Benefit of keeping borders closed

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Why aren’t we talking about the benefits of keeping the borders closed?

  • No hyper tourism
  • Near full employment
  • Higher wages
  • Less migrant exploitation

Imagine how much worse the housing crisis would be with pre-Covid tourism?

If we accept that Covid will require annual injections, that mutations will continue to threaten and acknowledge our supply chains will be marred by lockdowns in poorer countries over time by the virus – then why are we hurrying to open the borders?

Add to this the increase in climate extremes that will drive migration, shouldn’t we be keeping the borders shut rather than open?

Many of the free market neoliberal cows are being slaughtered, why try and resurrect them?

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22 COMMENTS

  1. For years migrants were blamed for the cost of houses going up I wonder who they are blaming now.
    Many countries including Australia are starting to open up and accepting the covid in the same way we except the flu.Lives will be lost but covid is never going to back in the bottle. We need for injected before we proceed down this path but we need to start the conversation

    • No Australia is not opening up.

      NSW is locked out of the federation owing to an outbreak totalling just a few hundred and few want to go there. So it’s not really being treated like the flu now is it?

      But Fiji aren’t having any of this silly lockdown nonsense, now are they? So what if the infection is a little out of control there? At least they’re are open!

    • The migrants are kiwis now, they are all coming back but as Kiwi’s. 120,000 people came back when the borders were closed, they took their money, bought a house and many have now left again.

    • The conversation can start by why N.Z. has been successful in having the strongest economy of the south pacific and why we continue to be out in front with the covid response.
      Counter that to why people want us to be like Australia where there is continued lockdown in Sydney affecting their economy or even worse like the U.K. where Boris is straight out gambling with lives.

      N.Z. IS the model for other countries. Please don’t hold us to other countries that have covid flourishing.

  2. Thirty years of neo liberal stupidity has given us at least two generations fed on a diet of convenience, and indifference to anyone elses issues arising from the process of pushing the addiction to using machines to do everything for us, including thinking.. I talk to young ‘uns now, and am constantly disappointed/shocked at just how utterly useless they would be without them.. The vast majority have no clue as to how they would survive if the internet went down for over an hour, let alone weeks, months, or permanently… The last government started the process of selling some of NZ’s best croplands to build houses on, so it won’t be long before NZ has to import what it used to grow in abundance… One would have to be terminally greedy, thick, bigoted, or just plain stupid to think that any of the neo liberal agenda will ever help anyone in the long term… Those in the top 5% or so may be making out like bandits now, but it’s all built on a series of obvious fallacies.. Which they couldn’t give a short length of rats poo about, until there is no more room for houses, and nobody earning under 100k can afford to eat… And so another of mother Britains acts of barbarism evolves into a man made hell hole… I dare anyone to tell me that kiwis are too smart to let that happen!!

    • Gosh. I havent seen comment for a real honest to goodness Luddite on here for such a long time Stefan.
      Well done.
      Shock surprise the Internet has been with us now for more than a Generation.
      Oh. and by the way. Am on a pension and eat quite well thank you.

      Which red is it that you are drinking nowdays?

    • You’re quite correct Stefan. By and large, Kiwi’s are not that smart, and will be led down the garden path to a third world existence by those who seek to take advantage of their positions of relative power and dominance. I mean, just look at the government and PM they’ve foolishly elected. If anyone thinks Labour are acting in the best long-term interests of NZers, then I’ve got a bargain of a bridge they’ll interested in.

      • Yeah Woolly, who do you think we should vote for instead of Labour? Better the Devil you know with Jacinda’s mob than the incompetent & buffoonish National Party & the Neoliberal Act Party pushing more rightwing rubbish thats been a proven failure? Go ahead then & vote for Chucky’s bride Judith Collins & her Dancing with the Stars embarassing twerker, David Seymour! Both are as useless as a one legged man at a ass kicking contest? If you want the Country to go completely to hell vote for a Nat/Act Alliance! Personally, I think I‘ll stick with Labour, at least there trying to fix NZ’s problems rather than kicking the can down the road & being in denial like the idiotic Natz!

  3. Rather than continuing to pump billions of dollars into the comatose, climate-unfriendly tourism industry, the govt should make the hard call of looking much more seriously at our ability to become more sustainable, and investing in this. If they could just find the political will to do that, then our longer term future would be healthier.

  4. Well said Martyn. Covid has given us a chance to rethink our values and our economic model. Our past economy has been busily destroying our future survival. As to how the future will look is unknown, but we should be in no rush to recreate the flawed past. Blue prints, like Australia’s, as to how we come out of the Covid event are really just hypotheses and already in disarray with their latest outbreaks.

  5. Sadly the fox is in charge of the hen house, aka the exploiters have the governments ear. Covid saved them last time. Great points.

    Why aren’t we talking about the benefits of keeping the borders closed?

