While political leaders were bravely saying "we're all in this together", making vows to co-operate across jurisdictions, and talking about "coming out on the other side" it was obvious from the magnitude of their collective response they were living in terror of just how bad things could get.

That is why COVID-19 hospitals such as Canberra's rose from the ground in a matter of weeks, and massive income support mechanisms including JobKeeper and JobSeeker, which would normally have required a gestation period measured in years, were rolled out almost overnight.

It is fair to say that the machinery of government, both at the legislative and federal and state public service levels, has never worked as well as it has done in the past 10 months.

And, unlike what we have seen in the US, parts of Europe and the UK, all levels of government quickly grasped the principle that the only way to save the economy was to beat the health emergency. As a result of that approach, underwritten by a "team Australia" level of national cohesion the country is looking forward to a "COVID-19 normal" Christmas season.

With state and territory border closures tumbling like nine pins, and Qantas on the cusp of returning domestic flights to 80 per cent of pre-pandemic levels, moving reunions between family members and friends are taking place all over the country.

This week's national accounts figures were stronger than had been anticipated and, according to ABS data released on Friday, retail sales have come soaring back after the end of Victoria's epic 100-day plus lockdown.

That lockdown was itself a reminder that although governments and leaders have generally done a good job, tragic mistakes did occur and had grave consequences. The NSW Ruby Princess debacle was also a case in point. The important thing however is that governments and administrators learnt from those mistakes and, even more significantly, took the hard decisions necessary to get their jurisdictions back in order.

In June and July, when Victoria's second wave was just starting, the state's case numbers were on a par with the UK, which this week has had to authorise the early roll-out of a vaccine in a bid to bring infection and death rates under control.

Even our share market, which had plummeted almost 2600 points in March and April, placing the retirement savings of millions of people at grave risk, has clawed its way back up to within a few hundred points of the record levels it had reached in February.

All of that said, it cannot and should not be forgotten that the recovery has been highly selective with some sectors bouncing back much more strongly than others. Although 450,000 companies and more than 2 million workers have "graduated" from JobKeeper, hundreds of thousands of Australians are still doing it very hard.

This was acknowledged by the Prime Minister on Wednesday when he said that while "technically the recession has obviously concluded... that's no comfort to those who are still trying to get back into jobs".

He's right. And while the decision to extend JobKeeper and JobSeeker, albeit at reduced rates, until next March offers some comfort, it doesn't go far enough for many.

The many Australians still out of work or getting by on reduced hours have done just as much, if not more, to get the nation through the pandemic as anybody else.

Australia's leitmotif for the past 10 months has been "we're all in this together". If that is the case then nobody should be left behind.