The ‘Covid Queen’ started her political career as the ‘Crisis Queen’, rising to international stardom on lucky breaks provided by the politically motivated exploitation of cyclical weather changes (initially named global warming then renamed climate change), the Christchurch killings and then the White Island eruption. All attracted global media attention.
These lucky breaks provided an opportunity for Ardern’s political ambitions and distracted media scrutiny from her recurrent failures in addressing child poverty or providing low-cost housing. But the best, however, was yet to come.
COVID-19 overtook all previous disasters combined and the ‘Covid Queen’ rose up to replace the ‘Crisis Queen’ in 2020.
Lucky breaks had returned Ardern to government, but they will not keep her there, because her luck has run out. The Covid Queen’s time is now up.
The misfortune of another crisis will not be met with the same fawning gratitude from an adoring public, simply because the curtain is slowly pulling back on arguably one of the worst performances of any New Zealand government.
We have spent more on Covid relief than any other country measured, equivalent to 21.3 per cent of GDP, “to achieve one of the worst economic outcomes in the OECD“.
$75M media bailouts have kept the hard questions at bay but this is changing. Australian media weren’t given financial reward to speak kindly of Ardern, and it won’t be long before the Ardern fan club is forced to come to terms with her failure to protect us from looming financial disaster.
“… while New Zealand, a small island nation, has controlled the virus well, it has done so at massive economic and fiscal cost.
Were it not for its overinvestment in forests, which are now encroaching on valuable arable land, the Ardern government would be a very long way from meeting its commitments under the Paris agreement. It’s also trying to fudge the figures by using an absolute figure for 2005 and a net figure for 2030, hoping no one notices.”
Spectator
Finally someone in the media, albeit the Australian media, is taking notice.
Business owners know a lucky break helps to establish their business but hard graft and good management are required to keep the doors open.
Listen closely and you will hear the sound of business doors up and down the country closing. Hospitality businesses established decades ago are closing permanently after the ‘Covid Queen’ crippled them along with the international travel and tourism industry and the seasonal produce sector.
40 years of strawberry growing didn’t help Perry’s Berries when the ‘Covid Queen’ refused to allow seasonal labourers into the country to pick the fruit which is now left to rot on the ground. Their doors have now closed and it is heartbreaking.
A 24 year history couldn’t keep Auckland’s O’Connell Street Bistro open. They close next month.
Queenstown was hit very hard. After 29 years one of Queenstown’s longest running independent restaurants shut its doors last month. The owner said “The resort had been ‘cut adrift’ by the Government, and he wondered who would be left standing in the town centre when international visitors eventually returned.”
The ‘Covid Queen’ and her media buddies tell us – with straight faces – that Covid destroyed our economy. They are lying!
It wasn’t Covid that closed the borders and locked us down. It was Jacinda Ardern’s government.
Ardern’s government did nothing to help our Pacific neighbours either; the source of our missing seasonal labour this summer.
Last year the Covid-free Cook Islands begged Ardern to allow international travel but their pleas fell on her deaf ears. They are still Covid-free and are still waiting on a go-ahead from Ardern’s government.
“Fiji hasn’t had a community case in around a year – Samoa and Tonga have never had one,” she [Judith Collins] told Newshub Nation on Saturday.
“We need to support our Pacific neighbours with tourism because they have just gone through devastating economic times.”
RNZ reports Samoa’s economy collapsed by 8.6 percent in the 12 months to the end of September 2020.”
Judith Collins on Newshub Nation
It is no surprise to discover our own economy is finally showing the effects of Ardern’s devastating lockdowns and border closure with a 2.9% drop in GDP over 2020.
Predictably, the Finance Minister was upbeat saying “New Zealand had come through the COVID-19 pandemic better than expected.”
Perhaps he meant the Covid mortality rate was better than expected because he is dead wrong about the financial fallout – the worst is yet to come – not from Covid (as this government and its media sycophants would have you believe) but because of the crippling lockdowns and border closure.
Has Ardern finally come to terms with the fact that the results of her government’s Covid mismanagement are just around the corner? Missing an excellent PR opportunity last week with the America’s Cup win was totally uncharacteristic.
However they frame it, the writing is on the wall for the Ardern government: they can no longer pass off their mismanagement as bad luck or Covid.
Ardern’s government will go simply because they didn’t do their jobs properly. The only question is, how long will it take before their fan club wakes up and rejects them?
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