It became obvious this was the motivation for the boost - which unions, welfare organisations, businesses and state politicians have been crying out for since the start of the NSW outbreak - on Thursday, when the Treasurer conceded Australia risked a second COVID-19 recession.

"My expectation is that the September quarter will be negative," Mr Frydenberg said. "But with respect to the December quarter, that depends to a large extent on how successful NSW, our largest state economy, is in getting on top of the virus."

His timing was unfortunate given just over two hours later the NSW Premier announced a record 239 new cases. This was the largest single daily jump since the Delta strain outbreak began. It came the day after Ms Berejiklian said the Sydney lockdown would be beefed up and extended until the end of August.

With pundits now saying the lockdown is unlikely to end before September or October, the prognosis is poor.

ANZ economists have said that if the lockdown is extended until the end of September, the economy will contract by 1.3 per cent for the quarter. The Commonwealth Bank's head of Australian economics, Garth Aird, predicts a contraction of 2.7 per cent.

This is despite the fact Victoria and South Australia came out of lockdown this week. NSW is the nation's largest economy and Sydney accounts for about one quarter of national economic output.

It is not all doom and gloom, however. While the federal government has been late in coming to the party, there is a lot to like about the tweaked COVID-19 Disaster Support Payment.

It has increased from $600 a week to $750 a week for households in a declared Commonwealth hotspot that have lost more than 20 hours' paid work a week, and from $375 a week to $450 a week for those that have lost between eight and 20 hours. The additional $200-a-week payment for people on welfare support who have lost more than eight hours of paid work addresses an obvious anomaly.

While it is understandable many people are still calling for a return to JobKeeper - which, to its credit, pulled the nation out of the previous COVID-19 recession and preserved millions of jobs - the government's more finessed approach this time around appears to be justified.

It is now well documented that JobKeeper, designed for a time when the whole country was in lockdown, was a blunt if effective instrument.

One of its major flaws was that applications were approved on the basis of estimated hits to a company's income. This resulted in billions of dollars of overpayments which, in many cases, will never be paid back.

The joint NSW-Commonwealth JobSaver program, which has been boosted to provide weekly payments of up to $100,000 a week to businesses with an annual turnover of up to $250 million a year which have experienced a 30 per cent drop in revenue, is significantly more nuanced. In order to claim this benefit, companies have to maintain their employee headcount.

The billion-dollar question, given the NSW outbreak is worsening by the day, is whether these two programs and the other safety nets being put in place will be sufficient.

If the health crisis is not contained, then a major economic crisis, including a return to recession, appears certain to follow.

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