Hospitality has struggled through Auckland's latest lockdown. Photo / Alex Burton
Hospitality has struggled through Auckland's latest lockdown. Photo / Alex Burton
Opinion
As we say goodbye to 2021 and welcome in 2022, it's a good time to catch up on the very best of the Herald columnists we enjoyed reading over the last 12 months. From politics to sport, from business to entertainment and lifestyle, these are the voices and views ouraudience loved the most. Today it's the top five from Richard Prebble.
A better way to beat Covid - August 25
This Covid outbreak is the worst public health snafu since the Massey Government let WWI soldiers with Spanish flu disembark. At least Massey never closed Parliament to avoid being accountable.
The virus is learning faster than we are.
Ministers are ignoring the official New Zealand Influenza Pandemic Plan, which states that the recovery phase from an outbreak can start when the population is protected by vaccination or the pandemic has abated. If we were all vaccinated against Covid, the country would not be in lockdown.
A Covid-19 testing centre in Henderson, Auckland. Photo / Sylvie Whinray
Devastating inflation on horizon - July 14
What is happening to inflation? The Treasury says, while there will be a blip in prices, inflation will remain low. Yet business sees signs of inflation everywhere.
If we get inflation the economic and political effects will be devastating.
Social credit is the Reserve Bank creating credit and lending it to the Government at zero interest. Today the Reserve Bank has a programme to create $100 billion to lend to the Government at near-zero interest via the secondary market so they can pretend it is not social credit. They also keep up the pretence that it will eventually be repaid, although no one seriously believes that.
The leader of the Social Credit Party must be the authority on what is social credit. Yes, there is still a Social Credit Party. Its leader is Chris Leitch, a ballroom dance teacher from Whangarei. He has no doubt the Government is implementing social credit. Leitch says his party has been vindicated.
I have opposed social credit my entire political career. I too feel vindicated. I have said "if the amount of goods and services remains approximately the same, printing more money will result in inflation".
Printing more money will result in inflation, argues Richard Prebble. Photo / Supplied
Grant Robertson is the worst FM since Muldoon - May 5
New Zealand gets flattering reviews from nations that do not know us. Our Australian cousins who know us better are far more critical. Adam Creighton, the economics editor of the Australian, last month wrote a savage review of our performance:
"New Zealand's economy is in strife. Without major change, our constitutional cousin is in decline. Its public finances are in tatters.
"New Zealand ranks fourth last in the OECD for labour productivity growth, and last for multi-factor productivity growth.
"In one year, New Zealand has blown 30 years of hard-fought fiscal rectitude. Its public debt will explode from the equivalent of 19 per cent of Gross Domestic Product last year to 54 per cent by 2022, on the Government's own figures."
