Relaxing the borders risks us returning to a more restricted lockdown. Photo / Michael Craig
COMMENT
Right now, some of New Zealand's cleverest businesspeople are tearing their hair out at how slowly the Government is moving on policies that would allow a careful reopening of our borders.
There is the CovidCard proposal, pursued with the kind of commercial aggression and single-mindedness that gentler souls can easily interpret as arrogant and self-interested.
There's the new report from the New Zealand Initiative, the economic rationalist think-tank backed by some of the country's most progressive chief executives.
The Initiative wants travel freed up between New Zealand and Covid-free Taiwan, Covid-free Pacific Islands — starting with the so-called "Realm" territories, the Cooks and Niue — and "safe" bits of Australia.
"If the Australian Prime Minister then wishes to make it difficult for Australians in safe states to take a winter holiday in New Zealand, that is for him to discuss with his electorate," the Initiative suggests.
It also proposes that the Government issues vouchers to subsidise the cost of managed quarantine for "returning Kiwis whose stays the Government would wish to support".
Private provision of managed isolation would be encouraged, under strict Government supervision, to increase the number of quarantine facilities and allow more people to come here than the stuffed-full current accommodation allows.
Those private facilities could charge a commercial rate for a quarantine stay but "the Government would charge each facility for the full cost of police, military, and other staff involved in managed isolation". All terribly logical.
Elsewhere, major hurdles face industries that require highly skilled, specialist contractors and employees to come to New Zealand to advance infrastructure and other commercial projects.
And there is frustration among some senior businesspeople that the country is turning away a slew of applications from wealthy, talented, potential investors in New Zealand who want to move here as a safe haven from a Covid menace that may be around for years to come.
They are lobbying and complaining, most privately, to Government agencies and ministers about the resulting missed economic opportunity.
Some are so out of touch that they talk darkly of a politically motivated campaign of fear being pursued through daily press briefings on the Covid situation, where the vast majority of New Zealanders see those briefings as indicators of success.
They seem unaware that people who are financially secure have considerable control over their lives and careers, and are in leadership positions and are wired to accept risk in ways that lesser mortals simply do not wish to accept.
It doesn't matter who's right about this. What matters is that arguments for border opening are almost unwinnable in such an environment.
Also caught in this dynamic are international tourism operators, universities and other providers of education for international students, all of whom are suffering because the borders are closed to almost all non-New Zealanders.
So far, none of these initiatives — many backed by significant lobbying budgets and co-ordination with like-minded industries — is getting much traction.
There are two main reasons for this.
The first is that too many of these businesspeople are trapped in a mindset that assumes the economic and health responses to Covid are inherently opposing forces: that if the health response is too strong, it will weaken the prospects for economic resurgence.
They are, quite simply, wrong. It is increasingly clear that a strong health response underpins economic resilience, albeit with anything up to about 6 per cent of the economy that used to exist no longer able to operate at all.
But acting in the interests of that 6 per cent puts the other 94 per cent at risk.
Just ask someone in Melbourne whether they think going back into lockdown has been better or worse for the Victorian economy.
Or a Queenstown tourism operator who was hoping for Australian skiers this winter, but will see no one from Aussie for far longer than might have been the case if the virus had been better controlled in that country.
These critics are wrong, too, if they assume that the populations of Pacific Island nations are uniformly willing to risk their Covid-free status by allowing New Zealanders to visit and revive their tourism economies.
Logic may say it is safe.
But logic does not hold sway in a pandemic and the major bounceback now occurring in the New Zealand economy is testimony to the fact that when people feel safe, they will return to life pretty much as normal.
The risk of some border opening may be very small, but there is neither public nor political appetite to take even a calculated risk that could sacrifice the relative normality we have within our borders now for solely economic reasons.
To see why a rational businessperson's argument just won't fly in the current environment, look to the extreme opposition being demonstrated by some New Zealanders to fellow citizens who simply want to return home.
That is not to say there should be no pressure on the Government to consider how and when a border reopening might become appropriate.
Knowledge of the virus is constantly improving and credible treatments may be starting to emerge. Heightened political nervousness on the issue, thanks to the election campaign, will dissipate once a new government is in place after September 19.
And once the current wave of post-lockdown spending and relief passes, a far less buoyant economy will become much more visible. The public appetite for concessions on border opening may well start to grow as those realities bite.
But until some of those factors start appearing, it would be heroic to imagine that public mood or political will emerge to support border opening that would increase public health risk in exchange for increased business activity.
The stance taken so far by the new National Party leader, Judith Collins, suggests this is a cross-party view. She has been taking the fight to the Government in other ways, but she has lined up with it in her comments on the pre-eminent priority to keep New Zealanders safe.
Well-meaning though the border-opening lobby undoubtedly is, it is unlikely to succeed by seeking to convince an uninterested public that the Government — and they — are wrong-headed.
In fact, the current focus on the border is arguably wrong-headed if the goal is to maximise economic revival.
A more productive focus would be to ensure that spending decisions pouring forth from the Covid Recovery Fund are well-reasoned and well-executed. There is massive potential for blundering and pork-barreling, given the vast sums of borrowed taxpayer dollars involved.
For now, the most that New Zealand can do to secure as strong an economy as possible, to combat a global recession of large but unknown proportions, is to make sure that everything we do inside the borders has the best chance of hitting an economic home run — and being ruthless about those that won't.
- BusinessDesk
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