Talkback hosts have been fielding hostile calls all week. Little wonder that they’ve been damning in their weekly columns. Heather du Plessis-Allan is scathing of the government in her column:
The Government’s decision to extend Auckland’s level 3 lockdown is a massive disappointment. Worse, it is a failure: a failure by authorities to properly prepare New Zealand for the inevitable return of Covid.
The disease was always going to come back. We’ve seen that across the world: Vietnam, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Victoria.
If that was a given – and it was – why didn’t authorities spend every minute since the last lockdown preparing the country so we wouldn’t need another one? Those 102 days of no community transmission were days we bought for them with the first lockdown. Kiwis paid for it with their jobs, their businesses, their mental health, and other immeasurable costs.
The Employers and Manufacturers Association’s Brett O’Riley says “the business community have done their part … and it’s only a reasonable expectation that every precaution is taken at the border to ensure that this virus is contained”.
We did our part. Why didn’t they do theirs?
Good question. She continues:
This week we watched health authorities fail at virtually every task. They didn’t have enough testing stations, they didn’t have enough PPE for nurses (again), and, in a mind-blowingly stupid twist, we discovered they weren’t testing all border workers to stop them bringing it into New Zealand.
…
Lockdowns should not be the go-to option. They should be the last resort. They are too expensive. They cost people’s livelihoods, their jobs and their businesses.
This is not an objection to the attempts to prevent Covid’s spread. It is an objection to health authorities having no option but nuclear, because they weren’t ready for something they knew would happen. It is an objection to the failure of those authorities and the ministers in charge of them to prepare the safeguards to prevent another lockdown.
We had more than three months without community transmission. It cost Kiwis so much to make that possible. Why didn’t authorities use that time to prepare for the inevitable?
How many more times will they need to put us into expensive lockdowns to buy them time?
We can’t keep doing this. The damage is worse each time.
Kerre McIvor is similarly hostile:
… it hasn’t been a great week for the Prime Minister and the Director General.
They must have known from last time that people would demand to be tested once Covid was in the community but there weren’t nearly enough testing stations and the poor staff were simply overwhelmed.
It was also revealed this week that 63 per cent of frontline border security and quarantine staff have yet to be tested for Covid.
It seems farcical that with all this banging on about saying yes to the test, we’re not screening the very people who are in contact with freshly returned Kiwis.
Add that to the misinformation about PPE gear and the flu vaccines and you’d have to say that there have been some major stuff-ups from the Government and the Health Department. But dare to say that, should you have the temerity to so much as murmur a criticism of the PM and the faithful turn on you.
The people mobilising to defend the ‘Covid Queen’ are hardly practising kindness either, with some of them wishing violent harm to those of us who raise valid questions about failures.
When did we all get so binary and, in some cases, bats*** crazy? Those who worship at the Church of St Jacinda and the Holy Bloomfield are blind to any wrongs or failings of their demigods.
You simply cannot have a free and frank exchange of views with some people – it’s like the Springbok tour all over again. If you dare to suggest the Government has made mistakes, the acolytes cast you into the camp of the conspiracy theorists who are alive and well and fomenting their madness all across social media. They – the acolytes and the tinfoil hat-wearers – are blind to reason and rationale.
When I express incredulity that border security staff aren’t being routinely tested, that doesn’t mean I think that Ashley Bloomfield has the mark of the beast on his forehead.
When Sandra Goudie, the Thames Coromandel Mayor, said she was annoyed that the PM announced a lockdown but put police on the borders only 15 hours after the announcement, thus allowing Aucklanders to flee to their baches for the duration of the lockdown, that doesn’t mean she believes the PM is an evil person with a hidden agenda to turn New Zealand into a communist country.
When Professor Des Gorman says the Government has been too reactive and too partisan when dealing with Covid, he’s not saying the virus is being introduced back into the community by government agents. He’s expressing a considered opinion that has some merit.
When did people get so rabid and lacking in nuance? Covid hasn’t just robbed us of our freedoms; it’s robbed us of our senses.
I’m not sure Jacinda Ardern will be happy with her election plans being upset in such a dramatic manner.
The anger on the streets of Auckland is palpable, and that will be coming off the government’s support.
They were so high in the polls, now the only way is down. They thought they were going to march to glory. Now it appears they’ll be dragged from their offices in ignominy.
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