These figures are what are leaders will be using to base their decisions, so like many people associated with retail, I was looking forward with great interest to see what these people produced. You will find their results here for the March month.
Unfortunately, it is limited as it only breaks it down into these retail types
Food
Household goods
Clothing, footwear and personal accessory
Department stores
Other retailing
Cafes, restaurants and takeaway food services ;
The spreadsheet, I think that you will find to be the most useful is: TABLE 3. Retail Turnover, By State
Now select the retail type you find most useful and compare March 2019 to March 2020.
Now you will get a feel of what the government and ATO think is happening now.
From what I can see, based on these figures food and household goods are up. No surprise there as many people were sitting at home with little to do in March so they cook and fix up the house. Conversely, clothing and restaurants were taking a big beating although not as high as I expect. We will need to wait till April as lockdown only started in Australia in late March so most of that change here is the voluntary lockdown. which we can expect to continue after the official lockdown ends. People are not suddenly going to go shopping just because the government says they can.
One point that does appears based on our figures that it does not show here but I think you will find when you compare figures is that people are shopping less but buying more on each trip.
