The position of Australia's first Small Business Ombudsman prompted a move to the spot she traded for the old Canberra Hospital peninsula during her tenure as chief minister.

The Kingston Foreshore, where the pair have had an apartment for five years, was opened up for development by the ACT government as a result of the swap with the Commonwealth.

Ms Carnell jokes that having sold the Canberra house in which she raised her daughter Claire and son Matt, she decided on Kingston to prove she still backed the decision.

"Look, I'm really here! This is very good!" Ms Carnell laughed from the apartment during the first week of June.

"No, the reality is it's lovely - so we decided to buy."

"Retired since the end of January", Ray Kiley works remotely three days a week for a Melbourne company, having finished up as CEO of Canberra-founded multinational Intelledox, after it sold to a UK buyer last year.

He said life under lockdown looked much the same as pre pandemic times; a bit of work from home and a lot of golf at Fairbairn. Except with son Shaun back under their roof for three weeks for additional company.

A former performer with the Australian Ballet, the 25 year-old had been in Spain when the borders closed to prevent the spread of coronavirus, cutting short his European holiday.

"It was sort of like being a boy again and having a mate to play with," Mr Kiley said.

"But two bedroom apartments are not made for three adults," Ms Carnell added. "Well, they might be when you're in uni, not now."

Ms Carnell continued to work from the city office alongside senior management, while the majority of her team of 25 had spent weeks working from home.

"For some it was like the first day of school having to come back to the office when they were used to working in trackies and uggies," she said.

"I'm an extrovert, at the end of the day I work much better in teams than I do on my own."

Asked if there's anything she'd have done differently had she still been at the top in ACT during the pandemic, Ms Carnell said she means no criticism of Andrew Barr's leadership.

"But I think we were really tough on lots of small businesses that won't survive this," she said.

"In places like Canberra we could've been a bit more flexible on some of the little guys, particularly since we never had terribly many cases."

Sporting a manicure days after salons were given the green light to resume trading, Ms Carnell said her "heart bleeds" for beauticians - many who are Thai and Vietnamese Australians - "closed overnight" during COVID-19.

"I hope they survive. The dilemma is they'll come back now while they're not paying banks and wages but will the debt kill them next year?

"I think that's the challenge for the ACT government, how we are going to support them in the first half of next year to stay afloat when their revenue won't be back but all their costs probably will," she said.

Mr Kiley predicts a quick bounce back in earnings and then "two of three years of hard stuff" to get the economy to where it was.

"We have to commit to the fundamentals like immigration because immigration is the key driver of growth for many businesses. It's important that we don't start becoming xenophobic because of what's happened," he said.

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Mr Kiley and Ms Carnell agreed the closure of the apartment complex gym was one of the most "traumatic" disruptors to their day during the lockdown.

While aware of the overstating of suffering the term suggests, there's an element of truth for Ms Carnell. Hospitalised for anorexia as a teenager, she works out at 5.30am most days as a way to keep her head in check.

"One of the reasons both of us continue to exercise and try to keep general health happening is that really. It's incredibly important," she said.

"I hated the gym closing, I was in melt down trauma. It meant I had to go running outside in the dark."

Mr Kiley said maintaining good mental health under COVID-19 restrictions has been the same as during normal times: exercise, sunlight, eat well and plenty of sleep.

"I don't do the last one," Ms Carnell said, admitting she works more than 70 hours a week.

Mr Kiley and Ms Carnell agree the biggest change has been spending so much time together.

"We didn't live in the same city. Then we had jobs where there would never be a week one of us wasn't away," Ms Carnell said.

"It's tested it with no problems being found," Mr Kiley added.

"And the best thing about the lakefront is the hospice is just across the water - we can just get in the double kayak and paddle across when we're ready."