While Australian Treasurer Josh Frydenberg looks to cut COVID support to save the country’s balance sheet, a Swedish firm has unveiled its plan to use ‘Corvid’ support to do the same.

On Monday, Mr Frydenberg said Australia’s economy is on the mend and, as things normalise, Commonwealth spending on support programs – notably JobKeeper, which ended in March last year to much controversy – must stop.

“The reality is the economy simply cannot be conditioned to the level of unprecedented support that has been required over the last two years,” he said.

“This level of government intervention must not become entrenched and become a permanent feature of our system. Continued support at crisis levels would do more economic harm than good.”

Although considered by some to be controversial, Mr Frydenberg’s plan to cut spending to preserve the federal budget is not an unconventional response to Australia’s debt levels reaching their highest point since 1964. 

That’s not to say other governments around the world aren’t turning to more creative ways to save money in the wake of the pandemic, however. 

The Swedish city of Sodertalje, not far from Stockholm, has recently launched a pilot program that aims to use wild crows to collect cigarette butts off the streets.

Corvid Cleaning – the company looking to feather its nest with the proceeds of the plan – trains wild birds to collect butts and deposit them into specialised collection bins, which release a small snack for each butt dropped off.

The birds are then released back into the wild, and the decision to clean city streets or simply fly aimlessly about the city is left entirely up to the crows themselves.

The scheme is expected to deliver significant savings to Sodertalje, too. The city currently spends around $3 million cleaning up after smokers, with each butt collected currently costing the city $0.12.

Under Corvid Cleaning’s core (or should that be ‘caww’?) scenario, that cost drops to $0.03 when costly human labour is replaced by a murder of avian environmentalists – marking a 75% drop.

Maybe Australia could save some money training kookaburras to clean up public barbecue sites – many of them seem happy to work for free.

Sources

• The Guardian, Rapid Covid tests to be tax deductible but Frydenberg says pandemic supports must end
• The Guardian, Swedish firm deploys crows to pick up cigarette butts
• Josh Frydenberg MP, AIG Speech
• The Sydney Morning Herald, Australia drives up debt to Menzian levels with no end in sight
• AMP News, Sausage-addicted kookaburra too fat to fly