What is it with this Government that it appears to have such an aversion to telling the truth? We have been, for months now, subjected to a daily diet of BS from the so-called pulpit of truth otherwise known as the one o’clock electioneering broadcast. Virtually nothing that is said there matches reality. There seems to be an awful disconnect between the verbal and the actual. One can only assume this is because they want us to believe they’re on top of the handling of COVID when the opposite is the case.
The team of Ardern, Robertson, Hipkins and Woods are a verbose lot but the verbiage they are enunciating in terms of what is happening is far from reality. The one o’clock broadcast should be sponsored by Guthrie Bowron or Resene because it is simply an opportunity to attempt to paper over the cracks, or more accurately chasms that appear weekly. Sir Brian Roche who, along with Labour stalwart Heather Simpson, has been brought in as a Mr Fix-it says we, the public, are being too hard on the Government.
I, along with Heather du Plessis-Allan, don’t think so. As Heather says, the Government chose to go down the elimination path and we are all paying a heavy price for it. If you go down the elimination path you can’t afford mistakes. Well, we’ve had plenty of those. Anyone with a modicum of grey matter could tell you elimination is a dumb strategy. If their game is to keep having lockdowns until there’s a vaccine that’s equally dumb.
Perhaps they’d like to start proper testing at the border, soft and late. Perhaps Hipkins would like to read the strategy documents from the Ministry of Health so as he knows what he should be doing. Perhaps they’d like to be truthful about the time it’s taking for G P’s to get test results back. Five days and not 48 hours. Why aren’t we hearing about the 240,000 mortgage repayments that have been missed since April? Obviously, the wage subsidy is enough to cover those. Why doesn’t Grant Robertson, when he talks about his $14 billion, remind us that it’s borrowed rather than make it look like it’s sitting there due to his whizz kid ability in saving it.
This Government are no better than a bunch of schoolchildren in the playground trying to win a game of tag. Mind you, it would be a short game as only about four of them would be considered good enough to play. So keen are they to stamp this virus out they are going to chase a bus all around Auckland as someone on it may have caught it from someone else on it. Everyone else on the bus at the time should be home self-isolating. If normal suburban bus usage in Auckland is anything to go by there were probably the only two passengers.
This sort of nonsense from the Government is what is getting people increasingly riled. They are welcome to go on a bus hunt but the rest of us would like to resume our normal lives. Two hundred and fifty jobs are being lost in Auckland every day and the economy is taking a huge hit while they look for a bus. I said to my son-in-law, who hails from England, where else in the world would you single out a bus? He thought it laughable. It’s pathetic.
We have a country going down the gurgler and a Government who is flummoxed about what to do. They have adopted a strategy which has as much chance of success as the cow jumping over the moon. No amount of military personnel, closed circuit television, Roches or Simpson’s are going to sort this shambles out. It will only be sorted out by a Government that has policies in place whereby the borders can be opened, businesses can open and we can get on with our lives.
Jacinda implores us to stay the course. Forget it sweetie. With you in the saddle the horse has well and truly bolted. The only race you’ve got this country in is a race to the bottom. With your Government’s level of incompetence we’ll be saying hello to the earth’s core before you have Auckland out of level three.
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