In the beginning, it was a question of identifying just how serious a threat the coronavirus was to public health. Then there was the task of mobilising to try to head off mass infections, and buy time to get our health system in shape to deal with it.

As chief medical officer Brendan Murphy observed a couple of weeks ago, once there was some sense of things being under control, there was time to look around and assess what needed to happen next.

The same process has been going on over the economic crisis linked to the virus.

Having put wave after (ever increasingly large) wave of government assistance into the economy, governments and other participants in the public policy debate are starting to focus on where we go next.

There's a hot debate raging about how and when the lockdown should be lifted. And there is another debate brewing about what changes we need to make — and whether we need radical economic policy reform — to deal with the big issues that have been thrown up by this crisis.

The "usual suspects" have immediately been dusted off: company tax rates, industrial relations and red tape. The government has said it's no longer "business as usual".

It has also pointed to a report from the Productivity Commission dating from Scott Morrison's time as treasurer which covered a much broader canvas of change across federal and state government including the taxation of land and road user charges, and ways of improving the delivery of health and education.

But a good place to start with "not business as usual" should surely be in undertaking that same sort of assessment done in the health space once the immediate panic was over.

Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume. Watch Duration: 39 seconds 39 s Scott Morrison on Sky News

Assessing the big-picture changes

Shouldn't we start with questions about what has happened to the economy — and what is likely to happen to it — in a structural sense, and what that might require of policy, rather than starting with well-worn answers and working backwards?

While the government has been rightly praised for its quick economic response to the economic slump triggered by the virus, the actual economic effect is still playing out in many sectors of the economy in one of those slow-motion train wreck sort of ways.

Businesses are still battling through the processes of working out what support they are entitled to, negotiating with staff and banks and landlords, trying to establish just what is a viable path through for the next few weeks and months.

We've all seen the impact of coronavirus closures on business, but we're getting a better picture of the hard data too. ( ABC News: Jessica Warriner )

On a larger stage, people are making assessments about the big-picture changes that will flow from a world where the economic rewards are not in globalisation and easy travel.

We are still only just getting a picture of how the virus has affected different states, industries and workforces. Work done by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, in some cases in conjunction with the Australian Taxation Office, has given us some extraordinarily fast, almost real-time data on this.

While plenty of people are now opining about the impact of the virus or can see what is happening directly around them, Australian statistician David Gruen says "we've now got solid, solid statistical evidence" about things like how social distancing has changed people's travel plans, obliged them to cancel things like family reunions.

And we have maps of where particularly vulnerable communities might be.

Two factors compound the problem

There is data on people who are now out of work, but also data on people who technically have a job, but haven't actually been working.

And just from the first surveys taken as the crisis was in its early weeks in March, "the picture that has emerged is that there's disruption right across the economy, but it is particularly concentrated in particular industries, and those are accommodation and food services and, and the arts and recreation", Dr Gruen says.

With theatres and venues closed around the country, nearly 20 per cent of the arts workforce is out of work. ( AAP: Steven Saphore )

Yes, we sort of know this has been going on because restaurants are closed and you can't go to the footy or the theatre. But the numbers involved are truly staggering.

There was a 25 per cent fall in the number of jobs in accommodation and food in just a couple of weeks, and almost 20 per cent in the arts. Young people were hit hardest.

Compounding the problem is that both workforces disproportionately include a lot of short-term casual employees, which means they can't access the JobKeeper payments, and people on temporary visas, who can't access any form of assistance.

This has been creating all sorts of problems in these industries, not just for the individual workers, but for the businesses that employ them: difficult questions about who to keep on the books; complex issues about how to maintain links with your staff.

Both sectors are equally challenged by the fact they don't really function with social distancing laws in place, meaning there's no end in sight anytime soon.

Where the Government's approach becomes unstuck

Arts Minister Paul Fletcher recognises the problems in his sector, a vast array that covers everything from theatre to live concerts, film and television, to footy matches, and which on his estimation employs 600,000 people and accounts for about 6.4 per cent of GDP.

He argues that between JobKeeper and JobSeeker, there will be somewhere between $4 billion and $10 billion paid out on income support in the sector.

"But what's also very important is that the fabric of the sector is maintained, the structure is maintained, so that when we get through this art sector organisations can restart productions, galleries and museums can reopen, performers can start doing gigs again," he says.

This is where the government's approach of trying to deliver the same sort of assistance to all industries comes a bit unstuck.

It's not clear whether these particular forms of assistance really work as intended to maintain structures in the arts sector, despite best intentions.

But what is happening in the hospitality and arts spaces also brings us back to just what the agenda should be for making sure Australia is best placed to deal with the post-virus economic world.

Industrial relations is an issue that keeps coming up: business says there is much to be done to simplify workplace laws.

That might be true. But it is also true that these two sectors that have been so badly devastated are among the least burdened by the normal IR issues.

The huge rates of casualised work haven't caused the job losses. But it would seem on the surface of things that removing IR restrictions won't help them get back on their feet, either.

There are all sorts of issues and choices governments have to make here.

Do we pragmatically say that our love affair with food and coffee is going to have to change now? That the economics of this industry, let alone tourism and accommodation, will inevitably be such that lots of businesses go to the wall?

Do we have a conversation about the cost of losing different forms of culture?

Before we talk about reform, let's try to frame the questions about what needs to be done.

Laura Tingle is 7.30's chief political correspondent.