Simon Wilson: Here's why we need the election now

Jacinda Ardern with director general of health Dr Ashley Bloomfield and Police Commissioner Andy Coster. Have we got all the best people for the right jobs? Photo / Mark Mitchell

COMMENT

The Prime Minister will announce tomorrow whether the election will still be held on September 19. Let's hope it is.

There are those who say Labour has an inbuilt advantage, because the Covid pandemic has given her an unfairly large platform on which to operate, and the current lockdown has made that even larger.

But the advantage Labour has is almost entirely to do with the leadership of Jacinda Ardern. That's who Labour is: the party led by Ardern, just as National was once the party led by John Key.

It's true, Ardern led the country through a remarkable lockdown, during which we eliminated the Covid-19 coronavirus. But Key led National through an election within 12 months of the Canterbury earthquakes, with the entire region voting blue. That affected the outcome, but it wasn't unfair. Cantabrians, on the whole, like the leadership they got.

People talk of "incumbency bias", but what a crisis really does is illuminate the leaders of the day in ways that aren't ordinarily possible. Before the Covid crisis, before March 15 and Whakaari/White Island, Ardern's critics liked to say she was a shallow figurehead with little capacity to provide competent and assured leadership when it really mattered.

Pretty much what Key's detractors continually said about him. If the detractors had been right about Key, he'd have been out on his ear and if they were right about Ardern she'd be heading for her own political oblivion.

The fact is, a crisis is just as likely to ruin an unsuitable leader as it is to elevate a good one. Ask Donald Trump.

Jacinda Ardern with director general of health Dr Ashley Bloomfield and Police Commissioner Andy Coster. Have we got all the best people for the right jobs? Photo / Mark Mitchell

Or remember Winston Churchill, who was universally admired for his war-time leadership but, as soon as the war was over, was judged by the British people as the wrong person to lead them into post-war reconstruction. He reverted, in their eyes, to what he was before the war, an anachronistic Tory snob, while Labour proposed a National Health Service and a raft of other measures that would look after ordinary folk.

That same challenge confronts both Ardern and Judith Collins today. Almost everyone is deeply grateful to Ardern and her Government for getting us through the first wave of the pandemic, with astonishing health success and – relative to what might have happened – remarkably strong economic resilience too.

But now we are asked to choose who's fittest to lead us forward. Who we trust to manage border controls and community transmission far better than has been the case to date – as we discovered to our horror last week.

Who we trust to rebuild a viable ongoing economy, complete with public health strategies that will allow us to stay safe even as the economy continues to function.

Who we believe has the vision and skills to lead us into a decade that looks like being tougher than any other in the lifetime of almost everyone alive today.

Collins has every opportunity to press her case. The media is keen to hear what she has to say and will give her the time and space to say it.

Ardern, meanwhile, despite the value of her skills in a crisis, is on the back foot because of the weaknesses we learned about last week. To put it bluntly, the Ministry of Health appears to be out of its depth, and Ardern's Government has not inspired much public confidence that it knows what to do about it.

Daily appearances on TV worked in her favour before, but it doesn't follow they always will.

And yet, strangely, when it comes to inspiring public confidence, Collins' crew are doing even worse.

Deputy leader Gerry Brownlee's instinct, last week, was to dive into the cesspool of conspiracy, and Collins, for a moment, seemed to relish the splash.

Whatever you think of Brownlee's achievements in the past, in that moment he demonstrated, to me, that he is unfit to govern us through this crisis.

If Collins really wanted us to believe she's a decisive leader always ready to act in the country's best interests, she would have sacked him on the spot.

The muck Brownlee covered himself in from that cesspool is a threat to public health: the Government is out to get you, vaccines are evil, all that stuff. Parties that dabble in it are dangerous.

If Judith Collins is a decisive leader, why did she not act decisively against Gerry Brownlee last week? Photo / Mark Mitchell

So, delay the election? Please, no.

We need it to go ahead because the current crisis doesn't tilt the playing field. The parties and their leaders do that through their behaviour.

We need it now because we need a functioning Government, able to make hard decisions without the uncertainties and distractions of an election hanging over it.

We need it now because why does anyone think there will be a better time soon? It's very possible that over the next months there will be worse times.

Meanwhile, if any of the parties happen to be looking for some Covid policies to hang their hats on, how about these:

1. Mandatory masks in public under level 3 (and 4, if it happens).

2. New, broader rules for allowing shops to stay open, with click and collect rules and mandatory app use or sign in.

3. A rethink on "whole of government" pandemic crisis management. Instead of trusting the Ministry of Health, as currently constituted, let's have the best people for the job in charge. Second the best public servants to the most critical jobs, and bring in some private sector people too. Empower them to serve.

4. I think it's splendid that the people who generate the most public trust in this whole thing – the likes of Michael Baker, Siouxsie Wiles, Sir David Skegg – are among those who used to be abused as ivory-tower academics. Why don't we empower them too?