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Robert MacCulloch
Robert MacCulloch is a native of New Zealand and worked at the Reserve Bank of NZ before he travelled to the UK to complete a PhD in Economics at Oxford University.
Days after this blog released its Two Minute Covid Inquiry, which argued Labour leader and former Covid-19 Minister Chris Hipkins, together with former PM Ardern and Health Chief Ashley Bloomfield, ordered the Covid vaccine late, which crushed the NZ economy and smashed trust in government as it forced them into an over-reliance on lock-downs in 2021, the Australian Covid Inquiry has released near identical findings, almost word-for-word:
The first wide-ranging inquiry into the nation’s pandemic response has found delays procuring Covid-19 vaccines cost lives and delivered a $31 billion hit to the economy.
In NZ’s case, it was a $15 billion hit, which is why our health system is now underfunded, infrastructure crumbles and teachers are underpaid. Australia and NZ matched each other in terms of snail’s pace vaccine roll-out, probably because we copied each other and didn’t match world best practice. This blog, and myself, were savaged by the Labour government at the time, mainly via by its henchmen in the mainstream media, for daring to argue the late order had caused a calamity for NZ. Sir John Key defended us. NewsTalk ZB put me on their show. No one else. The following lines from the Sydney Morning Herald are most telling:
Australians don’t need reminding of what it feels like to be subject to stay-at-home orders ... five-person picnics, made to wear face masks outdoors or get vaccinated to go to work. Most lived through it. What is now clear is that they won’t do it again.
Not according to Mr Bloomfield’s editorial in the latest NZ Medical Journal. He says we need even more stringent lockdowns next time around, involving NZ’s “security services” and full “security apparatus”, which I presume means the army and SIS intelligence services. At least the tell-it-as-it-is Aussies state in their inquiry that the main lesson is how the Ardern-Hipkins-Bloomfield style approach destroys society as we know it. These lines from the Australian Inquiry can be photocopied to the NZ experience:
Australians’ trust has been eroded, health systems are struggling and inflation pressures from government pandemic stimulus are still hurting the economy five years after the first Covid-19 case was detected, the first wide-ranging inquiry into the national response has found ... The most disturbing finding from the inquiry released on Tuesday is that trust among Australians has been eroded. It’s so broken that surveys find one in five people would not get a vaccine offered by the government in a future health emergency. Only three in 10 had high trust in the federal government to have done the right thing at the height of the pandemic. This will be its most damaging legacy.
The latest trust surveys in New Zealand record a similar across-the-board erosion of trust.
The inquiry delivered a resolute verdict about how our leaders failed us. Trust started high. But as the months wore on and sacrifices piled up, they didn’t explain their actions. Nor were those actions based on evidence. Widespread school closures, for example, were never recommended by the Australian Health Protection Principal Committee. Children are still affected by hits to their mental health, school attendance and academic outcomes. Vaccine mandates are an even more concerning case study.
NZ doesn’t need to waste money on Covid inquiries. The Aussies have done ours for us. It matches what this blog argued since 2021, as evidenced by our writings and radio interviews. Maybe more than any other institution, our mainstream media – Radio NZ, One News, Herald, Newshub (who phoned me to get stuck into my late-order-vaccine claims and discredit me) and Stuff – should take a look at themselves and ask why they sold out Kiwis by not objectively scrutinizing NZ’s government during those times. No wonder you’re bankrupting. No one likes you or trusts you anymore.
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This article was originally published by Down to Earth Kiwi.
