The Government’s borrowing requirement is set to dwarf pre-Covid levels. Over the five-year forecast period, Westpac sees the Government raising $140b in bonds, $12b higher than the previous forecast of $128b.
Westpac is now pointing to 6% OCR because of huge immigration pressures, that’s the umpteenth time in a row the economists have been wrong about an OCR peak.
Yes our economy has been malformed and warped by the Covid response, but all those screaming at those ramifications ignore why we had to take on that debt in the first place!
COVID!
It’s bizarre that Covid which has shaped all these symptoms in our economy and society, from debt to crime, is not mentioned at all!
It’s like it is Taboo to even speak of it!
This silence damages the Left because we are unable to explain why we are facing the symptoms of the cure we took to protect life in the first place!
We faced a once in a century novel pandemic. We had to make decisions that hurt and damaged many lives.
We all sacrificed for the greater good because that was the best means of dealing with a novel virus.
Were there mistakes?
Of course and there were consequences, and those consequences were worth the alternative which was tens of thousands of dead in a mass death event altho would have mutilated this nation.
Critics pointing at the lack of a mass death event as proof that there never was one ignores what we had to do to ensure that didn’t happen!
It’s the most idiotic argument!
The ease with which we rewrite the recent past, to determine with the luxury of hindsight that Covid was just a cold when it has killed tens of millions around the globe is sophistry.
Let’s remember what Labour and Jacinda’s courage did again?
Why it protected us from a mass death event and saved 20 000 lives!!!
New Zealand’s Covid-19 response saved 20,000 lives – research
New Zealand’s restrictions during the pandemic saved the lives of about 20,000 people, according to new research.
The paper by 16 leading doctors and scientists, published in the New Zealand Medical Journal on Friday, is calling for all serious respiratory infections – including influenza and RSV – to be treated the same way.
Lead author and Otago University public health professor Michael Baker said it was a “strange paradox” of preventative medicine that its success could work against it in people’s minds.
“We have an expression in public health: ‘A public health triumph: nothing happened’.
…did we all sacrifice for greater good over Covid?
Yes we did.
That sacrifice was unequally shared in an unequal society and has caused ruptures in crime, the economy, mental health, political polarisation and the rise of conspiracy theories thanks to social media hate algorithms.
Things are hard, they will get harder still thanks to catastrophic climate change, but imagine if we’d lost 20 000 of us?
How much more damaged things would be from the cultural shockwave of 20 000 dead.
I salute Jacinda’s leadership, I salute Labour’s courage and I salute our shared sacrifice, but what I won’t do is shit on their response and that collective sacrifice by pretending that saving 20 000 lives was a worthless thing to do just because inflation is high, predictable social problems have occurred and Te Reo is spoken too much during the Weather.
Labour deserve our vote this election.
Their courage saved 20 000 lives.
We would be an empty shadow people for not recognising that.
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“It’s bizarre that Covid which has shaped all these symptoms in our economy and society, from debt to crime, is not mentioned at all!
It’s like it is Taboo to even speak of it!”
Chris Hipkins fear of even speaking of it, is a demonstration of the power of far right extremists, who don’t forget, erected a gallows on the lawn of parliament to intimidate our parliamentarians and Prime Minister Ardern personally and the Labour Party administration generally is fully on show.
Just as Chris Hipkins caved into the Right’s opposition to a wealth tax, (which would have helped alleviate some of the hardship left by the pandemic)
Chris Hipkins also caved into far right bullying and intimidation over our covid response.
Instead of fronting up and defending our covid response.
Hipkins’ timidity on this issue and others is why Laboour is losing the election.
Continuing to bring up Covid is the death knell of Labour
Jack. We will continue to be your single source of truth; don’t talk to the neighbours; unless you hear it from us it is not the truth; create a two-tier society; river of filth; ambassador to Ireland.
Covid was a dark time in world history – its foolish to want to rehash it in order to garner some kind of favour! Nonetheless, if there is evidence, as in verifiable scientific proof that certain measures undertaken during that period of time did produce, again, verifiable benefit, then that may be strong enough to help nullify the dark period it will come out of, thus be of use. The proof will be in the pudding….
