Don't tread on me Mistress Jacinda: the Act view of our Covid response

In the interests of public safety and health, one hopes whoever is responsible for firing out what seems like 30 press releases a day from the Act party hive mind is hydrating properly. 

All that foaming at the mouth over slack civil servants, incompetent Labour party politicians and Covid vaccine FUBARS must really be causing some poor sod to lose quite a bit of body weight in sweat and spit. Luckily, we have this party’s fevered labours to thank for helpfully pointing out that nothing this government has done has ever been right. The message gets reinforced by a National Party release seemingly minutes later – sporting almost the same mind-blastingly good common sense on issues as diverse as Labour’s inability to understand tax, to Labour’s inability to be transparent, to Labour’s inability to walk and chew gum and stop Bill Gates’ depopulation agenda at the same time. 

One that I have to admit caught my eye recently had the catchy title Where The Bloody Hell’s Our Plan? In it, Act leader David Seymour declared Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern had “made it clear in Parliament that she has no plan for New Zealand to move on from Covid-19”.

If Seymour is to be believed, Ardern spends not a jot of her time trying to stay abreast of a global pandemic and slowly reopening the border with extreme flexibility while keeping the more devastating variant of the virus out of the country thus far (through it all remaining far from cocksure about it never getting here). However, in the minds of Seymour and his acolytes she remains absolutely hopeless. Apparently, Act’s leader prefers a plan by noted strategic master, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, in early July, in which a four-phase plan to reopen Australia to the world was outlined. 

“Today [July 6th] when I asked Jacinda Ardern where her plan was, she couldn’t tell me,” fumed Seymour. “She pointed out that every country is 'experimenting' with their Covid response, but she also pointed out they all have a plan for reconnecting with the world, while we have none.

“Australian businesses and households can see how this thing ends, and when various freedoms will return.”

In the wake of events of the last two weeks, they are famous last words, surely, underscoring precisely why Ardern doesn’t stand up and make grand pronouncements about New Zealand’s future under Covid – because in doing so, one runs the real risk of looking and sounding like a horse’s arse a few short weeks later. 

She is also probably loathe to upset the many people who continue to support the government’s broad approach to Covid-19. A study this week of 1800 people’s attitudes and beliefs about Covid showed most citizens of this country are not only broadly happy with the Covid response but actually worried about opening the borders. There is a case to be made that the process of getting the right people through the border is too slow and/or too shambolic. But most ordinary New Zealanders are anxious about prising the border open too quickly and are quite happy to stay away from the chaos unfolding in most other countries in the world. 

What has happened in Australia? 
I went on a hunt for Morrison’s brilliant four-fold reopening plan he laid out in early July. From the beginning what was striking about this plan was that there were no actual dates definitively attached to any of the ambitions, almost as if he wanted to give the impression of a grand plan without committing himself to actually doing anything. Quite smart politics really, especially for the dwindling number that still believe whatever Scott Morrison is saying to them. 

Another point worth noting is that the fourth stage of Morrison's masterpiece will be when Australia is “completely back to normal”. To give him his due, that is a bolder prediction than almost any politician, person, health authority or medically trained boffin in the world has ever said about Covid. All of the above feel the world has irrevocably changed since a global pandemic killed now over four million people and completely rewrote the rules of work and social interaction. But not Morrison, who apparently knows better. 

Phase One of this master of plans was to be known as “vaccinate, prepare and pilot”. Had this great plan to vaccinate people rolled out as per the timeline in Morrison’s head, this might have given him something to boast fulsomely about, and a point on which Seymour could rightly attack his own government. But no. As it happens, a lot of boasting in November last year by Morrison that Australia was “in the leading pack of the world” in terms of securing 10 million Pfizer vaccines and an undisclosed number of Novavax vaccines was, in actual fact, slower and smaller than the order placed by most other countries.

Former prime minister Kevin Rudd has now been revealed as something of a Mr Fixit: the man who, at the urging of Australian business people, lobbied Pfizer to send 40 million vaccines they had been promising quicker than originally intended, as a glacially slow vaccine rollout continues to splutter across Australia. Rudd is usually quick to be the recipient of praise to be sure, but he demurred this time. 

"Mr Rudd would definitely not seek to associate himself with the Australian government’s comprehensively botched vaccine procurement program,” his spokesperson told media as Rudd's do-gooding came to light. 

Phase two 
Phase Two in the Lucky Country would see some unvaccinated travelers and many more vaccinated travelers allowed through the borders, with lockdowns to occur only in “extreme circumstances”.

The lack of ability of any Liberal Party MP to now try and install a lockdown when the need is obviously there is going to be how the Delta variant of Covid mushrooms in the state of New South Wales and threatens to scupper public health in almost all Australian states. Interstate borders are notoriously hard to comprehensively police. One would note it is the same devil-and-deep-blue-sea decision that currently bedevils UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, whose meaningless political rhetoric and point-scoring have tied his hands, meaning Covid infections in the UK are now at their highest public level since February (even without the end to lockdown expected next Monday).

One in every 160 people in England now has Covid-19, with the much more infectious and more vaccine-resistant Delta variant now accounting for 99% of cases. Vaccines have stopped hospitals from being swamped, though admissions are increasing, as are deaths.

Criminal, of course. But apparently, also something to aspire to for ‘freedom’ advocates the world over. 

Phase three and four
Phase three is like phase four but with bells on – no lockdowns, no cap on returning travellers or domestic restrictions for vaccinated citizens, and travel bubbles where the world allows it. 

Under phase three, “we should treat it like the flu, and that means no lockdowns,” Morrison said, adding that the number of vital international students would be increased. 

Under phase four, we are back to pre-Covid Australia. Presumably not factoring in the potentially hundreds of people, maybe even thousands, with long Covid diseases that drain the health system and can afflict the young and healthy with extreme prejudice. In England, by way of example, studies show some two million people already suffer from the disease – some with mild long Covid symptoms including brain fog and dizziness, others with heart disease and ME-like symptoms that are far more debilitating.

These people can’t work, need intensive health services, and are extremely expensive to treat. Notably, this cohort of potential long Covid sufferers is entirely absent in the Morrison plan that Seymour et al swooned over just a few short weeks ago. 

A plan
Both Act and National are champing at the bit to have as equally a vague and meaningless plan as Morrison’s, clearly, but their comments suggest an evil plot by the government to not let New Zealanders know what is being planned on their behalf. Like Maori sovereignty, communism and the evil plan to take farmers' utes off them, the hardworking Kiwi battler is in for a shock to his or her way of life, or so Act and the Nats would have it. 

“It’s time to start treating New Zealanders like adults. This Government has never been open and transparent but it’s not too late to start," declared Seymour. 

Translation: Mistress Cindy and her nanny state cabal are telling us what to do! They are planning to bring in He Puapua and socialist mind controls and sign us up for international tax accords! Don’t tread on me!

The sad thing is that neither Seymour nor Collins, as intelligent human beings, actually believe this. If the best and brightest minds in parliament put aside extreme politics and got together on an important issue like Covid, alongside the business community, we could have a plan open-ended and flexible enough that could have kept the largest number of people happy while maintaining community confidence in what has been, so far, a very good Covid response.

It does not mean criticisms or improvements can’t be made. But when the opposition is more intent on barking at every passing car and holding up the cockups of every two-bit prime minister overseas as some sort of golden example to follow, it is hard to take them seriously. Especially when most of the world not run by Crosby Textor clones are keen to work together to make a difference in the world and abide by basic public safety measures in order to give as many people as possible a chance to escape the virus without undue harm.