It has really surprised me how compliant the New Zealand public has been over COVID. We have had most of our human rights and civil liberties taken away by a benign dictator who has persuaded us all that it is for our own good. Yes, the country is locked off to the world, we are not allowed to travel, gather in large groups or stand less than 2 metres away from others. We are asked to log our movements in a way that any Soviet dictator would be proud of. All this for a disease that kills only small numbers of people, usually only those with serious health conditions anyway. But we have done it, mostly willingly, with maybe a few grumbles but with the majority of people being totally compliant.
Probably the thing that makes me laugh most is watching people actually queue up to access the COVID tracer sign at shops and restaurants. They are not queuing for the hand sanitiser. They are queuing to tell the government all about their whereabouts. You couldn’t make this stuff up.
However, there was always going to be a turning point, and I think we may have just reached it, because on Friday, we lost the rugby.
We were in the running to host the Rugby Championship this November, this tournament being a sad second best after the loss of the full Super Rugby and All Blacks tours this year. Rugby fans were really looking forward to it, and with New Zealand being the most rugby-mad country in the world, of course it had to be held here.
Unfortunately, it is going to be held in Australia.
No, the Aussies have not pulled the rug from under us, like they did over the 2003 World Cup. We lost the hosting rights of this tournament because the government would not relax its rules around quarantine and social distancing for the players arriving from overseas. Australia saw sense and realised that it would be imperative for teams going into a top level tournament to be able to start training almost as soon as they arrived in the host country, and amended the rules, allowing players to commence training almost straight away. New Zealand didn’t. It stuck with its quarantine policy, bending the rules a little, but not enough to make it attractive for players to be able to reach a suitable level of match fitness by the time the tournament started.
The rugby-loving New Zealand public is furious. Not only have we lost a major sports event, but we have also lost a huge economic opportunity, providing some relief for bars, hotels and restaurants, not to mention the sports venues themselves. It would have been a welcome boost to businesses that have done it hard for most of this year, with the COVID outbreak and repeated lockdowns.
But no.
Now people are beginning to wonder if we are ever going to have anything nice again. After all, this tournament is being held in November. We all keep hoping that these lengthy periods in lockdown are going to come to an end before too long. But now we have clear evidence that the government does not see an end to it all any time soon. We are caught in a witches curse, destined to be in lockdown for a hundred years or more.
What it really proves, once again, is that this government has no Plan B. Lockdowns and quarantines are the only tricks they know. They cannot be flexible, they cannot compromise and they cannot find a way out of the hole that we are in. Lockdown is all they have.
Most rugby fans will not be able to go to the games, of course, and the really sad thing is that Australia is not really a rugby nation. Nevertheless, Australia saw an opportunity for its flagging economy that our government was too stupid, too inflexible or too naive to consider.
However, it has been said before. Elections held in World Cup years often go badly for the incumbent government if our team loses. Judging by the comments on talkback radio this weekend, losing this tournament because of inflexibility and a lack of vision is not going to go down well with voters.
Labour dropped the ball. And it will have lost us at least $100 million.
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