What we have learned this week, with absolute clarity, is that our borders will have to remain closed for a long time to come. Those talking about a trans-Tasman bubble are not thinking straight. Until there are no new cases in Australia, and no chance of new cases, the bubble is not possible. And, as neither Australia nor New Zealand are prepared to close their borders to repatriating citizens (and, indeed, how could they?), there will continue to be cases at the border.
This means that no-one can be allowed in the country without at least a two week quarantine, now or in the foreseeable future. That is the bottom line. I think we should be exceedingly grateful to the two women whose case exposed the failures of implementation of this policy. Their frightening experience has been a salutary lesson to the nation. The government got the policy absolutely right. We will have to manage, and try to thrive, by ourselves until the Covid threat has passed.
The threat is very proximate. Daily number of infections worldwide is now approaching 200,000. The number of deaths worldwide is approaching half a million. And we are probably still in the early stages of the pandemic. As the disease rages in the world around us, the current border policy is our only hope to keep NZ free of Covid-19.
The frightening anger unleashed against those grieving, isolated, women, the name-calling (that ridiculously misogynist term ‘Karen’), the blame-the-victim stuff showed a very different face of New Zealand than our official policy of ‘be kind’. It is quite possible, though, that the anger was fuelled by the unconscious realisation that if we are to remain Covid free, things will not be the same for a long time to come.
There is not going to be an Australian resurgence to save the ski season. There are currently 110 live cases in Victoria alone, and some signs of a slight resurgence, including community transmission. And because that number is not nil and is unlikely to get to and stay at nil for a long time yet, we cannot mingle with them.
Things are very bad elsewhere. Most countries seem to have given forms of lockdown around 6-8 weeks to work. Often, those periods ran out at the end of May. The fight was declared over. And now, numbers are starting to climb again, especially in the USA. This is not the second wave, but the second act of the first wave.
Brazil is fulfilling its promise to be the world experiment for what happens when a pandemic is simply ignored. It is not a pretty sight. India is not far behind, and it is interesting that two cases caught at the border are New Zealanders returning from there.
Right wing groups – and governments – all over the world now equate freedom with the right to freely mingle, catch and transmit this deadly disease. Those people refusing to be tested in quarantine have apparently adopted a position that having a nostril swab is a breach of their human rights. Frankly, if they think that way they should not have decided to return home. There are plenty of countries proclaiming rights over good policies, where they may feel more at home.
The Covid has always been a political disease, and the parlous state of politics in many parts of the world has hampered public health efforts to control the spread. When looking for someone to blame, it must be those governments that have refused to control the disease, ignored the WHO and who now pretend there is nothing amiss.
We are not immune from impatient white blokes itching to be ‘free’. In a weekend column, someone called Damian Grant stated that our current policy is untenable. In a quote memorable for its sheer idiocy, he noted: “At some point our concern for the welfare of Grandma is going to be overtaken by our desire to visit the Grand Canyon”. Try telling Granny that your little trip is more important than her life. I am sure she will understand.
It is not the time for anger, recriminations, spurious rights claims or the whining of selfish blokes. Einstein said: “Anger dwells only in the bosom of fools”.
It was such a great feeling when we were declared Covid free, and it is within our grasp to retain that status except at the borders, where cases will come in and hopefully now be dealt with efficiently. Fingers crossed that the two women did not inadvertently infect anyone and that border controls now remain firm.
I am so sorry for those who have successfully pursued international tourism for so long. It must feel very personal to have your future stymied by a virus. But the government is doing exactly the right thing. We must concentrate on building our domestic economy and other export industries that do not require large influxes of uncontrolled people. New Zealand is an innovative country and now is the time to think outside the square. We can export our Covid-free status without jeopardising it. Hold the line. Be positive. This too will pass.
Dr Liz Gordon is a researcher and a barrister, with interests in destroying neo-liberalism in all its forms and moving towards a socially just society. She usually blogs on justice, social welfare and education topics.
Damien Grant’s article shows again libertarian theory’s inability to process in a pandemic world or economy. Their only option appears to be herd immunity – which has shown itself to be ineffective with this virus. I’m sure the UK’s tourist industry is running a roaring trade & I’d love to see how many people will take up Mr Grant’s offer of a trip to the Grand Canyon – regardless of Granny’s health (though I often think with the inherent arrogance embedded into libertarian thinking they believe they’d personally be immune to the debilitation).
Excellent article, I’m sure you speak for many people although there will be a few who cannot stand the idea that the government can do anything useful.
Maybe we could call the right wing economics, zombie economics – the virus we have to have to be part of the zombie world economy.
We all agree in this house Liz.
Good article.
