It was said that the New Zealand public won’t accept another lockdown, and here we are with Auckland back in lockdown. As night follows day, other regions will revert to curfew too.
Like a case of Stockholm Syndrome, where the abused bond with their abusers, we the people never seem to tire of it. We are the beaten woman returning to the drugged-up boyfriend, the hostage snuggling up to the kidnapping assailants.
The PM appeared on television on Tuesday night in a stage-managed set-piece with Labour’s Little Helper, the ever-willing and compliant ‘enabler’, Dr Ashley Bloomfield. Together, they have closed the cabaret and fired the chorus. Who would have thought that there’s an election in five weeks?
The PM is ‘back in control’ and able to do what she does best: scripted twice-daily media presentations, which will keep her front and centre of the nation’s bedazzled collective mind. We won’t be able to think of anything else. We won’t be presented with anything else other than alarmism and its antidote – Mother Jacinda’s breast milk.
As the government’s warnings scream out for Armageddon across the mobile phone networks, only She can protect us.
A number of nations have staged elections during COVID. Singapore recently did. There were no surprises there. Thanks to favourable terms, the long-term incumbent is always returned. What was noteworthy, however, was that some of the strongest and most experienced opposition candidates, such as Tan Cheng Bock, didn’t make the cut.
This can only be due to the sitting government’s perceived ‘good handling’ of the pandemic, coupled with a fear of change in troubled times.
Will the same happen here? Coronavirus ‘management’ is our government’s election-winning strategy. None of its other policies have worked. And most are so bad they are embarrassing.
Thankfully for Labour, the socialist ‘antidote’ to a medical pandemic is the same as its ‘antidote’ for the economy, that is – to centrally plan and fund all activity, and extend to everyone a paid holiday, allowing them to sit around at home doing nothing. And believe me, sitting at home on a wage subsidy, writing emails all day, is the equivalent of doing nothing.
This strategy is hugely popular with the general populace and works well for a time until those in control run out of other people’s money. That’s when it hurts, and that’s when it becomes somebody else’s problem. That is, in fact, when National gets voted back in. And that is when it’s already too late.
We do not need another lockdown. All the evidence suggests that lockdowns don’t work. As a geographically isolated country, we cannot continue to ‘protect the vulnerable’ by imprisoning the population indefinitely and cancelling our economy.
Miss Ardern is on record as saying that the ’team of five million’ beat COVID-19. What patronising nonsense. We are not one team, and we didn’t ‘beat’ anything. The best that we have been able to do is delay the virus’s inevitable onslaught.
This has been at the considerable cost of raising the national debt to more than $100,000 per family by 2024 – a fiscal mountain we can’t possibly climb down from.
The government has recently been on the hunt for COVID cases in order to justify new draconian measures. Until recently, our testing regime within the general population has been woeful. We have absolutely no idea whether our ‘100 days without coronavirus’ is due to its arrest at the borders, or positive tests returning a faulty negative result, or whether the flu-like illness has been with us undetected all along.
Suddenly Ashley Bloomfield, ‘leading by example’, took a test. Then, as if by magic, the Bloomfield groupies began taking tests, and ‘next minute’ we have community transmission – the very thing which Labour needs if it is to set the terms of the COVID election and win it.
Suddenly, and in addition to the other ignominies, we all have to wear face nappies. It’s very important that all community interaction is once again brought to a halt, and terror struck in the hearts of the masses. It’s critical that the ‘new normal’ be re-imposed by the most overt and heavy-handed means possible. This is the smiling face of Jacinda’s new tyranny.
And it’s based on a lie. Our government’s reaction to the pandemic, arrived at through globalist ‘consensus’, has been out of all proportion to the seriousness of the illness. The risk to the young, the fit and the healthy is negligible; the risk to the elderly, obese and infirm more severe.
Even if it were severe in all cases, we need to accept that there’s little we can do about it, and that we face an opposite and greater threat to livelihoods and to liberty by suspending ordinary life for an indefinite period.
What the PM should have done, but didn’t, is use the time since the last lockdown to address our failing and inadequate health service. We should, by now, have more ICU beds and staff, but we don’t.
She could have expanded the private sector’s role in healthcare by making COVID treatable in private facilities, and by making private health insurance tax-deductible. But she didn’t.
She should have come up with ways to protect those amongst the elderly and vulnerable who want to be shielded and helped. Although not all do. Opting out is fine, but what about those who understand the risks and want to opt-in to normal life?
A strong leader is one who makes a tough decision and stands by it. A weak leader panics and follows the crowd. A duplicitous and immoral leader encourages crisis at an opportune time and exploits it for personal gain. Which one are you, Prime Minister? Which one are you?
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