The BFD | Department of Dreams

Our bungling bureaucrats should headline their own comedy show like Australia’s Utopia or our own Gliding On.

We all know that the messaging bleated ad nauseam from the podium of truth often did not reflect reality.

For example, Ardern’s “Get vaccinated and you won’t get sick and you won’t die” comment was said at a time when vaccinated people overseas were indeed getting sick and dying.

But our misguided leader was also backed by well-paid, clueless lackeys who pushed vaccination with powerful and repetitive messaging.

Behind the scenes, these public servants did not need a pandemic to get us vaccinated: they just needed to generate enough fear of one.

Remember when Covid suddenly became less deadly but the adverts implored us to get jabbed anyway to combat variants like Omicron?

The vaccine, supposedly designed for Alpha, was already two variants past its use-by date.

And you’d struggle to find any scientist in the world (even those clinging to the gravy train) to say the vaccine would work for variants not yet in existence.

Just how this slipped by our public servants is best exemplified in the award-winning Australian comedy set inside the offices of the “Nation Building Authority”.

This was a newly created government organisation responsible for overseeing major infrastructure projects, but never achieved a single thing.

For those of an age, think Gliding On after steroids. Others might liken it to The Office but with far more bureaucratic layers to lampoon.

In this comedy, we see practical people overshadowed by aspirational visionaries with zero ability.

Here’s another real-life example of New Zealand’s well-meaning, but oft clueless officialdom at work.

Just this month, our newly formed health provider was ordered by the Advertising Standards Authority to remove or fix misleading advertisements.

The foolishly titled “Vaccinate for Life” campaign was aimed at our kids and plastered all over billboards, television and radio.

The more than suggestive logo was not only disconnected from science but was also completely disconnected from reason.

Just this week the Ministry of Health started a new campaign the same week mask mandates ended.

This one, promoting the fourth booster as offering the best protection, showed cartoon scenes with people of all ethnicities still wearing masks and social distancing.

Sane people see this and know the fourth shot of the same vaccine can’t be all that effective when you still have to mask up, en masse.

So not all that encouraging.

Millions were spent on the graphics, the inter-departmental think tanks and the long hours pondering ‘donut or muffin?’ Our civil servants, despite our leader’s public decree of normality, ran the ads anyway.

Other departments, of course, possess the same fanciful and costly mentality.

Too much emphasis and money were placed in the hands of the ever-expanding Waka Kotahi PR team when all we wanted were the potholes fixed!

This is the same office that spent $30,000 on six light-up Road to Zero props.