D J S
Yes this Pandemic is more dangerous than we have been told by World health Organisation was aware of long ago.
Italian researchers have now found traces of Covid 19 in city sewers!!!!
This highlights how widespread the virus can spread to re-infect us all again like the “Black Death bubonic Plague was’ during the Europe’s pandemic in the 1300’s that killed 20 million.
https://www.history.com/topics/middle-ages/black-death
The Black Death was a devastating global epidemic of bubonic plague that struck Europe and Asia in the mid-1300s. The plague arrived in Europe in October 1347, when 12 ships from the Black Sea docked at the Sicilian port of Messina. People gathered on the docks were met with a horrifying surprise: Most sailors aboard the ships were dead, and those still alive were gravely ill and covered in black boils that oozed blood and pus. Sicilian authorities hastily ordered the fleet of “death ships” out of the harbor, but it was too late: Over the next five years, the Black Death would kill more than 20 million people in Europe—almost one-third of the continent’s population.
My son and his partner just flew home from Germany last week on Sunday 14th and were Covid 19 tested on 16th and now on 22nd June after six days is yet still waiting to get their testing results back and they are now only 6 days away from leaving the isolation unit to go back into the freely mixed population so the system is yet to be truly fixed.
I thought it was brilliant until I read the past paragraph.
You may feel sorry for people involved in tourism but i am not. Many of them exploited people in the low-wage economy. And far from being a good component of the economy it was thoroughly bad: gross overconsumption of fossil fuels with their commensurate emissions!
What is more, the writing has been on the wall for tourism for a long time -ever since the realities of Peak Oil and Planetary Meltdown became quantified. There is the profoundly unsustainable economic aspect to consider, plus the direct damage tourist do to the local environment. So anyone who persisted in ‘investing’ in tourism has nobody but themselves to blame when the thing comes to an end. The warnings were loud and clear.
‘But the government is doing exactly the right thing.’
No, it’s not. It’s promoting domestic tourism when there are far better strategies for dealing with the mal-investment that has occurred since the 1980s, before which tourism hardly existed in NZ.
Like all short-term aberrations, tourism will soon be gone.
The sort of tourism we have had here is madness and will stop permanently.
Too much tourism isn’t the only problem we have we also have too much cheap labour and far too many people have been allowed to come here when our infrastructure can’t cope. Now we have all these people wanting to return we can’t stop them but we can put policies in place to manage them and we may need to start looking at charging people for some of the quarantine costs as this is starting to blow out. Those coming back need to stop whinging and be bloody thankful, they also need to comply otherwise bugger of back to to where they came from. Many who have and are returning obviously had money to travel in the first place we don’t need them coming back and ruining it all.
I agree Michelle it is dumb. Instead of seriously helping our unemployed to take up jobs this was a quick fix and that is all.
In the last week I met a couple of young dutch people on a visiting visa who had been working on a dairy farm for a set salary, that they said worked out $19 an hour plus a house in Balclutha, I did query them about the hours and they said all up it was about right for a 40 hour week, some weeks 30 and some weeks 50 but they did keep track of it. They didn’t have kids so they both worked at the same time. Sounds okay if you want to live in the countryside and get up at the crack of dawn, not everyone’s cup of tea.
The forestry industry were bemoaning the lack of workers in that industry and quoting the big money over $1000 a week. Then Lisa Owen (Checkpoint) did it for a day, you get picked up at around 5am for travel that is an hour or so, you have an expected rate of 1000 trees a day, this is working on a rugged slope. They showed all this on her show, tough tough work and she was exhausted at the end of the day and slept in her clothes. it was very clear that perhaps 1 or 2 earn that fabulous amount of money but most don’t. One man said he never carried 100 young trees around on his back because it was too heavy, I can’t imagine what it would do to ones back over a period of time. They guys get home at about 7.30 – 8pm… what a life and then you have to cook your dinner, or talk to your wife and kids, in this day and age in a wealthy country that is complete bullshit!
That silly brainless Bennett set up that scheme whereby if you were unemployed you could move your whole family to say Christchurch for work, with a maximum relocation payment of $5000.
We should be doing things far better than this.. If you want people to locate this is what you do>
Find them a job with liveable wages, find them a house, fined them schools for their kids, find them a community… the idea that people would move when they have no idea about any of these things was ridiculous. Moving away from the structures they know which most likely include family was never going to work.
