I know I have critics who think my apparent excessive commitment to positivity is something that renders my judgment unreliable but it’s nice to see an independent body such as the OECD claim that our little old Aussie economy will lead the world in the post-Coronavirus recovery.

I hope they’re right but I wonder if the pointy-headed economists at this Paris-based think tank (i.e. the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) have factored in the troublesome behaviour of China and our unions, who are really playing up, just when we need them the most.

The Coronavirus has rocked our economy and job market. Employment fell by 594,300 in April, the biggest monthly decline in jobs on record. Full-time jobs slumped by 220,500 and part-time jobs evaporated to the tune of 373,800 in one month.

The jobless rate spiked from 5.2% to 6.2%. Treasury tipped this unemployment rate could go as high as 10%, though in the past week the Treasury Secretary, Dr Steve Kennedy, has suggested that because we’re doing so well with infections and opening up of the economy, we might only see unemployment at 8%.

Of course, I’m joking when I write “only 8%” because 8% is no joking matter and “only” is there for ironic purposes. Everyone in the country should be fighting to ensure unemployment is as low as possible.

The OECD and yours truly are holding pretty positive views on what could happen to our economy. The think tank sees China, South Korea, Indonesia and Australia as the potential fast growers out of this Coronavirus crash. They calculate our growth in 2020 will contract by 5% but 2021 will bring economic expansion at a rate of a solid 4.1%.

But maybe this optimism is being taken a little too far, with our ACTU leaders now thinking that a 4% rise in the minimum wage is justifiable on what looks like the analysis of left-wing intellectuals, perhaps after a long night on the turps and other mind-altering substances.

Generally if the economy is doing OK, I don’t take issue with the usual small increases to the minimum wage. But this current proposed 4% rise would mean a $30 a week pay hike for low income workers.

However, this is a very unusual year where many businesses are operating on 80% revenue decrease (or even more), they have deferred loan repayments, which one day will come back to haunt them, and reduced rents that one day could be hiked to make up for the period when their landlords were virtually told by the Government to “play nice”.

To justify these higher wage demands, the ‘experts in business’ (the ACTU) say because lots of businesses have failed because of the Coronavirus, the survivors will have less competition and can afford to pay a 4% pay rise!

Not surprisingly, the unions and employers are at loggerheads over the issue and the craziness of these demands in 2020 — the year of living dangerously with COVID-19 — reminded me of a lesson I learnt as a student at the University of New South Wales, when my lecturer (who was a leftie) did point out that unions often pursue higher wages for their membership because, as he said, “they don’t represent the unemployed!”

Good point and made by a very old world, objective academic — those were the days.

And then there’s damn China!

First they slammed an 80% tariff on our barley exports and now Beijing is warning students to give our education bodies the flick, accusing us of being racist.

The combined inflow from education and the travel-related spending represents our third biggest export, bringing in about $37 billion. And our Chinese customers are about a third of that total, at $12 billion a year.

Education as an export is only behind iron ore and coal as income earners. Iron ore brings in about $77 billion, while coal earns around $67 billion, so you can see how important education-travel exports are to our economy and our 2021 recovery.

This isn’t the time for the unions to make our economic recovery harder than it has to be, especially with the Chinese clearly punishing us for supporting the Donald Trump calls for an objective inquiry into the causes and the handling of the Coronavirus in China.

Also, our reluctance to welcome Huawei with open arms, after it has had some worrying links to questionable hi-tech behaviour, isn’t helping Beijing see us as kissing cousins.

How the Morrison Government diplomatically handles the China problem will be important for our economic recovery. And you’d have to hope that the ACTU will lose this ill-timed grab for money.

As I’ve said, I usually accept the reasonableness of a minimum pay rise for low paid workers but ironically a lot of these casuals are actually on the JobKeeper payment of $1,500 a fortnight so for them a pay rise in 2020 is unnecessary.

We can’t expect much out of the team in Beijing but this is the year that the ACTU can’t depart ‘team Australia’.

As the old Randy Vanwarmer song ‘kind of’ went, our union buddies can’t leave us “just when we need them the most.”