Heather du Plessis-Allan: It's a big call tomorrow

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern speaks to media during a press conference at Parliament. Photo / Hagen Hopkins

It's an awful decision Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has to make tomorrow.

It's tempting to think the decision is already made and Cabinet will simply rubber-stamp it. I'm not sure that's accurate.

What might be more accurate is that the Government has a preference, which is to come out of lockdown. It's clear senior Cabinet Ministers such as Winston Peters and Grant Robertson are concerned about the mounting economic cost of this shutdown. But, a preference is just a preference. It's not a commitment.

There are reassuring signs pointing towards a lifting of the lockdown. New daily Covid-19 cases are down. The number of new clusters is down. The borders are now fully secure.

Also, the political pressure is mounting. Australia is achieving similar results without the same sort of restrictions we're under. Their cases and deaths are comparable to ours per capita. Australian PM Scott Morrison is so confident in his country's trajectory he has taken to openly criticising our government's approach.

But, it seems the Government is still short of data to be sure a step-down won't backfire. Testing is frantically underway to determine whether there are Covid-19 cases outside the official tally. There may be concerns about whether the contact-tracing teams can work fast enough to identify and isolate new cases of Covid-19 if they start to pop up outside of the level 4 restrictions.

This is what makes tomorrow's call so high stakes.

If the Government takes out us out of lockdown too early, experiences a surge in cases and then needs to force the entire country back into level 4 lockdown, that would be economic and political suicide. It would be a fail on an epic scale.

But if it extends the lockdown to perhaps the other side of Anzac weekend, the Prime Minister risks disappointing a population now expecting a shift-down in levels.

Ardern has created that expectation by earlier this week releasing the details of what life under level 3 will look like. She had to do that to help businesses plan for life after lockdown, but it still created the impression that lockdown is about to happen. As much as she emphasised that the release of the details was no hint of what to expect tomorrow, it's hard to control expectations.

Disappointment is, of course, the lesser of the two risks. Weighed against the economic cost of going back into lockdown it's a small price to pay. But disappointment could've been avoided. ScoMo initially warned Australian citizens to expect six months' worth of restrictions, only to announce this week that he's already considering lifting restrictions in four week. Surprising on the upside is a smart move.

I'd love to think the design of level 3 is a hint that it is coming soon. Level 3 is just a lockdown by another name. It's level 3.8. It's lockdown-lite. It's a purgatory position that feels designed to make us feel better because we're out of lockdown while still under most of the controls of lockdown.

And while that may be true, it will likely bring with it a marked step down in compliance. We're seeing it already. As soon as Easter was over, the roads began to fill with cars again. It'll likely get worse under level 3. Businesses will be expected to judge for themselves whether they're safe to operate. People will judge for themselves who to add to their bubbles. It'll become harder to enforce. With more people around, more double-bubbles, more businesses open, it's going to be harder to know which are adhering to the rules and which aren't.

So, as much as level 3 has clearly been designed to extend the lockdown, it still carries risks to the Government strategy of elimination. It's a big call tomorrow.