Fuck no @ AO. The Cov19 pandemic was what we all needed to reevaluate our lives, to consider alternatives, to acknowledge that we dont have control over the universe. Probally a precursor of what lies ahead.
Consider the fuss about the government agency hanging back on expensive life-lengthening, drugs which don’t cure and aren’t preventing the condition, and then think how contrary, unreasonable and impractical and ignorant all of us are. Because we all are, some of those things most of the time – hey we are only human. But to stick tenaciously to griping and anger at top heat is stupid.
It would be better to spell out what the anger is about; the person who has lost their business because of the covid closedowns etc. The family that had to live together for survival while division and dislike grew tio boiling point, etc.
The government was good in the macro measure, but as in the economic sphere in NZ/AO, at the micro level it didn’t offer enough, listen enough, and then carry out the numerous small measures that would have helped already harmed people economically from being battered also socially to breaking point. Ram raiding by the government measures against hapless people! No wonder there was so much angst! One of the new churches has a slogan ‘Real people helping real people’. You can see why that would not seem to be woolly thinking to people feeling the pain of neofreemarket liberality where they live, so to speak.
Reading the comments Martyn, one thing is for certain, you were right about how shallow people are and by their comments they’re all easy to spot.
Very true .While the government can be applauded for what they did I doubt if National would have been much different .It was not a hard call to pull up the drawbridge and let nobody in or out as opposed to other cou tries with vast borders.
Agree I don’t think National or ACT would have done much better they had to listen to their Scientific Advisors.
Trevor. Our isolation as an island country down the bottom of the world, without the daily influx of border crossings which eg the continent experiences, worked to our advantage, but it was we the people, by and large behaving responsibly, which kept the infection rate down, then.
The COVID survivors, housing portfolio bailout victims, struggling untaxed millionaires, public sector Netflix bingers and immigration refugees ten to a room all owe their life blood to Labour. Surely their political sophistication and commitment is not that piss poor that they would take the money and run back into National’s arms? Like a political ram raider?
Agree the problem is NZ’s wealth is concentrated in the top 5-10%, our food supply is controlled by 2 x main players, the Ozzie Banks have us by the short and curlyies, our real estate is driven by Offshore Buyers and Investors, our Infrastructure, Health Department etc has been driven into the ground, where do i stop. NZ needs to get back to the basics and fix the basic things first.
Labour had plenty of opportunity and mandate to fix and reform all of that but they were too timid, not wanting to scare the horses and had lost their sense of history and purpose. They decided to woke virtue signal instead of actually doing the work. They will pay the price for this and so they should.
I think Labour did a magnificent job with the arrival of Covid. So many worked so long and hard and had terrible decisions to make. Chris Hipkins was among a number of MPs who particularly stood out .. I have NOT forgotten.
The Daily Blog continues to “cover-up” peer-reviewed science articles and experts that go against the MSM narrative. Happy days.
Yes Nitrium and the election was stolen from Trump if you listen to Fox News.
Peer reviewed science articles? Where? The Lancelet? Not likely.
Outside a few trusted journals I think you’ll find much – arguably on both sides of the argument – is published in open source journals and is not subject to the rigours of peer review. Or is simply opinion.
Agree I don’t think National or ACT would have done much better they had to listen to their Scientific Advisors.
Jacinta and John Key are similar, they both gave up and threw their parties under the bus.
I remember about David Lange saying that Labour walked away from him. I think Jacinda could be flexible but I think she had more desire to serve NZ than Key, Lange died early but Jacinda has a little child that she and her husband want to see grow up. She seemed to have discernment and honesty, it takes effort to rise above the murk more than to be a financial sharpie.
Key is someone who would fit into financial consultant Alex’s world of cartoons. They are very clever so here’s a few – watch for the sideways shift at the end. (Alex is a British cartoon strip by Charles Peattie and Russell Taylor.)
https://www.alexcartoon.com/
Covid is a red herring. Labour had a majority in its second term that allowed it to transform. The talk (and it was endless) had no walk. Hipkins can’t blame his predecessor. He was her right hand man. He is all talk..no walk..but talk…and angry man yell.
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