2: to sessions that have already sold more than that level,

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Speaker 2: and all tickets that have already been purchased will remain

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Speaker 2: valid and no tickets will be canceled or changed.

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Speaker 1: Four people have been arrested during a protest at Parliament House.

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Speaker 1: Act Police said the group of protesters were unlawfully attempting

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Speaker 1: to enter the building. According to AAP, an anti mandatory

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Speaker 1: vaccination group hosted videos to so media showing them engaging

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Speaker 1: with police outside Parliament House.

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Speaker 2: If you're going to Woollies to buy toilet paper or painkillers,

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Speaker 2: you now are going to have a restriction placed on

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Speaker 2: your trolley. Supermarket Giant Woolies has announced they will be

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Speaker 2: reinstating nationwide limits on certain goods due to supply chain constraints.

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Speaker 2: We talked about this on the podcast earlier this week.

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Speaker 2: It's a mixture of issues with the supply chain that

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Speaker 2: we've been talking about for months now, but also major

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Speaker 2: issues with the availability of the workforce. Customers will only

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Speaker 2: be able to buy a limit of two packs of

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Speaker 2: toilet paper and painkillers each.

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Speaker 1: For your Friday good news, we are bringing you the

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Speaker 1: story of Australian aerial Skia law Appeal, who's one gold

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Speaker 1: at the Freestyle World Cup a Deer Valley in the US.

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Speaker 1: Over the weekend, Peel became just the third woman ever

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Speaker 1: to land the quadruple twisting triple backflip on snow.

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Speaker 2: I'm going to make a big call, Zara Laura Appeal

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Speaker 2: will bring home gold at the Winter Olympics in a

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Speaker 2: couple of months time. Today in the podcast, we are

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Speaker 2: joined by a new journalist at The Daily Odds, Tom Crowley. Tom,

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Speaker 2: Thanks for being here. Happy first week on the job.

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Speaker 2: You've been looking into whether we are in fact in

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Speaker 2: lockdown pretty much in Sydney and Melbourne, but also all

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Speaker 2: over the country. Before we get to whether we are

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Speaker 2: or not, I want to understand how you actually went

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Speaker 2: about finding out the answer.

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Speaker 3: Thanks Sam. So, of course, as we know, you are

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Speaker 3: literally allowed to leave your house unless you're under an

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Speaker 3: isolation order. So and that strictly technical sense, we're not

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Speaker 3: in lockdown. But what we sought to find out was

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Speaker 3: does it look like we're in a lockdown in every

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Speaker 3: other sense? And so the first place that we went

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Speaker 3: to look at that is Google's analytics data. So Google

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Speaker 3: has been tracking our movements basically since the beginning of

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Speaker 3: the pandemic to see how the time that we spend

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Speaker 3: doing a range of different activities has varied. And what

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Speaker 3: they have seen recently, essentially is the time that we're

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Speaker 3: spending in entertainment, in hospitality and in retail has plummeted,

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Speaker 3: which might align with the kind of thing that you've

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Speaker 3: seen yourself if you've been out in the street in

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Speaker 3: the last couple of weeks. It's been quite quiet. We're

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Speaker 3: seeing that it's not quite yet at a lockdown level,

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Speaker 3: but that it's plunging very fast, and that the pattern

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Speaker 3: looks very much like the beginnings of the lockdowns that

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Speaker 3: we had last year. So we are seeing in the

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Speaker 3: data evidence that people are staying home.

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Speaker 2: And when you say it's close to what we saw

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Speaker 2: in the peak of the delta wave, is it far off?

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Speaker 2: Are we kind of in the ballpark or do we

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Speaker 2: still have a way to go?

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Speaker 3: If I had to put a number on it, I'd

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Speaker 3: say maybe it's about two thirds of a lockdown at

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Speaker 3: the moment. But the key thing that's different, of course,

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Speaker 3: is that there's no economic support as there was.

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Speaker 2: So what do you mean by that? You say, it's

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Speaker 2: the key difference. Can you tell me a bit more?

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Speaker 3: Well, for those who can remember, twenty twenty, we had

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Speaker 3: the job Keeper Payment that was around the first time

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Speaker 3: that we had a lockdown, and the purpose of that

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Speaker 3: was to support people who were laid off during lockdowns

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Speaker 3: and to support businesses who had to shut Last year,

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Speaker 3: we had the COVID Disaster Payment, different name, did approximately

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Speaker 3: the same thing, and again it was designed to kind

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Speaker 3: of smooth the costs of the lockdowns. That technically still exists,

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Speaker 3: but it only applies when there is a formal lockdown order,

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Speaker 3: and there isn't one of those this time, and so

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Speaker 3: essentially there is no kind of specific support to recognize

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Speaker 3: this fact that people are staying home. So even though

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Speaker 3: it sort of looks like a lockdown, because by the

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Speaker 3: letter of the law it isn't one, the same sorts

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Speaker 3: of economic supports aren't there, And so businesses and people

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Speaker 3: who have stood down are kind of doing it alone

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Speaker 3: in this time.

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Speaker 2: And do we actually know that people are spending less?

