Historian Malcolm Mulholland at his Palmerston North home. Photo / Mike Scott
Historian Malcolm Mulholland at his Palmerston North home. Photo / Mike Scott
Reporter David Fisher and visual journalist Mike Scott have been driving the length of New Zealand, exploring how we're coping with the Covid-19 pandemic. In part four of The Road Ahead they travel across the central North Island.
How do we get by, with Covid-19 is in our world? Have we ended a golden age?
In an engineering workshop in Eketahuna, Tony Corlett is one of those whose ability to adapt and learn bodes well for the recovery to come.
Corlett came to the business aged 14, working after school, and then at 16 as a full-time worker. At 19, he added agricultural contracting to the engineering business, which he now owns with twin brother Andrew.
If everyone was a Corlett, we'd be fine. He bustles and hustles for business, he builds, creates and harvests.
Eketahuna Engineering handles work for the surrounding rural area. "Anything a farmer can touch, we get the opportunity to fix," says Corlett. They also contract supply equipment and expertise across a number of farms where it makes little sense for farmers to develop assets or skills used only on a seasonal basis.
Corlett is blessed with a certainty that there is a future for his business, so much so that he continues to talk of plans to build a new engineering workshop to replace the old Ford garage and showroom out of which he currently operates.
Tony Corlett of Eketahuna Engineering. Photo / Mike Scott
That confidence is rooted in a belief in his business, its importance to its farming clients and the importance those farmers have to New Zealand's economy. "There's a worldwide food shortage," he says.
Eketahuna is a long way from Queenstown, the jewel in what was once a glittering chain of tourism offerings, and somewhere Corlett never visited. "I can't afford to go there," he says.
Where's the wealth gone?
With lustre lapsed and big-spending tourists gone, Corlett wonders at the wealth that pumped through there in years gone by. His businesses have benefited from an insular approach - earn, reinvest, diversify, grow - but he looks to the boom years of tourism and asks; "Where has all that money gone?"
Beyond Eketahuna through Pahiatua to Woodville, which once featuredthe best pork chops. Those days are gone. Every golden age fades. The Manawatu Gorge remains closed with a $600 million new highway planned to take traffic above the old route yet below the Saddle Rd, which winds through the spectacular Te Apiti Wind Farm and its giant windmills, bypassing Ashurst.
Wind turbines near Palmerston North. Photo / Mike Scott
In Palmerston North, Malcolm Mulholland, 44, and wife Wiki, are no strangers to the spectre of death. It has lived in their house, a constant shadow, since Wiki was diagnosed with stage four breast cancer in November 2018.
As a disease that attacks society's low hanging fruit, Covid-19 brought an increased threat to Wiki Mulholland's life. For the Mulhollands, much of their time since diagnosis has been fighting for access to the best drugs public money won't buy.
Malcolm Mulholland, mild-mannered academic historian, has been transformed into a fierce and unrelenting campaigner to review Pharmac, the government drug buyer, and increase the funding for medicines.
Historian Malcolm Mulholland at his Palmerston North home. Photo / Mike Scott
The government response to the virus has brought frustration to their household. "We have a lot of immunocompromised people in the community who had been waiting for a long time to get funding (for medicines). They saw the lengths the country went to, to protect ourselves from Covid."
Big spending, debt for generations was taken on. "They are really angry. They've seen this massive exercise undertaken and don't understand why particular drugs and treatments aren't being funded."
There's money spilling out in many unexpected places. Jason Anderson's business Performance Industry is about tweaking high-spec cars to operate at the peak of their design and its been busier than normal since lockdown ended in May.
For Anderson, 45, "it's the whole thing where no one can go on holiday". Money intended for one purpose has been funnelled into others. "Since then, loads of customers just want to spend their dollars."
Jason Anderson from Performance Industries Limited in Palmerston North has been run off his feet working on high performance cars since the Covid-19 lockdown. Photo / Mike Scott
Elsewhere, in Melbourne, he's got suppliers who are "shitting their pants" at the impact the fresh lockdown has had on business. Business is drying up and they're dropping staff numbers to cope.
For Anderson's business, it's good now but the future - like all our futures - is uncertain. "It's one day at a time. And we've got no choice."
It's a common theme, this lack of certainty. The country is riddled with it. What now? And what of tomorrow, and next week, then next month? What does next year look like? What of jobs? Will business survive? How do we pay for this?
Not so far to fall
On the road to Whanganui, just south of Sanson, there's a solemn roadside ceremony that brings perspective. Mark Karotau, 50, is mowing the berm around the small memorial marking the place his nephew, