National now has two extremely competent spokespeople in their new leader, outspoken Judith Collins and deputy leader, no-nonsense Gerry Brownlee, to call the government out on their bullshit on many issues. And to firmly declare National’s stance and plans going forward.
Collins has done that this past week with Ihumatao, continually demanding that Ardern declare her stance before the election on the use of public money to solve a problem solely caused by the PM’s interference. National’s position is clear. They will not. This will soon be firmly entrenched in people’s minds.
Gerry Brownlee’s announcement on 18 July that a National government would ask returning Kiwis to pay for their quarantine and would implement it early November, saw Megan Woods issuing a press release saying in effect that they thought of it first. No action though, except for the PM telling Hosking “it is very complex”. Where have I heard that before?
There is a song called “Show me” from the stage musical My Fair Lady which begins “Words, words, words, I’m so sick of words”. This is exactly my feeling. The government has been considering the intricacies of this for weeks and has the power to act now, to enforce a charge for quarantine.
Instead, the PM uses her default position, “we’re working on this” and “it’s difficult and complex” and, whenever she can, she uses the fear factor of COVID re-emerging. The cynical would say having the virus raging overseas and its re-emergence in Australia plays into Ardern’s hands. She can always use this fear factor, to take the focus off the government’s non-activity. (That does not mean we should not view the current global situation as dire and constantly learn from it).
It has now been almost three months since we had community transmission. The government should have confidence in their stringent measures around the border, the quarantine security and tracing and be making bolder moves to advance our economy. Kiwis should be able to relax, with less pressure from the PM, who tends to use tactics to deflect and avoid taking actions to keep moving forward. Hey, that’s their slogan, Lets keep moving. More “words, words, words”.
We know why we have been relatively unaffected here compared with other countries and it’s not because the government went “early and hard”. That is simply not true. If you look back at National’s press releases (as early as January) and questions in the House it is clear they would have gone much earlier and harder with possibly even better results and perhaps not such a stringent drawn-out level 4 lockdown with its accompanying economic devastation. We will never know.
Ours is a unique situation and should have always been viewed so, not constantly compared with similar yet different overseas countries. Our isolated, geographical position; being surrounded by a huge moat, which gives us a border we can hermetically seal; our small spread-out population; and lack of sardine-like public transport and housing, are the more likely reasons we have escaped relatively unharmed.
However, we can (and do) thank the government for getting us safely to this stage, but not for their current paralysis. That is caused by their fear of making a mistake before the election. Using the fear factor and clinging to their past success rather than boldly taking action and moving forward is cowardly.
We have eight more weeks before the election during which the government should be well advanced in implementing measures to attempt to rescue our economy which is currently hanging off a cliff. Measures like an air bridge to the COVID free Cooks; or a detailed starting date and time-line for the commencement of re-entry of International students; or Sam Morgan’s mandatory Bluetooth COVID card, to enable more bold action on the border.
Judith and Gerry need to keep pointing out that empty promises without action will not keep us “moving forward”.
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