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Speaker 2: Are they just simply doing their shopping online or are

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Speaker 2: we seeing people kind of close up their wallets.

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Speaker 3: We are seeing people close up their wallets as well.

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Speaker 3: So A and Z put out some interesting data on

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Speaker 3: this that once again showed basically that spending was the

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Speaker 3: lowest that it has been since we were in the

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Speaker 3: lockdowns because of Delta last year. So that's a sign

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Speaker 3: that it's not just the amount of time that people

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Speaker 3: are spending, but the amount of money that they're spending

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Speaker 3: as well.

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Speaker 2: I find this discussion really interesting because there's a number

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Speaker 2: of ways to kind of start to digest all of

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Speaker 2: this data that you've told us. One is that people

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Speaker 2: are genuinely sick and they've got COVID or they're close contact,

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Speaker 2: and that's why they're not on the streets. That's why

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Speaker 2: they're not at the cafes and at the shops. The

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Speaker 2: other one is more of a mindset thing, and the

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Speaker 2: other one is about confidence. It's about the fact that

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Speaker 2: I think a lot of us in society at the

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Speaker 2: moment they're not feeling one hundred percent comfortable in being out.

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Speaker 2: When we did polling with the Daily Ohs this week,

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Speaker 2: we got ninety thousand responses from Australians, a lot of

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Speaker 2: them young Australians. What did you learn from those whole results?

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Speaker 3: It was fascinating and it was amazing to be able

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Speaker 3: to get such a big response, and we saw, as

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Speaker 3: you say, that some of that hesitation from people who

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Speaker 3: aren't necessarily sick was really there. So what we saw was,

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Speaker 3: I think most people, it might have been eighty percent

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Speaker 3: of people wouldn't attend a music festival. Most people wouldn't

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Speaker 3: attend a house party, but even you know, one in

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Speaker 3: four said that they wouldn't go to a restaurant, about

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Speaker 3: twenty percent so that they had reservations about going to

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Speaker 3: family gathering. So even slightly smaller settings, I think a

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Speaker 3: lot of people say that they wouldn't go on a

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Speaker 3: date as well. So there was a lot of kind

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Speaker 3: of indication that a significant number of people were hesitant

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Speaker 3: about doing daily activities. So that suggests that it's not

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Speaker 3: just people who are home sick. Of course that's going

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Speaker 3: to be part of it, but that there is also

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Speaker 3: kind of a choice element in this too.

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Speaker 2: And so the term that we're kind of looking out

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Speaker 2: for when looking at other media coverage of what we're

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Speaker 2: talking about is this notion of an unofficial lockdown, obviously

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Speaker 2: meaning that you know, as you said earlier time, we're

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Speaker 2: not being ordered to stay inside, but we're kind of

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Speaker 2: making a decision to do so. Anyway, It'll be interesting

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Speaker 2: to see whether a peak in COVID cases means that

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Speaker 2: we start to come out of our shelves a little

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Speaker 2: bit more as cases start to decline, or in fact,

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Speaker 2: as when everybody actually has COVID, I mean, we get

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Speaker 2: some sort of herd immunity. But the research you've done

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Speaker 2: this week has really showed us that we're kind of

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Speaker 2: making our own decisions at the moment, and I think

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Speaker 2: that's a really interesting observation. What's your sense about the

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Speaker 2: discussions happening at a government level. Back to the economics

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Speaker 2: support point you were making, What of signs would they

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Speaker 2: be looking for to decide whether to implement some support.

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Speaker 3: Probably the key question will be, you know, how long

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Speaker 3: does this go on? If you know this is just

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Speaker 3: a couple of weeks where people are staying inside and

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Speaker 3: you can almost think about it like a bad storm

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Speaker 3: and then people go back out with confidence, then maybe

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Speaker 3: we can weather that. But if it does go on

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Speaker 3: for a long time, I think the government's going to

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Speaker 3: have to consider this question of well, is there a

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Speaker 3: case for support. Yes, it's not formally a lockdown, but

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Speaker 3: if it's a lockdown by any other name, then are

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Speaker 3: the same arguments there. And I think especially if businesses

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Speaker 3: and unions start to say, look, people are really suffering here,

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Speaker 3: and if small businesses start going under and we're starting

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Speaker 3: to hear some more chatter about this sort of as

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Speaker 3: every day goes by, then I think the pressure might

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Speaker 3: really mount on the government to reconsider that stance. So

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Speaker 3: at the moment it seems to be a bit of

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Speaker 3: a watch and wait. We are very much in early days,

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Speaker 3: so the next couple of weeks will be very telling

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Speaker 3: in that sense.

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Speaker 2: I think Tom Crowley keep an eye on this one

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Speaker 2: for us. Keep us updated with not only what the

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Speaker 2: kind of Google led geographic data shows us, but also

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Speaker 2: some of that spending data will be interesting to see

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Speaker 2: where to from here. That's all we've got time for

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Speaker 2: on the Daily US this Friday morning. Have a fantastic weekend.

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Speaker 2: It's great to be back on the air for another week.

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Speaker 2: We'll be back next week. In the meantime, follow us

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Speaker 2: on Instagram where they're all weekend and we can't wait

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Speaker 2: to see you