Turns out I’m not the only journalist to notice the worrying similarities between Daniel Andrews and Jacinda Ardern. Both are socialists who are slavishly devoted to every fashionable leftist cause. Their inane commieraderie is evident from their giggling, fangirl photo-op during Ardern’s visit last year.
And, as socialists invariably seem to be, they’re both nursing a closet dictatorial side that merely needed the handy excuse of a global pandemic to run off the chain.
In 2020 they have both emerged as anti-COVID zealots, willing to sacrifice any quantum or type of economic and social activity and any civil liberty if that is what it takes – or they think that’s what it takes – to squash the SARS-Cov-2 virus out of existence within their borders.
In keeping with their socialist delusions, both seem to imagine that sopisticated economies can be “frozen” without long-term cost.
Coincidentally, fresh evidence of the economic cost of this single-minded zealotry became available on both sides of the Tasman on Thursday.
The New Zealand statistical agency reported that real GDP contracted by a stunning 12.2 per cent in the second quarter, following a 1.4 per cent decline in the first quarter.
Global data shows a rough correlation with the stringency of restrictions and the subsequent economic decline. New Zealand’s decline is 14th largest out of 38 countries.
We will never have comparable data for Victoria because quarterly gross state product (GSP) data are not produced. However, we do have the labour force data released on Thursday, which show the story is very much one of Victoria and the rest. In August, employment and hours worked in Victoria fell and unemployment rose, going in the opposite direction to the rest of Australia.
Victoria’s restrictions are quite likely the toughest in the world. Andrews hasn’t started shooting demonstrators on sight or banishing COVID infections to gulags in Shepparton, but it’s a close-run thing. Consequently, while the rest of Australia recovered about 70% of the pandemic-induced jobs decline from March to May, Victoria went backwards.
Victoria has become a multi-billion dollar drag on the national economy.
New Zealand doesn’t have states, of course, but the restrictions imposed on Auckland alone are a good proxy for Victoria’s millstone around the rest of Australia. If Ardern continues to hit the panic-button every time an Aucklander sneezes (or, as seems more likely, new infections slip through quarantine), New Zealand’s economy can expect to keep lagging behind as well.
Bizarrely, though, the harder Andrews and Ardern fail, the harder the fans on both sides of the Tasman cling to the unshakable belief that both are doing a sterling job.
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