A One-Trick Pony

Morris 8 is a Wellington beltway insider, a small-c conservative, fiscally dry but socially liberal. Loves New Zealand but hates the current slide towards separatism and socialism.

There’s a need for balance in all things, not least in the way we are governed. There are a plethora of serious issues to be dealt with, but Jacinda’s government is like the traditional one-trick circus pony: it can only do one thing, and then not very well.

Admittedly, it is part of the role of governance, and government, to identlfy key issues of concern and interest to the population and then to deal with them according to the governing party’s political values and philosophies. In New Zealand’s case, there are a myriad of serious concerns to be dealt with: the housing crisis and homelessness, education, law and order, climate change, and the whole gamut of health-related concerns.

If we focus purely on health issues, there are many deserving branches of medicine and health that are crying out for assistance but have been shunted down the order of priorities by the focus being solely on Covid. It’s as though nothing else is important. But that’s not the case. The normal demands on the health system continue unabated, but they have not only been eclipsed by the focus on Covid, they’ve been exacerbated by it.

Issues such as mental health and the wholesale increase in suicide and attempted suicide by young people, delayed cancer and cardiac surgery, deferred bowel cancer screening, cancelled elective surgeries that will materially affect people’s quality of life, as well as many others, have been sidelined.

The role of Minister of Health is always thankless, having to assign priorities and allocate funds accordingly. There’s never enough money to go around, to purchase and procure the medication and treatments for everyone but, under Covid, it seems that everything apart from Covid has gone on the backburner. All health issues, plus most other social issues, have been reprioritised in favour of dealing with the pandemic.

It’s not just health that has been completely reprioritised because of Covid. Many other policies have also been relegated down the order of priorities: the housing crisis, homelessness, and education, all supposed core issues for a Labour government, have been left languishing. The reality is that, in almost every case, the metrics for all social services are deteriorating. Even the key performance indicators for the prime minister’s own portfolio, her special interest and passion – child poverty, are going in the wrong direction. More kids in poverty, more hungry little mouths, more housing insecurity, and less education. Setting up another cohort for intergenerational poverty and state dependency.

But perhaps that’s the game?

There are two ways of looking at the issue of the government’s appalling performance

The first view, the more charitable, is that Labour is limited by its very shallow pool of talent in its members of parliament and ministers. There are very few with any real-world or business experience and almost none who can manage a department, let alone drive change and implement effective policies. That’s the charitable view.

The other way of looking at this is more cynical, but perhaps more realistic. Labour relies on having a large number of voters who are dependent on the state: a poorly educated, low waged or unemployed underclass who cannot manage their own lives but depend on the state for all things. They behave as though the government is their mother and father, responsible for all aspects of their lives.

And the Left traditionally plays to these voters: all sorts of promises and blandishments to buy their votes and get them firmly hooked on the state teat. Once they’ve become accustomed to receiving state support, they are unlikely to vote against their sponsor or parent. The cycle continues, with the Left treating their constituents with scorn and disdain once elected, and then doling out the promises again once the election cycle starts.

If nothing else, Covid has shone the spotlight of public scrutiny on the limited, one-dimensional performance of this Labour government. A one-trick pony indeed.