David Seymour suspects an inquiry will find that the Prime Minister and her Cabinet relied far too heavily on the advice of Dr Ashley Bloomfield. Photo / Mark Mitchell
David Seymour suspects an inquiry will find that the Prime Minister and her Cabinet relied far too heavily on the advice of Dr Ashley Bloomfield. Photo / Mark Mitchell
OPINION:
"Kids don't need another reason not to go to school." This is what two school principals told me upon learning that we'll have another public holiday.
They're grappling with truancy. It's the worst they've seen, and it all goes back to our response to Covid-19.
In the UK theheadlines read: "Lockdown effects feared to be killing more people than Covid." Figures from the National Office of Statistics show that around 1000 people more than usual are dying each week from conditions other than the virus. Conditions that should have been preventable but weren't seen to because of lockdowns.
Across the ditch "a stark rise in domestic violence during the Covid-19 pandemic will cost the NSW economy more than $3 billion by 2025". There were 60,000 women estimated to have experienced domestic abuse for the first time in 2020 and a further 45,000 women suffered an escalation in abuse during the first year of the pandemic.
In the UK, the terms of reference for a public inquiry have been decided. It's time we had one too.
Some will argue that what we faced was unprecedented and the Government did the best it could in the circumstances. If that's the case, then the Government has nothing to fear by scrutinising its response.
I suspect what we'll really find is that the Prime Minister and her Cabinet relied far too heavily on Saint Ashley. He attended Cabinet regularly with his advice – while the likes of the Treasury and the Education Secretary had little say.
We were slow to lift our restrictions – about six months too slow, leaving us playing catch-up on the rest of the world.
Australia moved quicker than us in relaxing restrictions and, as a result, has 38 per cent of their pre-Covid international students contributing to their economy, while in New Zealand we only have 4.5 per cent back. They've also returned to and exceeded their pre-Covid incoming migration levels at 107 per cent of pre-Covid. New Zealand is at 52 per cent of our pre-Covid incoming migration.
This is why so many businesses are struggling under the weight of workforce shortages.
David Seymour. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Our geographical location puts us at enough of a disadvantage, we didn't need any more barriers.
The impacts of our response have been immense. We have reason to believe there will be significant impacts on our children's educations, mental health, benefit dependency, crime, social cohesion, business strength and infrastructure for years and years to come.
Act has promised an investigation into the Covid response to be launched in our first 100 days. We would lean on experts from a range of countries that did things well, and not so well, to give an honest review. We would ask Taiwanese, Swedish, and Australian experts, for example, to be part of the investigation. This will inform a publicly available pandemic plan.
Its terms of reference will include, but not be limited to, the effects of the Government's response on mental health, children's learning, and crime; the effects of the Government's response on social cohesion and trust in institutions; the fiscal and economic costs of the Government's response, including the use of unconventional monetary policy; the cost of Quality Adjusted Life Years saved from Covid, in comparison with other challenges; compliance with the Bill of Rights, and whether restrictions were always justifiable in a free and democratic society; absorption of technologies such as for testing and tracing, into the response; the relationships with private sector partners including technology suppliers, GPs, and community vaccination centres; the quality of advice and the Government's attention to advice from a range of departments other than health, such as the Ministry of Education and Treasury; and the timing of vaccine ordering and distribution.
The investigation is not simply about learning what Labour did wrong. It is about working out what we need to do right. There will be another pandemic. Probably not this year, hopefully not in the next decade, but almost certainly in our lifetime.
In the future, it could save New Zealand billions of dollars in costly mistakes. With our current debt levels, we literally cannot afford to repeat Labour's handling of this pandemic.
We can't have a lost generation who suffers due to the impacts of our Covid response, without even looking at what we could have done better and ensuring we don't make the same mistakes again.
