Covid 19 coronavirus: Mike Hosking - Tune in for the 'truth' at 1pm

COMMENT:

Can I suggest if the Prime Minister spent less time on Facebook and more time asking questions over whether things she expected to happen were actually happening, then we wouldn't have been in the $1 billion-plus mess we have been these past two weeks.

It now extends to Sunday night.

Such is the news cycle these days, we very quickly forget why we are where we are.

We followed breathlessly the theories, rumours and accusations around everything from whether you can get Covid from frozen food, to whether the maintenance worker at Rydges was wearing PPE or was in a lift or in a room, what bus might have been caught in one case, to whether the South Auckland community was racially targeted.

Then we had the hours people looking to go to work across the border had to wait once they had applied for exemptions. And there was the time people had to wait in line crying at the testing stations.

There were testing stations at the port in Tauranga that weren't actually open days after the Government said they would open.

We got to absorb the lecture from Health Minister Chris Hipkins about the pulpit of truth and how nothing said from that place was wrong, until of course it was and had to be corrected a number of times.

We studied the number of businesses that wouldn't make it, the ones that thought they wouldn't make it and the number of businesses on wage subsidies.

Covid-19 alert level 3 is in place in the Auckland region until Sunday. Photo / Dean Purcell

There were increasing calls for a new approach beyond elimination, a revisit of the cost-benefit calculations around elimination as opposed to the approaches of other countries.

Oh and the fact the court found the first part of the lockdown was unlawful anyway.

After all of that, and a whole bunch of other stuff I don't have space to list, we then arrive at "decision day".

And once again we are lulled into this bizarre Lotto-come-Telethon pitch as to how difficult the decision will be, what factors will be taken into account, what the various predictions from around the community are.

When the decision is made, we all then breathe this mad sigh of relief of gratitude - how lucky we are to only be kept in this state for another four days, and just another couple of weeks for the rest of the country.

Forgetting of course, the critical thing at the very start - it wasn't our fault, it was the Government's.

Their ineptitude and laziness got us into this. The fault lies entirely at their door.

Which brings us back to the Prime Minister and Facebook.

One of the more egregious actions taken in these past 14 days was the Facebook post shot by the Prime Minister's own videographer showing a visit to ESR and there in the background was Ashley Bloomfield.

David Seymour, who is having the political year of his life, quite rightly called it out.

Although Labour claimed it wasn't against the rules they changed it knowing even if it wasn't, it was immoral if not exceedingly arrogant, and showed another one of their traits - try it on until you are caught.

It yet again shows for all those who've been sucked in by the "team of 5 million", "go hard go early", "stay the course", stick a teddy in your window bollocks, this is a government, and in particular a Prime Minister, who is far more calculating than the dim-witted appear to understand or want to admit.

There seems no shortage of energy for Facebook and messaging while Rome burns.

It also reinforces the suggestion that as long as they can get away with it, the Jacinda and Ashley show is indeed a political weapon, despite them swearing black and blue it's health information at a time of crisis and nothing more.

When is an ad an ad? And when is a Facebook message shot by your very own videographer starring your very own deified health wonk merely a health update?

In that nuance and debate is the Machiavellian nature of this government.

The test for the election is whether you can watch your country go bust through the complete incompetence of a government who insisted testing was being done when it wasn't, the lockdown was legal when it wasn't, nothing but truth gets told at 1 o'clock when it doesn't.

Or you merely like a few vids of fun visits, you are part of the team of 5 million who went hard and went early, and you're happy to stay the course and be kind.