Truth of the Day

The Royal Commission has dropped its first 716 page report into the ether.

It will not be read. So comprehensive is our collective amnesia over Covid that it has provided herd immunity around Chris Hipkins’ ministerial career. [...]

“In total, $70.4 billion was allocated to Covid-19 response and recovery initiatives… from mid-2021 onwards, both the pandemic itself and the policy responses to it started having economic and social impacts across society, sectors and regions that were strong, unevenly distributed and negative.” [...]

The Commissioners then outline the costs.

The human impact of locking Kiwis out of the country. Stopping children being with their parents as they died. Preventing kids from socialising with their peers and the decline in education. Increased rates of truancy that persist. Driving the vulnerable to suicide hot-lines. Reckless monetary policy locking a generation out of housing. A mountain of fiscal debt that will be a drag on our economy for the balance of this century. Mandates that forced people out of jobs and careers and drove a level of community mistrust and a breakdown of social cohesion.

And in case there was any lingering uncertainty about the economic costs, on Thursday Treasury released the latest Crown accounts that shows the ongoing impacts of fiscal recklessness.

The four months ending in October resulted in a $2.3b deficit, pushing gross sovereign debt to $192b. The cost of servicing the monster Ardern and Robertson bequeathed to a grateful nation is ten billion dollars.

But this is not a mistake that we can only reflect on in hindsight. It was obvious to even the most clueless. [...]

No one listened then and, now that the results are in, no one wants to acknowledge what happened. [...]

New Zealand is ashamed about what happened in the Covid years and we wish to pretend it did not happen. But it did, and because we refuse to confront this failure ensures that we will do it again.