WHAT'S NEXT FOR VIRGIN AUSTRALIA?

According to The Australian ($), Virgin Australia’s chief executive Paul Scurrah believes the company could have new owners in as little as 2 months, with Deloitte appointed as administrators, more than 10 potential buyers circling, and The Age reporting that even Victoria threw its hat in with QLD-NSW state offers.

Over at the AFR ($), the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has been tasked with ensuring Qantas does not abuse its market power to “crush” a restructured Virgin before it can re-establish itself.

The Australian ($) also reports that Australia’s largest airport ground operation company, Swissport, will axe more than 80% of its workforce within days and begin liquidating critical assets, creating yet another roadblock for a future return to the skies.

WHERE ARE YOUR BILLIONAIRE PHILANTHROPISTS NOW: Over at The Courier-Mail ($), you can cop a squiz at some of the British, UAE and Chinese billionaire stakeholders who refused to rescue the airline.

ECONOMIC DISASTER, CONFIRMED

According to the ABC, three separate bodies have delivered dire economic news and warnings within just 24 hours:

• New figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, based on Australian Taxation Office Single Touch Payroll data, show more than 700,000 Australians lost their job in the first week of April following business shutdowns and social-distancing limits;
• Reserve Bank governor Philip Lowe warned Australia is headed to our biggest contraction in national output since the Great Depression, with national output likely to fall by about 10% over the first half of the year and unemployment set to hit around 10% by June; and
• Modelling by Victoria’s Department of Treasury and Finance forecasts unemployment could hit as high as 11% in the September quarter, the gross state product could fall by 14% relative to previous forecasts, and property prices could drop by as much as 9% by the end of the year.

VICTORIA BORROWS BIG: With the Victorian government planning to take out a $24.5 billion loan to address the latter, The Age reports that the Victorian Chamber of Commerce and Industry has written to ministers warning against “ad-hoc spending” that does not address “structural” challenges.

POOP OF CONCEPT FOR EARLY WARNING SYSTEM

Science of The Total Environment has released the first pre-proof study — that is, a peer-reviewed, formatted version of a report that’s not quite the definitive product — regarding the virus that leads to COVID-19, SARS-CoV2, in untreated wastewater in Australia.

Examining two Brisbane-adjacent treatment plants over the course of six days from March 20 to April 1, CSIRO and University of Queensland researchers estimated that, given early uncertainties and variation, a median range of 171 to 1090 infected people.

The team, which now aims to build national collaboration, explained ahead of publication that the study acts as a proof of concept for a potential early-warning system — particularly for vulnerable populations where testing may otherwise not be feasible — as well as monitoring during the recovery phase.

WILL QUEENSLAND EXPAND EVICTION POWERS?

Ahead of Queensland Parliament voting on rental measures tonight, Greens MP Michael Berkman has claimed in a Twitter thread that the Palaszczuk government, in limiting criteria for the eviction moratorium, has actually created new grounds for landlords to evict tenants on fixed-term leases if they want to sell a property with vacant possession.

The news comes after the state government spruiked new measures on Sunday as a “fair middle ground” between tenants and landlords, following a concerted campaign by the Real Estate Institute of Queensland last week.