COMMENT:
How have we got so many cars on the road at the moment? Where are they going?
I cannot be the only person who's noticed this.
It seemed to start on Tuesday. As soon as we got through the Easter weekend, all of a sudden, the roads were full of cars again. Cars heading in all directions. Enough cars to cause mini traffic jams. Cars parked outside retail strips, which suggests people are quietly slipping into their closed shops to get a bit of work done.
I'm not here to tell anyone off. That's not my job. But I think this is indicative of a brewing problem. Compliance.
If we're only three-quarters of the way through lockdown and this is already happening, imagine what it's going to be like next week when we reach the point where we're expecting lockdown to end.
Compliance is going to be a problem either way isn't it? It'll be a problem because people already seem to be getting sick of the restrictions. It'll be a problem because level 3's rules are blurry and, as Police Minister Stuart Nash told us, we need to rely on common-sense. And it'll be a problem because of how hard it will be to enforce.
This is especially the case in level 3. With so many people out and about legitimately, so many businesses able to open legitimately, so many bubbles able to include other bubbles legitimately, it's going to be hard to pick out the ones doing what it when they shouldn't be.
There's another problem here I think. And this is probably the biggest issue: expectations. When we were told lockdown would last four weeks, I think people really did expect four weeks of sacrifice then some freedom. But what we're now getting is pretty much more of the same. I hate to keep referring to Australia but again they did that a bit better than we have. They told citizens to expect six months of restrictions, now they're surprising on the upside by already considering lifting restrictions in four weeks' time.
Combine that all together – the difficulty of enforcement, the desperation of business owners to earn some money, the sense that the rules have been too strict, the expectation that things would be wrapping up soon – and I think we'll see compliance become an issue.
• Covid19.govt.nz: The Government's official Covid-19 advisory website
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