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Bryce Edwards
democracyproject.nz
The chaos, disruption and suffering brought about by Covid is far from over, but there’s now a sense that, politically, the virus has finished. The pandemic has dominated the political agenda for two years, and with yesterday’s announcement of a significant loosening of restrictions, it feels like an “end of an era”.
We will continue to debate the last two years of Covid management, and there are many who regard the Government’s decision yesterday as an incautious and poll-driven error but, by and large, the mood seems to be one of relief. It’s not “mission accomplished”, but it’s “time to move on”.
The ideological shift from Covid protectionism to laissez-faire
There’s always been a heavy ideological dimension to this. The diverse political options for managing the pandemic were spread out on a spectrum from hard-line protectionism through to a looser orientation of “learning to live with Covid”. Wednesday’s Government announcements were a very deliberate shift along that spectrum, from protectionism towards deregulation.
In this sense, the politics of managing Covid has always entailed many different policy options – correlating somewhat with the left-right dimension that we often understand politics by in this country. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and her administration started out in 2020 at what seemed like one end of the spectrum – in favour of heavy restrictions and an elimination approach. This was strongly informed and endorsed by health professionals, and the Green Party was very much onside. It felt like a left-wing approach that put the health of the public first.
At the other end of the spectrum there were always those, especially in the business community and on the political right, who wanted to “learn to live with the virus” and an insistence we could somehow “return to normal”. National and Act have generally aligned more with this approach – arguably to National’s cost in the 2020 election.
Over recent months, as circumstances have changed with a highly vaccinated public and Omicron’s relentless march, it seems that both the public and the Labour Government have been travelling along that political spectrum, from left to right, becoming less convinced of the need for a hard-line Covid protectionist approach and more accepting of opening up the country and living with Covid.
Jacinda Ardern has personified that shift. She was originally all about “going hard and early” on Covid, and about “the team of five million”. More recently, you’d struggle to find such sentiments. Yesterday she spoke more about how exhausted everyone was with that approach and how we needed to find a new normal.
So with yesterday’s announcements, has the Government ended up being in the optimal place on that Covid spectrum?
It’s inevitable that those on the left and right of Labour will dissent and express disappointment that the Government is being too restrictive or not restrictive enough. Of course, the Government will take some satisfaction in the notion that by being in the middle of this spectrum, with complaints to the left and right, they’ve probably got the compromise about right.
Certainly, most public commentators are in a consensus that the Government has read the public mood correctly. For example, Herald political editor Claire Trevett says that the loosening of restrictions will result in some public anxiety, but that “acceptance will be more widespread than the fear”. She argues that New Zealand is successfully “living with Covid” already, and the impact of the more restrictive measures like mandates and passes “were responsible for stretching – and tearing – the unity that was so critical in Ardern’s handling of the pandemic’s first two years.”
Trevett suggests that unhappiness about the mandates and passes has been growing, as even vaccinated people become more sympathetic to the plight of the unvaccinated whose lives have been severely impacted and who have felt marginalised by society.
Stuff’s political editor Luke Malpass also seems to approve of the announcement, saying “some of the most divisive and now pointless elements of the system are being dismantled.” He thinks there will be general positivity about the end of most mandates and vaccine passes, saying the “announcements were of life-changing importance to a small group of New Zealanders who, for whatever reason, chose not to be or were unable to be vaccinated. But for most, it’s ending small nuisances.”
