Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Opinion
As we say goodbye to 2021 and welcome in 2022, it's a good time to catch up on the very best of the Herald columnists we enjoyed reading over the last 12 months. From politics to sport, from business to entertainment and lifestyle, these are the voices and views ouraudience loved the most. Today it's the top five from Steven Joyce.
Labour's wheels are coming off - October 30
A number of government announcements in the last week or so give the impression the wheels are starting to come off at the Beehive.
It's not just that Covid decisions are increasingly erratic, though they are. Ministers have also lost the room, particularly in Auckland, and seem to have no ability to do the things that will win it back.
It started last Friday with the confusing and indecisive traffic lights announcement. Cynically held until the eve of a long weekend, it raised more questions than it answered.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern arriving for a press conference with chief press secretary Andrew Campbell and director general of health Dr Ashley Bloomfield. Photo / Mark Mitchell
This time, let's try a little humility - August 21
So here we find ourselves. We've joined much of the rest of the world in having to manage a Delta outbreak.
The suddenness of this one will rightly be freaking many people out.
Even if it turns out to be a shorter one, and it hangs in the balance currently, the fear of being thrown back into enforced isolation at a moment's notice again in spring or in the run-up to Christmas is real. How does any business or family plan for that?
Hopefully some good can come from this new reality. Perhaps we could collectively use the time to develop some greater clarity of thinking on our response to this pandemic, knowing what we know now.
Hospitality has struggled through Auckland's latest lockdown. Photo / Alex Burton
Overheated economy about to burn borrowers - August 7
It is becoming clear that the economic response to the Covid-19 pandemic has been overdone.
As a result of massive fiscal expansion and the loosest monetary policy in living memory, the country is awash in both borrowed and printed money. And our unusually constrained economy can't expand fast enough to absorb all that cash. We are overheating.
Inflation is already running at an annual rate of 3.3 per cent; and most price growth has happened in the last six months. If the second half of this year runs like the first, we are heading to 4 per cent plus inflation by the end of the year.
The country is awash in both borrowed and printed money, argues Steven Joyce. Photo / 123RF
Govt getting too big for its bossy boots - October 2
MMP has not been perfect. It has often frustrated governments and their supporters and prevented them from doing things they sought mandates to do. One of my biggest regrets about the Government in which I served was we were not able to secure enough votes for fundamental RMA reform.
Yet MMP has created stability and relative prosperity. Over a period of 20 years New Zealand has made solid incremental progress, without the wild lurches and rough edges that characterised government decision-making in the previous 30 years.
Until last year. As a result of the Covid 19 pandemic, voters did what many did elsewhere and re-elected an incumbent government with a significantly increased majority.
However, only in New Zealand, with its single House of Parliament, did we effectively return to our old system of "elected dictatorship".
In 2020, NZ effectively voted for a return to our old system of "elected dictatorship" personified by Sir Robert Muldoon. Photo / NZME
Health reforms - what's in it for patients? - May 1
There has been a remarkably muted level of public critique so far of the Government's health reforms, where it intends to merge the 20 District Health Boards into one big health monopoly.
It's worth discussing. This is quite probably the single biggest merger New Zealand has ever seen. The organisational change and dislocation will be massive, distracting senior managers and clinicians from their primary jobs of treating people for an extended period. And all during a pandemic.
The current regionally-based organisations between them employ 75,000 full-time equivalent staff and the total head count is considerably higher. Compare that with the 20,000 who work for our biggest company, Fonterra, and you get a sense of the scale of change. The merged organisation will be in charge of some $12 billion worth of healthcare.
Some commentators have praised the announcement because "at least it's bold". Bold reform might be an antidote to political boredom, but if boldness is your criterion for whether a reform is worthwhile, you are setting a very low bar.
