I listened on Tuesday to Heather du Plessis-Allan interviewing Health Minister Chris Hipkins on the testing at the border. Chris started off confidently enough but when Heather started to drill down he was at sixes and sevens. He was finding it hard to stay on message. Then we got the obfuscation as he tried to explain away why his statement at the one o’clock stand up regarding numbers being tested at the border had changed in four hours.
At one o’clock he inferred that all workers at all borders were being regularly tested. By the time he got to the interview with Heather the story was that those at the border who had face to face contact with people returning were the ones being tested. That’s about three hundred out of about six thousand border workers. So no other border workers, including airline staff, are being tested.
Hipkins is proving no better than Clark. He may as well borrow the mountain bike and go for a hike or maybe a walk along the beach. Perhaps he’d like to move house? What Hipkins is proving is that this Government, this cluster of dunces who have yet to meet the real world, are trying to execute a task that is way beyond their capabilities. Hipkins now admits the whole kit and caboodle is such a botched shambles that he is losing sleep. He might like to know that the rest of us are losing patience.
Hipkins talks about having to work through issues, send out new directives etc, making himself sound like the perfect replication of a Sir Humphrey. Come to think of it you could do a whole new series of Yes Minister based on these fools. Obfuscation, buck-passing, ineptness, it certainly wouldn’t be difficult to write the scripts. They’re trying to cover up their incompetence by saying how complex this all is. It’s their incompetence that is causing the complexity.
I cannot see what is complex about testing everyone working at the border or staff at isolation accommodation if you’re prepared for it. Surely it’s a simple directive that needs sufficient people and the necessary equipment to carry it out. Blaming all and sundry but yourselves for the problems is simply not good enough. Ministers should be onto those responsible in their departments on a daily basis making sure they are getting the correct information and what is supposed to be happening is in fact happening.
The problem is that, apart from being a Government that is not up to the task, it is a lazy Government. In fact, I think the two go hand in hand. One is the cause of the other. Hence we have had a myriad of highly paid working groups over the last three years. It’s much easier to read the thoughts of someone else and just implement their recommendations. Providing they can understand them of course.
One cannot escape the conclusion that the Ministers charged with handling this pandemic are well and truly out of their depth. The disturbing fact is these are the best Ardern has at her disposal. Which introduces the next issue. These three or four now have a plethora of portfolios which brings with it an untenable workload. They cannot possibly be on top of any one of them. And so we have got to where we are.
Ardern has announced 500 more Defence staff and more security guards at isolation facilities. Why? What exactly are they going to do? Are they expecting a mass breakout? She says it’s going to take six weeks to do the rollout. Again why? Is there a war they’re involved in I haven’t heard about? The main problem has been with the testing at the borders not with those in isolation. Where are the extra numbers of people to carry out the tests?
You have to say that policy is being made up on the hoof. Everything is reactive, not proactive. We are witnessing a Government of hapless corporals running around like headless chickens exacerbating a problem largely of their own making.
A bunch of cocks with nothing to crow about except a bunch of cock-ups.
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