Rob Rattenbury: Rebuilding post pandemic

Life is returning to some form of normalcy for many but the social cost has been huge.

It is becoming clear that, with careful management and a huge willingness from the community, New Zealand will come out of Covid-19 well in terms of health statistics, maybe not so in terms of economic and social statistics.

Being a small country in the middle of nowhere at the bottom of the world has had its advantages.

We share no borders and are self-reliant for food.

We do not have to buy electricity from a neighbouring country and we seem to have no problem at the moment importing goods we need, such as oil.

Apart from the three big cities, our population of five million-odd people is dispersed across a landmass bigger than England, Wales and Scotland. In terms of comparing us to the Old World, our country is empty.

This has helped control the spread of the pandemic to date.

Life is returning to some form of normality for many but the social cost has been huge, businesses failed; staff redundant; unemployment soaring; people's dreams shattered. One would be really heartless to dismiss this as just collateral damage in the wake of a pandemic.

The Government has had the luxury of about seven weeks of support from all sectors of New Zealand, including to a certain extent, opposing political parties, but that is now ending.

The Government had a team of five million because we all knew that Covid-19 was bigger than any petty factional politics.

I have said before, we went to a war footing to fight a common enemy. This is not meant to denigrate the huge years-long sacrifices made by previous generations during shooting wars, but to simply highlight that we can all pull together as one when needed.

If anything it has shown that almost all New Zealanders are, underneath all our differences in politics, religion, class, race and age, a force to be reckoned with when we decide we want to achieve a common goal.

As we come out of what is hopefully the only wave of Covid-19, life will return very much to what it was before despite all saying this could be the start of a better world.

Sadly it will not.

We may have learned a new way of living, working from home and using internet shopping more, but the fundamentals will not change.

We will continue to use cars as our main form of transport simply because in a huge country with a small population there is no other, cheaper and more efficient way of travelling vast distances as we tend to do.

Flying will get only more expensive.

Flying will only get more expensive, especially if Kiwis do decide to really get into domestic tourism. Air New Zealand is bleeding money. It will not be providing budget flights any time soon. That's unlikely for a while, I am guessing.

We are being encouraged to spend but Kiwis can be a canny lot and may not want to open their pockets for a while, not knowing what the future holds.

Also, simply, many have lost their incomes along with their hopes and plans. They may not want to "see the country" for a while yet.

Now is the time for the Government to provide further strong leadership in managing our economy out of this disaster.

It is also now time for the Opposition to hold the Treasury benches to account for every item of expenditure.

We are looking at some years of huge spending on infrastructure, health, housing and education.

These areas will provide more employment quickly. We will also really need to look after our agriculture sector, having lost international tourism for the foreseeable future, as farming is and has always been New Zealand's one reliable stalwart against national poverty.

A concern is that recent history shows in the area of infrastructure, health and housing incompetence seems the norm from the ministers involved.

New Zealand does need a decent roading system.

Thankfully housing seems to have shifted to a more competent set of hands in Dr Megan Woods and Labour has reinstated the old Roads of National Importance, under a new name, realising two years down the track that, despite the noise from the Green Party, New Zealand does need a decent roading system, even for electric cars one day.

As September looms the politics will start flying.

Winston Peters will slowly be white-anting Labour to try to regain his former base of disgruntled, anti-immigration, nationalist supporters, only to let them down again if he has a chance after the election. They never learn.

The Green Party has in-fighting issues, not being far enough Left for a significant portion of the party and not gaining much traction in the present Government.

National is lost in the wilderness with a leader no one knows and a restless caucus.

Labour could be laughing all the way to the polls. Could they govern alone?