We are one small cock-up away from being in the same situation as New South Wales, says Mike Hosking. Photo / Bloomberg
We are one small cock-up away from being in the same situation as New South Wales, says Mike Hosking. Photo / Bloomberg
OPINION:
Today's announcement on borders and the great bright future beyond Covid is the Government's second foray into this particular area.
They did, of course, make an announcement about today's announcement, and they did that directly after the TV3 poll came out showing them plummeting 10 per cent.
What betterway to get an easy headline than with the promise of something bright and shiny?
That was followed the next day by the RSE expansion announcement, and the announcement on the Wednesday that the cycle bridge, probably the stupidest of their collection of stupid decisions, was not quite as concrete as they might once have suggested it would be.
It will be studied for years by political scholars as to just how it is that a group of people, (as revealed in the poll) got to run a country and yet be so spectacularly out of touch.
The question about carving out utes on the EV rebate was supported by a majority of their own supporters and even more embarrassingly by supporters of the Greens, and yet still, as is so often with the limousine Left, you're an idiot and only they know what's good for you.
What we get will not be aspirational, or in anyway edgy.
What we will get is the most conservative, possibly vague version of a plan, that will be more political than practical.
It will be as much about getting more headlines, allowing the government to wax lyrical about vaccines and death and variants to be afraid of, as it will about when you can book your ticket to anywhere beyond Australia.
I assume it will be like everyone else's plan, which is the weird thing abut this, why did it take so long and how hard can it be?
Once we reach a certain level of vaccination, some new rules will apply.
Check in area at MIT in Manukau for the mass vaccination event at the Vodafone Events Centre. Photo / Todd Murray
Can we return to the country without MIQ, maybe even without self isolation?
What about masks for vaccinated people, can we rule out lockdowns the way other countries have?
Can we be like Britain and accept that our elimination strategy once the vaccine got invented, was no way to run a country and has cost us a fortune in lost time, energy, opportunities with a gap filled by an eye-watering amount of inflation-inducing debt.
In short, when a certain percentage of us are jabbed, can we just get on with life?
The answer of course will be no, because with freedom comes an even greater political demise than the poll has already shown us.
This government got elected with the power of incumbency and fear ... we've seen it in virtually every Covid election anywhere in the world, most notably in several examples across the Tasman.
Liberal or, Labour, it didn't matter, if you were already running the place you won.
Without Covid, Labour are sunk. Without Covid, Labour are judged on their promises and delivery, their cycle bridges, their ute tax, their abject failure on housing, the list is longer than the queue for the jab or a state house.
Also nothing will happen before the end of the year because it can't until everyone has been offered the chance of a jab, you can't implement rules for some and not others, and the fact nothing can change before the end of the year in many respects is the worst crime of all.
This rollout has been and continues to be a disgrace that should haunt them all the way to the next election.
We weren't in any hurry? Well not until Delta, not until the inevitable variant that has seen us shut down and fearful, but one small cock-up away from New South Wales or Queensland or Victoria.
They took the same smug sleepy "its not a race" approach and look where it's got them. And we, having watched what's happened, can seemingly do nothing about it, because back late last year when the world was doing the deals on the vaccines, we didn't buy anywhere near enough, didn't pay to get them here quick enough, and didn't have the foresight to see it was in fact a race and we were in fact in a hurry.
So as for today? It'll be another Christmas at home. I'll vote Labour if I'm wrong.