    No hyper tourism
    Near full employment
    Higher wages
    Less migrant exploitation

  6. Lets sit back and see how the UK goes on opening up, based on there effort so far I predict many more will die, a new variant will strike, they will need a new vaccine and they will be forced to use the L word and then the rich will hide in their castle and all for money.

  7. The government was reported as saying today that New Zealand will be held captive to Covid-19 for the foreseeable future, regardless of the actions of other countries deciding to return to normality (Stuff, 2021). The article quotes Minister Hipkins stating alarmingly and without evidence that if we end restrictions and open borders “there will be more people dying”. Well yes fatalities are cumulative, death was a fact of life before 2019 and nothing has changed since. He also states “the world could start to get on top of Covid-19 for a period – and then we could find that there are new variants that flare it all up again”. Pure speculation from Hipkins again without evidence (the type of partial narrative that could be considered ‘conspiracy’ by government and which would certainly be censored by most social media companies). And even if cases did start to rise of some disease or another, it probably wouldn’t be because we ended mask wearing, opened our borders or mixed with the world, it’s because people going about their lives naturally succumb to illness and get sick. We simply cannot chase down every molecular variant of a disease hoping to protect citizens, this would grind the treating of disease to a standstill at best and is ludicrous pseudoscience at worst. Ardern herself said in the article “this virus is not done with the world yet”. Covid-19 is apparently from the family of corona viruses which mutate naturally over time and which affect every one in the community somewhat differently. The symptoms of Covid-19 should be concentrated on short term (combined with healthy practices), or in extreme measures isolating the elderly and risk groups, rather than subjecting whole populations to an impromptu clinical trial which no one has consented to, using vaccines which no one knows anything about (weaponised products rather than protective medicines. Maybe the least vulnerable in society somehow have the most to lose?). A virus is not as Ardern seems to suggest a specific entity or an anthropomorphous baddie lurking in the shadows ready to mug the elderly, or is subject to reason or our social peculiarities.

    Throughout the Covid pandemic, broadcast journalists such as Julia Hartley-Brewer have had the skills and courage to question the narrative, push back on the people involved in decision making and give voice to the affected communities. Journalists such as Neil Clark at RT News (2021) have also been accurate and refreshingly forthright in their writings about Covid and society, penning another good piece on the mindset of social media-driven fanaticism recently, arguing that some in society cannot or will not let go of medical authoritarianism and the virtue signalling attached to it. Perhaps some have too much to lose by going back to the old normal: their pride or reputation might be at stake, maybe even their supply chain contracts could be at risk. But if the rest of the world comes out of restrictions and the viral variants naturally spread globally, doesn’t that mean New Zealanders who venture overseas will eventually come into contact with these diseases anyway? Isn’t a quarantined, isolated New Zealand an exercise in futility, if not more of a risk for our citizens?

    RT. (2021). The proposed relaxing of Covid restrictions in England has sparked a social media meltdown from ‘new abnormal’ enthusiasts. Retrieved from
    https://www.rt.com/op-ed/528445-covid-restrictions-relaxed-twitter-melt-down/

    Stuff. (2021). Covid-19: Government considers permanent MIQ facility, dismisses UKs decision to live with Covid. Retrieved from https://i.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/125662926/covid19-government-considers-permanent-miq-facility-dismisses-uks-decision-to-live-with-covid

  8. https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/sunday/audio/2018767843/near-extinction-of-influenza-in-nz-as-numbers-drop-due-to-lockdown

    You appear to present to us that Hipkins is wrong yet a journalist is right? Who makes you the arbitrator of such?
    The above link shows that when a virus is contained the probable outcome is a positive one.
    I have listened to medical experts and Hipkins and believe they have the skills and courage to make the right choices rather than journalists who believe they are the authority on who live and who die.

  9. Yep. Keep them borders closed. The sea is the moat for our castle. Interestingly, the incidence of new strains of flu aren’t hitting us like they used to…and do we really need this ever growing bunch of cheap foreign labour when we can supply and train up our own? And pay our own a REAL wage? And while we consolidate ourselves, we can also blow apart the neo liberal myth that we NEED all those foreigners to flip more hamburgers…

    And we can pressure govts to do the Micky Joseph Savage thing and command the Reserve Bank to release finances to have a massive nationwide housing build, train apprentices, build more hospitals, more schools, renationalize assets, build deep water ports for Northland complete with modern rail, create long term employment opportunity’s for the rural sector to revitalize those community’s, develop offshore breeding habitats for our fisheries and a fisheries fleet to match, and increase our Navy to be an efficient policing force of those fisheries. And that’s just a smidgeon of possibility’s once the neo liberal is put firmly underfoot.

    You get the drift.

    • Loud and clear! I totally agree Wild Katipo; time to excise the ‘the rich getting richer on the efforts of the poor’ from our shores. Their was a time when a family could live on a single income – sure expectations weren’t as high, but we weren’t serfs working for foreign masters.

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