Dear Jacinda,
You seem to operate under the old adage that if you tell someone something often enough they will believe it. May I politely ask, was this part of your communications degree? Again at your Sunday press conference, you stated that observing the trajectories overseas had helped the Government to decide to “go hard and early”. You seem to use the term “hard and early” at every opportunity. If you call taking action a month or more after the initial knowledge of the event “hard and early”, think how much better placed the country would be now had you actually done that. Think of the jobs saved, think of the businesses better placed to continue, think of the non-imposition of restrictions on people’s daily lives. But you didn’t go hard and early. Nothing like it.
Had you done so we would still be able to read the Women’s Weekly, The Listener, North & South etc. Your argument that Bauer Media did not seek essential service status appears not to hold water. Internal Bauer emails obtained by The Spinoff show Bauer was assisting the Magazine Publishers Association “on a further submission” to the guidelines which had excluded them and others from the essential service designation. This was to YOUR department. According to you, they were offered the wage subsidy by Kris Faafoi which you say they should have taken up and which would have made a difference to the writers and journalists. Unfortunately, Jacinda, the bottom line for the company wasn’t just about its writers and journalists. Your annoyance at their refusal is understandable. I can see it is as much a blow to you as it is to them. Cover shoots are no doubt a wonderful distraction from the day-to-day drudgery of running a country.
This though, Jacinda, is the big worry concerning you and your Government. You are not business-friendly and the reason is that you don’t understand how business works. Thinking that the taking up of a wage subsidy was the panacea for this company’s woes shows a frightening lack of awareness of the intricacies of running a business. To survive they had to keep trading. To say the virus and the Government had nothing to do with their demise is patently not correct. This gives cause for a not inconsiderable degree of nervousness when one contemplates just how you intend to extract the country from the mess you have got us into.
You now use the modelling to justify your “hard and early” nonsense. The modelling suggested four thousand cases by the weekend just gone and we only had one thousand. Modelling all around the world has proven to be wildly inaccurate so there is no realistic link that can be made between the two. Figures are being thrown around like confetti at a wedding. No doubt the enforced lockdown has helped but it shouldn’t have got to this. Had it not, the Minister of Health could have lived up to his ministerial title and gone mountain biking without breaking the rules or possibly other parts of his anatomy. Instead, he’s been caught out and joined others not behaving – those who you charitably describe as “idiots”. No argument on that score. Are you aware of any other Ministers who indulge in this pursuit? It might pay to check. You might be surprised!
I am afraid to say that, far from going hard and early, you and your Government have dropped us in the so called proverbial. The hole is getting larger by the day. According to the Taxpayers Union, your Government doesn’t have a plan to come out the other end. It is of serious concern that neither you nor your Government have been on top of this situation from the start.
You describe it like a game of rugby where in the first half we’ve been playing into the wind and now we are about to turn with the wind behind us. Very clever analogy, whoever dreamt it up. I just hope by September the wind is still behind you and it’s hurricane force. I hear New York is very nice in the summer.
Regards,
JC
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