Sometimes, declarations of victory are, like rumours of Mark Twain’s death, not just greatly exaggerated but ludicrously premature. Who can forget George W. Bush triumphantly declaring “Mission accomplished!” in 2003 — when 18 years of grinding insurgency, including the rise of ISIS, lay ahead? Then there’s the Chicago Daily Tribune’s famous 1948 declaration of “Dewey Defeats Truman”. Just to prove that the media never change their spots, Newsweek distributed copies of their notorious “Madam President” edition to newsstands ahead of the actual 2016 election count.
And, when the world’s media breathlessly fawned over Jacinda Ardern’s “decisive management” of the covid pandemic, they definitely shot their collective wad a tad prematurely. The announcement that Ardern will be giving the next commencement address at Harvard, because, Harvard says, she steered her country “clear of the pandemic’s worst consequences” is definitely a case of getting off a stop or two early.
When the Harvard commencement date was first announced, New Zealand’s death toll from Covid stood at just 53. That tally has since increased nearly sixfold, mostly in the last few weeks or so. Many of the other Covid indicators are now looking positively bleak too.
In New Zealand, way more people are being hospitalised each day than at any other time during the pandemic. Case numbers have been on a similar upward trend. There’s no reason to suppose that the eventual fatalities will be significantly better than any comparable jurisdiction with good vaccine coverage — around 79 per cent of Kiwis have received at least two doses — and possibly rather worse given that the country comes to this latest phase of the pandemic with little natural immunity to speak of from previous infections.
But New Zealanders still love their dear leader, right?
Pent-up anger from the pandemic is also spilling out on the streets of New Zealand, where widespread Covid-related protests are the order of the day. In recent weeks, a riot broke out in the political capital Wellington as police and anti-mandate demonstrators fought pitched battles in the parliamentary grounds below Ardern’s ninth floor beehive office.
Ardern’s political poll numbers also make miserable reading for the PM. From leading her Labour party to an electoral win at the last election with an outright majority of seats — a unique achievement in the country’s mixed member proportional representation parliamentary system — public opinion surveys now suggest she may struggle to muster a coalition government of any sort at next year’s election.
So, how did it all go so wrong?
As a short-term idea, fashioning a Fortress New Zealand had obvious appeal, but as a long-term arrangement it always felt a little bananas. Hiding under the bed while an intruder can be heard prowling outside your window is all well and good, but as a domestic arrangement sustained over many months it has drawbacks.
In contrast to Ardern’s self-anointed image as Globalism’s “Queen of Kindness” it’s also decidedly selfish and parochial.
And what about the other ‘team’ of New Zealanders, the many thousands of expatriate Kiwis stranded abroad? Would they simply stay put forever? Could New Zealand, which makes much of itself as a stickler for international protocols, refuse to repatriate its own while at the same time outsourcing their welfare needs — including Covid-related care — to various host governments?
Spectator Australia
In effect, Ardern was happy for the rest of the world to do the dying until such time as New Zealand might deign to rejoin the global community.
All that’s happened, in fact, is that the rest of the world has more or less shrugged off the pandemic and returned to a semblance of normalcy, while New Zealand is still grappling with the incomprehensible absurdity of the “Traffic Light System”.
A return to normalcy for Kiwis is proving as elusive as the “first bloke”.