After a damp squib of an attempt back in December, when the demand was underwhelming, the new attempt to keep spending up in the face of the pandemic worked, albeit after being taken down just over a week ago when the website was overwhelmed.

But some questions remain.

The main one is: was it tax-payers' money well spent? Could the $2,000,290 of public money which was spent to make goods cheaper have been better spent on schools, particularly at a time when teachers are complaining that classes are dangerous because they are too big?

There is some evidence that the money wasn't really necessary.

Firstly, some shops actually had QR codes installed next to the till so that customers who were already there and ready to buy could download the ChooseCBR app and get the discount.

If they were already going to spend, what was the point of offering them an extra incentive, funded by the tax-payer?

On top of that, the economy has been going well without the aid of the scheme.

A year ago, in the depths of the pandemic, there might have been a need. But now, unemployment is falling and growth is strong.

A few days ago, the Australian Bureau of Statistics came out with strong new figures.

Its head of labour statistics, Bjorn Jarvis, said that May was the seventh consecutive monthly fall in the unemployment rate.

"The unemployment rate fell to 5.1 per cent, which was below March 2020 (5.3 per cent) and back to the level in February 2020 (5.1 per cent). The declining unemployment rate continues to align with the strong increases in job vacancies," he said.

Unemployment back to pre-Covid levels prompts the question: why is the ACT government throwing millions of tax-payers' money at the economy when the economy is doing well by itself? Couldn't the money be better used?

The second big question which the success of the scheme prompts is: why were big chains like McDonald's included? Does the fast-food chain really need a subsidy from Canberran pockets?

The rules of the scheme were framed so that a ceiling of $10 million was put on the turnover of a business for it to participate.

Each individual franchise for McDonald's (or Chemist Warehouse or Subway) might qualify, but clearly the whole multinational enterprise doesn't. Should the rules have been tighter?

Everybody likes free money. The main complaint when the scheme closed after only 25 hours was that, in a way, it had been too successful. People had planned to use their vouchers on the Saturday but the pool of free money had emptied by then. Savvy consumers got to the shops fast on the Friday. Those working on Friday had been left out.

But the bigger question with ChooseCBR is: was it a waste of money?

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