Two points regarding returning travellers to NZ,
1) Why are they not paying for their hotels, quarantine themselves when everyone else in NZ has to pay user pays, for accomodation even the homeless…
AKA those on benefits have to pay for emergency housing https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/304122/homeless-borrow-thousands-for-motels while well heeled travellers get their quarantine stays for free and are angry about paying for additional washing when their accomodation, food, power, internet, health care, testing etc all seems to be free on the NZ taxpayer https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/121625975/coronavirus-kiwis-in-govtfunded-quarantine-hotels-living-in-filthy-clothes…
Considering there is likely, the need for quarantines to continue for a long time in NZ as Covid is ramping up again overseas, shouldn’t returning travellers be paying for all their quarantine and isolation costs themselves like accomodation as a cost of coming back to NZ.
It was their choice to come back and was their choice to leave in the first place…
As usual in NZ government policy, user pays to those who live in NZ but freebies for overseas based travellers, coming to shelter in NZ, during the pandemic and probably get a nice benefit too while they wait it out…
Point number 2, the issues with testing have been documented for a long time in NZ, however the media/Bloggers tends not to employ critical thinkers anymore… so it was only when the penny dropped and more people were found with Covid after the fanfare of pretending NZ was Covid free did anybody seem to notice the laughable quarantine situation.
Articles like this were on-going but nobody seemed to be able to connect the dots that it was not exactly good practise going on with testing for Covid and isolation…more hit and miss approach and limited testing.
In this crazy example it sounds like this traveller, started his quarantine in Auckland but was offered 2 bus rides and another internal flight to Christchurch to go to another quarantine facility with 100 other potential Covid passengers! Truely crazy. Later a contact tests positive for Covid.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/121878928/contact-of-two-covid19-cases-flew-to-christchurch-without-being-tested
In NZ we might have been officially Covid free for a few days due to lack of testing and luck, aka low density of people, less males per females per population, better air pollution than other countries and limited testing. I don’t believe that NZ officials did an incredible job with Covid, we just have better conditions for it not to spread.
They should be paying for their food and perhaps a little rent wise but that is it, not their fault they have to go into lockdown.
@ Michel – everyone else has to pay for their accommodation in lockdown, so not sure why the Peter Thiel’s (Another NZ’s citizen who was not born here, nor lives here or contributes here but will be able to get the taxpayers to pay his quarantine expenses, as he flits in and out of NZ) of the world returning to NZ, should get a free stay…
I would be gladly waiting over a year, two, as long as it takes if I could only unite with my bf from another countries!
Seems like only economy and businesses are pitied, which are to adjust and survive – and also get better, modernized.
Thousands couples around the globe are equaled to non-essential and are to wait! That hurts deeply, human drama is absolutely out of sight, and it makes it harder to feel sorry for people hiding in the warmth and safety of their full houses and crying other money.
People should matter, not money!
Lives v Money is a fake argument. It’s really Lives v Lives. The UN WFP chief said that up to 130 million in the 3rd world could starve by the end of the year, not because of the virus, but because of the shutdowns.
But as long as you all feel warm and fuzzy about your acquiescence to the globalist police state, and enthusiasm for your voluntary enslavement, then that’s all that matters. It really is.
Shut downs affect jobs and impact the financially poor.
Food production and distribution can be managed to fed all in NZ but that is not a priority for Business NZ nor the financial system
It is a social consideration that should over ride business and be assumed as a Govt responsibility.
Food production in NZ for Kiwis is another aspect of our vulnerability that is ignored. Our supermarket shelve are full of food produced or packaged overseas. Why. Dont tell me it is necessary for a few to make more profit or you will reveal your shallow neoliberal thinking.
Highly processed food is not necessary and unhealthy anyway.
Our society is so dependent of private business for profit that we are crippled when it comes to conditions that disrupt profit taking.
There is a much better way of organising communities. You don’t leave it to the market but design supply of essentials to meet the needs of all people.
This may well need a socialist govt as wealth in the community gets accumulated by investors otherwise in stead of being circulated within the community.
For example we have many Kiwis without jobs yet we import labour in recent year as neoliberal thinking over rides community social responsibilities.
Our economic reliance on tourism is another market that has been promoted with real damage being done to local environment, infrastructure, displacement of other occupations, complete disregard for fossil fuel consumption, wasted world Non Renewable Natural Resources, pollution and unnecessary energy consumption which has an accumulative negative effect on our sustainability.
You may well ask how NZ got along without tourism and why was it promoted.
Thanks for this really good read – much appreciated.
They weren’t the victim – NZ was. We were the victim of their self-righteous belief that their crying was more important than other people’s lives.
The result of people looking more at the profit margins rather than the welfare of the people.
That’s what they’ve always done. For the right-wing its always been the rights of them over everyone else, their right to do whatever they please no matter how bad it is for anyone else. They actually believe that everyone other than them don’t have a right to have a say in their own lives.
Comments are closed.