Donald Digby
Having been an ex-pat for close to 15 years now it was wonderful to finally make it back home to New Zealand for a long-overdue Christmas and New Year. This was the longest I had ever been away from home and as much as I was looking forward to the trip I did wonder what life would be like there now.
The Good.
New Zealand is still a great country, the air is clean, nature surrounds you, the people are friendly and strangers chat easily about this and that. Despite what you read in the news and see on TV, it feels like most people are over the virus and just keen to get on with their lives. No matter where we went it was obvious a lot of people were not scanning in and places that asked for a vax passport did so reluctantly and with only the most cursory of checks. The same can be said for the masks. Sure, in the big malls and supermarkets people were wearing them, but outside those types of places, not so much. I would not quite call the general feeling a full-blown rebellion against the government just yet but there was definitely a ‘Yeah, Nah’ feel to the mandates and ‘the rules’.
The Bad.
Covid dominates everything. It’s impossible to have a conversation with anyone without it coming up. That it’s being rammed down people’s throats is obvious – you simply cannot escape it. If you go to the park with the kids, there’s the Covid QR code; watch the news each night and the first item, every time, is Covid. Look at the papers, it’s the same. It’s on the radio and it’s in your living room.
The level of propaganda is insane. You’re not allowed to forget about it, to the point where it’s like there’s nothing else to talk about, or worse, people have forgotten there are other things to talk about.
During our 2 months in New Zealand there were fatal shootings every week, 3-4 kiddies bashed to death and goodness knows how many ‘water incidents’, which I can only assume mean drownings. The price of everything is eyewatering; the Labour Government is spending money like a drunken sailor and yet it really felt like none of these things even mattered because, you know, Covid.
Gang culture is everywhere. Not everyone is a patched up member but it’s obvious: gang colours are tied to rear vision mirrors and bikers roam the roads. Crime and violence are through the roof. On the flip side to that, what happened to the police? Where did they go? I saw more officers in MIQ than during the whole trip and the ones I did see looked like they were running scared, happy to police speed limits in the usual hotspots but otherwise invisible. We drove most days at all hours for two months over Christmas and New Year and didn’t even hear about a breath test stop, let alone see one! The change since my last trip home 3 years ago is eye-opening.
The Ugly.
MIQ is an acronym everyone throws about as if it’s no big deal, although it’s been in the news a lot lately with some high profile cases being picked up by the media. As sad and cruel as these cases are, so what? They are no different to anything tens of thousands of Kiwis have been subjected to for the last 2 years. The cruelty of being denied entry to your own country is just one example and even now the situation is only being addressed reluctantly.
Never in the history of our country has such an abomination been forced upon our citizens. The government was able to do it because it was aided and abetted by the majority of NZ citizens who, for the most part, sat around and did nothing. When they write the story of Covid this will prove to be New Zealand’s greatest shame.
So adios home! See ya later. We are back off into the world, a world that’s waking up to life after Covid. I hope New Zealand can do the same because the longer it stays asleep the more the bad will outweigh the good.
