Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern during a post-Cabinet press conference. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern during a post-Cabinet press conference. 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 Bill Ralston.
NZ on the edge of disaster - July 28
It is hard not to feel that the Government and much of the country are somehow, incredibly, asleep at the wheel. Eighteen months into a deadly pandemic, we are balanced on the edge of a precipice and yet New Zealand seems to be blissfully unaware.
A recent public poll by the Government showed 44 per cent of us were "neutral" towards the country's Covid-19 situation and 75 per cent said the country was going in the right direction on the pandemic.
Is it the right direction that an important line of defence against another Covid-19 outbreak, our underpaid, overworked and exhausted nurses, are forced to go on strike to get decent pay? The Government has borrowed billions to spend on anything it fancies, but nurses are told there is nothing left in the district health board piggy bank to pay them better. How does that work?
Has anyone noticed that Fortress New Zealand, our bastion against infection, has some huge holes in its crumbling walls? A stubborn number of border workers have still not been inoculated. Months have passed and the Government has been reluctant to force them to do so because of its concerns about personal freedoms.
The Auckland lockdown began in August and dragged on for months. Photo / Alex Burton
Vaccine supply the Govt's worst mistake - September 3
The Government's biggest failure was not getting us vaccinated many months earlier. Despite negotiating agreements with several vaccine suppliers, it placed all its options in one basket – Pfizer – and time ticked by as the vaccine trickled slowly in. That was the Government's worst mistake. It is why we are all at home, effectively under house arrest, staring at the walls. The failure to ensure prompt supply was a shocker.
Its second error is Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern's insistence we can eliminate Covid-19. The overseas evidence is that it cannot be eliminated entirely. Vaccination will mitigate its health effects, but you cannot get rid of the virus itself. Well, we could, if we permanently shut the borders: no one in, no one out. No ships, no planes, bringing or taking goods. We would have to become the Hermit Kingdom.
The Government is saying this may not be our last lockdown but, surely, once enough of us are vaccinated, there should be no need for further lockdowns. Those who choose to believe Covid-19 is a fraud, or that you can simply breathe in other folks' antibodies and not need a shot, can take their chances. It's their choice, weird as it is.
The Whanganui Covid-19 vaccination centre. Photo / Bevan Conley
The National Party is fracturing - May 9
Something odd is happening inside the parliamentary National Party. It appears to be fracturing along religious lines.
For the past few years, there's been a hard core of Christian National MPs known somewhat disparagingly by their less-observant colleagues as "The Taliban". Chief among them is Simon Bridges, who recently stirred up a small storm on social media when it became plain that he, former MP Alfred Ngaro and the Jesus for NZ group are to host a large religious service called the Power of One in the Beehive Banquet Hall on May 10.
Bridges struck back against his online critics, saying, "Some Christians have a church service in Parliament as they have before and need an MP to host. Stop being so intolerant." The critics are intolerant? The Jesus for NZ team is run by a pastor, Ross Smith, who holds hardline anti-Muslim views that are intolerant, to say the least.
After the murderous Christchurch mosque attacks, Smith denounced Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern's embracing of the Islamic community, at one point reportedly posting, "Apparently, we, the church are going to have to declare it louder and clearer, 'What you are representing, Prime Minister, is NOT who we are!'"
For the first time in five years, the Government has managed to excite almost unanimous outraged opposition from both the political left and right. Its publication of a discussion document, "Proposals against incitement of hatred and discrimination", has resulted in angry criticism rather than the more anodyne "discussion" it hoped for.
A large part of the problem was an apparent lack of understanding by the Prime Minister of the document's details. Jacinda Ardern told a post-Cabinet press conference that the Government had removed political opinion as grounds for prosecution under a proposed hate-speech law. Ah, no, Prime Minister, I'm afraid you didn't.
Initially, she appears to be correct, because on page 17 of the document, which talks about the areas where hate speech may apply, there is no reference to political opinion. Yet, if she turned back to page four, she would find: "Under this proposal, more groups would be protected by the law if hatred was incited … This may include some or all of the other grounds in the Human Rights Act." In Section 21 (1) (j) of the Human Rights Act, she would find "political opinion, which includes the lack of a particular political opinion or any political opinion".
Lack of a political opinion? Political apathy could become a crime?
The chilling effect of the new hate speech law. Cartoon / Guy Body
Delta fight weak and slow - October 11
Over the past 18 months, we have, at various times and locations, surrendered a fair chunk of our human rights.
We have lost our rights of freedom of association and movement, some have lost the freedom to make a living in their chosen work, and more than 25,000 are in the queue for an MIQ place allowing them to fly home from abroad. This is no small thing.
The tough Covid-19 restrictions have taken their toll on the popularity of the politicians who are dealing with the pandemic on our behalf, according to the latest spate of political polls.
The original spirit of resigned acceptance of the lockdowns and inhibitions on our daily lives has, for many, given way to frustration, and that will soon turn to anger.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern arriving for a post-Cabinet press conference with chief press secretary Andrew Campbell and director general of health Dr Ashley Bloomfield. Photo / Mark Mitchell
