Mike Williams: National missing chance to focus on other policies

Mike Williams says National Party leader Judith Collins and her team are National missing the chance to focus on other policies. Photo / File

While both the National and Labour parties endorse the elimination approach to the Covid pandemic as are the smaller parties, doubts about the "sustainability" of the current approach are beginning to be expressed by members of the business community, including the normally level-headed CEO of the Auckland Chamber of Commerce, Michael Barnett.

His doubts are reflected by an "international financial consultant", Geoff Mortlock, who has written an open letter to the Government asking for a "meaningful cost/benefit analysis" on the elimination approach versus something he calls "managed suppression".

This debate is new to New Zealand but has been running hot in the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia.

A right-leaning friend echoes many of the arguments in favour of something other than elimination by quoting Sweden as an example of how the pandemic might have been handled differently.

An Australian Sky Channel clip promoting Sweden's handling of the pandemic has "gone viral" but regrettably it tells a distorted and misleading version of events in that country.

For background, Sweden adopted a much more lenient approach than New Zealand's rigid phase one lockdown, allowing restaurants, hairdressers, etc, to remain open with conditions more like our level 2 situation.

With a population almost exactly double that of New Zealand, Sweden this week reached a total of 85,411 cases of Covid-19 and nearly 6000 deaths.

Sweden's Scandinavian neighbours Denmark, Finland and Norway, each with a population roughly half of Sweden's, adopted a New Zealand-style response to the pandemic and recorded death tolls of 580, 321 and 237, respectively.

Sweden has the highest per capita mortality rate in Europe and its rate of 574 deaths per million of population is up there with disaster countries like Brazil and the USA.

It compares very unfavourably with New Zealand's four deaths per million.

Any New Zealand government following Sweden's path would have (per capita) clocked up 40,000 plus Covid cases instead of 1649 and 3000 deaths instead of 22.

The outcome of the Swedish approach, while perhaps marginally attractive to a business community, would have certainly been politically unacceptable in New Zealand and may yet bring the Swedish government down in the next general election in that country.

Those advocating a more relaxed approach for the sake of the economy might also note that Swedish business has derived no real benefit from the country's relatively more open economy. The country's economy has contracted at a similar rate to the rest of Europe.

We are fortunate in that no political party small or large has begun advocating any undermining of the current elimination policy, but with a self-interested and a noisy business community beginning to sound off, this may not be far off.

Mike Williams

Over the past week the New Zealand First, National and Act parties have promoted policies aimed at dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic. These have been at targeted what they see are problems at New Zealand's border which they believe have allowed the virus to re-enter the country.

Ordinary voters might ask why these ideas were not promoted before the recent virus resurgence. If it's good policy now, it would have been worth promulgating during our more than 100 days of no new Covid cases.

National Party leader Judith Collins has, in my view, fallen into the same trap as Simon Bridges and Tod Muller by getting drawn into trying to one-up the Government on pandemic matters.

Voters are often accused of having short memories, but many will recall National repeatedly pushing for the earlier lockdown levels to be lifted well ahead of what the most people were comfortable with.

Just last month, National was calling for a travel bubble to be opened with Australia - which is now struggling with an even bigger outbreak than the one it endured when the pandemic first hit.

National's latest pandemic announcement includes an entirely new (and uncosted) bureaucracy to monitor New Zealand's borders, apparently ignorant of the fact that we already have the Customs Department, and Aviation Security Service which was developed after the Nine Eleven terrorist attacks.

Recasting the responsibilities of these well-established organisations would be a lot quicker and cheaper than starting from scratch.

By focusing on the pandemic, National is missing the opportunity to put the spotlight on its other policies.

For example, as CEO of the NZ Howard League I found much to support in National's now buried Justice Policy announcement.

This includes expanding the use of drug and alcohol courts, increasing funding for education and drug treatment in prisons, and ensuring that all prisons are working prisons so that prisoners are either in work, education or training.

Knee-jerk responses to pandemic developments are not likely to stem the flow of National Party support that polls are telling us is now bleeding away to NZ First and Act.

Mike Williams grew up in Hawke's Bay. He is CEO of the NZ Howard League and a former Labour Party president.