Crowne Plaza Hotel in Auckland, a Covid-19 managed isolation facility. Photo / Sylvie Whinray
Crowne Plaza Hotel in Auckland, a Covid-19 managed isolation facility. Photo / Sylvie Whinray
OPINION:
Is the line of people criticising our MIQ effort now longer than the queue waiting to get into MIQ?
This newspaper alone these past couple of weeks has featured many a column inch looking into what's gone wrong, why it didn't need to go wrong. Offering ideas, safeguards, improvements.
Could it just be, at last, that enough people have woken up to the fact that our response to Covid has been based on the fact we are the smallest of islands at the bottom of the world with a moat, a closed door and a lot of luck?
Yes, we have done and are doing well compared to many, but the many didn't have the natural advantages we did. What's unfolding now is the reality that the next step actually requires more than a shut door and fingers crossed. It actually needs a plan.
Across the Tasman, Australia has a real leader in Scott Morrison. Photo / AP
They have begun a short, sharp inquiry into their immigration settings, they actually want more people coming to the country to, quote, "get the economy moving".
While they're doing that, we cancelled the cruise season because of ideology and paperwork.
They are organising a vaccine passport.
They have a start date and a finish date for their vaccine programme. We still don't - why not?
They are looking to do a deal with a private operator to build a major, purpose-built MIQ facility in Toowoomba, Queensland.
The developers can build 500-plus beds in five weeks. It will allow them to bring back more Australians stranded overseas faster.
Why aren't we doing that? Why are we booked out until June with computer programmers looking to scam the system?
They have a travel bubble with this country that has been open for months now, that - with the odd exception - has worked as well as it can given, yet again, we drag the chain with our absurd obsession with 28 days' community-free transmission.
It has become abundantly obvious both sides of the Tasman it isn't real. A security guard here, a case post-MIQ there, it's never going to be foolproof but it is certainly not worth stalling and procrastinating for.
The airports and airlines here, yet again, are banging the Government's door down with yet another idea to get planes moving and people travelling.
The Pullman Hotel has been used as a Covid-19 MIQ facility and is linked to the January Covid community link. Photo / Dean Purcell
The traffic light system outlined last week shows flexibility, agility, it's backed by medical experts as to its safety.
It is what should already be up and running, if only the Government weren't so lazy, lacklustre and complacent.
I am genuinely conflicted as to what is worse: an undynamic Government with no aspiration, or an apathetic public unwilling to hold any of them to account.
Australia isn't perfect, they have a draconian system whereby you have to apply to leave the country, and barely anyone gets permission.
Federalism as well has held them back - like America, having too many people in charge locally when the emergency is national. This is a recipe for the sort of division, upset and disorganisation we have seen in both countries.
But you play the cards you are dealt and, all things considered, Morrison is a rock star operator who represents the best aspects of the Australian outlook. He is a winner and he wants to win for his country.
Oh, and that's before you get to last week's astonishing backdown by Google having been stared down by a Prime Minister who, quite rightly, had decided that big tech coming into his country and stealing content for their platforms and not paying for it had to end.
Google, in front of a select committee, gobsmacked a nation by threatening to pull their search platform - and in doing so exposing for all to see their real motives.
Far from being kowtowed, Morrison roped in Microsoft, who offered Bing as a search engine, threw their weight behind the payment policy and, wouldn't you know it, guess who folded?
Attitude is everything.
You only get better, if you want better.
It's an amazing thing to have an example so geographically and culturally close, and yet seemingly be so asleep to it.
