Heather du Plessis-Allan: Goodbye to the Covid rules, we're back to normal politics

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern scrapped the traffic light system last week. Photo / Mark Mitchell

OPINION

Thank goodness that's over. Those Covid rules were well past their use-by date.

The mask rules especially. Obviously there still is a place for masks - and for some vulnerable Kiwis there might always be.

But the mask rules got silly and tiresome. Silly to mask up in the supermarket but not in the bar. Tiresome to carry a tatty old bit of fabric in your pocket to wrap over half your face just to buy a couple of carrots.

And the mask rules also got ignored. One informal survey found 73 per cent of shoppers in a Whangārei mall flouted the rules in July. Masks were giving retailers a headache trying to police their use. They were giving punters acne.

They were also a constant reminder of the PANDEMIC. Every time you put one on your face you were reminded that Jacinda et al were controlling our lives when the rest of the world had moved on. That's not necessarily a statement of fact, but perception is reality.

Then there were the isolation rules. Be honest now, who was really doing that in the end? Who even knew if they or their husband or child had Covid by the second or third time around? Was it Covid or just a cold?

If the chat among family and friends and colleagues is anything to go by, many of us were already treating Covid with the same casual disregard as we do the flu or the cold. Yes, Michael Baker's blood will run cold reading that sentence but then Michael Baker is a smart guy and he already knows we do that. He just wishes we didn't.

But of all the rules imposed on us until Monday at 11.59pm, the most egregious and offensive and divisive were the vaccine mandates. They still are. They're yet to expire. The Government mandates end in eight days, on September 26.

They should end today. If history is recorded accurately it will show that Jacinda et al drove divisions in society and turned desperate, vulnerable people to conspiracy theories by forcing them out of their jobs because they wouldn't take a vaccine. Shame on Labour for that. What a mockery of the "team of five million". If ever there was a time for the mandates - and yes, there might well have been at the height of the pandemic - that time passed months ago.

It's hard to know if the Government is quite as excited by the ending of the Covid rules. On the bright side for them, it means Kiwis will now start rapidly forgetting how awful this period was. By the time the next election rolls around we won't automatically blame Covid for everything from worker shortages to house prices falling. That's good for Labour, the party associated with Covid control.

But on the other hand, it means we're back to talking about normal politics and that's pretty close to 99 per cent bad for Labour. Ram-raiding kids. Iwi co-governance. Falling house prices. A worker crisis. A shortage of nurses. A shortage of doctors. A shortage of teachers. Inflation. Expensive tomatoes. Plans to tax us for unemployment insurance. Plans to take water assets from councils. The big polytech merger flop. Plans to let your neighbour build a three-storey house without your permission. Emergency housing in Rotorua. Emergency housing in our CBDs. Rising mortgage rates. I could go on for a lot longer but there is a word limit on this column.

The Taxpayers' Union Curia poll out this week showed 54 per cent of us think the country's headed in the wrong direction. That's a flashing red light warning to Labour that they're in big trouble.

That poll was taken before the Covid rules were ditched. There's a good chance we'll be feeling marginally better about the country's direction now. Marginally, at least.

Heather du Plessis-Allan Drive, Newstalk ZB, 4pm-7pm, weekdays.