Aigagalefili Fepulea'i Tapua'i, head girl of Aorere College in 2020, is Matthew Hooton's pick for New Zealander of the year. Photo / Supplied
Enjoying your holiday? Did you choose Northland or the Southern Lakes? Maybe Coromandel, Wairarapa or Abel Tasman? Sadly, Whistler or Hakuba are out.
New Zealand has achieved what, back in March, I called the idyllic scenario. As the pandemic rages elsewhere, we live Covid-free, safe behind our 1000-mile moat, waiting for the vaccine to be widely available here, perhaps as early as September, and trying to remember where we put our old yellow international vaccination cards so we can ski in Canada or Japan next year.
Foreign friends are irritated with our smugness, but the saccharine slogan Team of Five Million was right. When our captain, Jacinda Ardern, told us to stay home, we did. When Scott Morrison and Boris Johnson told their citizens the same, they headed to Bondi and Hyde Park.
Largely unacknowledged in the New Year's Honours are the business leaders and mandarins who confronted Ardern when she was dithering back in mid-March, demanding she cancel the March 15 memorial service, close the borders and lock the country down.
That does not take away from Ardern that, when she did resolve to act boldly and decisively, she was magnificent – and her popularity justifiably soared. We might hope she yet has it in her to similarly tackle the social and economic challenges she says drive her.
Luck played its part. Having not travelled overseas this year, we forget our 1000-mile moat is the biggest protecting any significant population in the world. We're nearly twice as far from Australia as Iceland from Scotland, and nearly 10 times as far as Taiwan from mainland China. In practice, our Covid border consists of only Auckland International Airport, the odd flight into Christchurch, and the container ports. If any country might achieve the idyllic scenario, you'd bet on us.
Nevertheless, even with these natural benefits, we nearly stuffed it up. Heather Simpson and Brian Roche are masters at pulling their punches or they wouldn't be chosen to do government inquiries. But Simpson, in particular, is also expert at communicating clearly to those fluent in bureaucratese.
As Richard Prebble described earlier in the week, their "Report of the Advisory Committee to oversee the implementation of the New Zealand Covid-19 Surveillance Plan and Testing Strategy" was damning. Little wonder the Government, which received the report in September, kept it secret not just until after October's election but until Parliament rose for the year.
It turns out that Ardern swimming gracefully upon the swamp disguised a complete shambles underneath. If the Prime Minister herself did not lie to us, then those who she relied on may have misrepresented information to her, with "reports of progress … not always reflect[ing] concrete action on the ground", Simpson and Roche assert.
Are you surprised? After all, these were the same health officials behind the 2019 measles and influenza fiascos, and the debacle around personal protective equipment in the early days of Covid-19.
Still, to borrow from Napoleon, better we have a lucky Prime Minister than an unlucky one. And I can't get as worked up as Prebble about the three-month delay in the report's release. After 20 years of the old norms being eroded by Helen Clark, John Key and their protégées, a mere three-month cover-up of a report critical of a government's performance on its main re-election pitch is unsurprising.
In any case, history is written by the victors. Even as Public Service Minister Chris Hipkins and the bureaucracy hopefully address Simpson and Roche's findings, the detail of what went wrong in the Covid response has no further political significance.
The big political question now is, who pays for what needed to be done? As I wrote in a long piece back in April, "if we're 'all in this together' when it comes to averting early deaths, then we had better all be in it together when it comes time to pay up."
Ardern was proven right that there was no immediate trade-off between protecting people from Covid and safeguarding the economy. To the contrary, as she put it, "the best protection for the economy is containing the virus". She was also right back in July and ever since to reject calls from the likes of Clark, Peter Gluckman, Rob Fyfe, the National Party and tourism and international education lobbyists for a more liberal border regime.
Her judgment paid off because while international education has been almost completely destroyed and tourism remains in big trouble despite our efforts as holidaymakers this summer, 2020 turned out to be largely business as usual for our main merchandise exporters.
Some had a bumper year, with dairy, meat, fruit and wine up significantly, and medical equipment soaring 40 per cent. Balancing this, forestry, seafood and aluminium suffered 13 per cent declines. Overall, exports rose 1.2 per cent in the year to October.
Domestically, it made sense for Grant Robertson to throw as much cash as possible over the Treasury gates in March and April. While some abused the wage subsidy scheme, even those who returned the money gained confidence when it arrived in their bank accounts so quickly. That confidence then played a big part in them ultimately not needing it.
Equally, no one disagreed when the Reserve Bank slashed the official cash rate to 0.25 per cent. More controversial was quantitative easing but it was hardly outside the global mainstream.
The challenge for 2021 is to deal with the aftermath.
The biggest beneficiaries of the Covid response were those who would otherwise have died or been permanently disabled. While there are certainly some in younger age groups, there is no escaping the international evidence that Covid victims are overwhelmingly over 65 or suffering from another disease. Even among people over 65, death rates are massively dominated by those over 80.
If they and their loved ones win the gold medal, residential landlords, land-bankers and even ordinary homeowners pick up the silver. Dairy, meat and kiwifruit producers, and investors in medical technology companies, probably earn the bronze. Office workers who could continue to operate using Zoom also did well.
The hard truth is that these beneficiary groups are dominated by Gen X, Baby Boomers and beyond.
Apart from tourism operators and sellers of international education, the young and the poor are massively overrepresented among the losers.
If attending a New Zealand school really makes a difference to young people's life chances – and the latest Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study perhaps makes that doubtful – those born between 2003 and 2016 have paid a heavy price.
As brought to public attention by Aorere College Head Girl Aigagalefili Fepulea'i-Tapua'i, hundreds of South Auckland secondary students never returned to school after lockdown.
Partly, Fepulea'i-Tapua'i reports, this is because they were forced to get jobs to help their families make ends meet. While incomprehensible to Wellington bureaucrats, many of who still work from home, South Auckland parents often don't have the types of jobs that can be done by Zoom, and so they were laid off. For highlighting this issue, Fepulea'i-Tapua'i is my New Zealander of the Year.
Similarly, those who enthusiastically started tertiary education or their first job last summer have seen their dreams fade. While New Zealand's successful response may mitigate this effect locally, global experts believe Covid will have the worst long-term mental health effects, including among the young, since World War II.
Perhaps even more despairing are those in their 20s and 30s trying to save for a first home. They have earned no interest on whatever they have managed to save over recent years while seeing the real value of those savings collapse as loose fiscal and monetary policy pour petrol on already out-of-control house prices.
This was not just predictable but predicted. As I wrote in my long piece in April: "stimulus spending soon evaporates largely into inflation, [and] inevitably benefits those who own physical assets such as houses but devastates those trying to save, massively entrenching the intergenerational inequality Ardern was elected to address."
As Gen Xers and Baby Boomers work hard this summer to support the local tourism industry backed by our additional property fortune, most of us will avoid reflecting on the massive intergenerational wealth transfer and extinguishment of opportunity that has occurred since we first heard of a strange virus in Wuhan. Baby Boomers, in particular, will use their notorious voting power to lock in their gains and avoid a day of reckoning – and Ardern's pollsters will advise her to comply.
But a day of reckoning there must be. Again, as I also wrote back in April: "As far as possible, all things considered, we should find a way for people born in 2000 to enjoy a bundle of opportunities that is as valuable to them as what those born in 1950 or 1975 have already enjoyed."
Right now, we are a very long way from achieving that objective, or even thinking about it. Next year will need to be the year of settling the Covid account.
- Matthew Hooton is an Auckland-based communications consultant and is also pursuing his PhD in philosophy at the University of Auckland, including with a focus on inter-generational ethics.
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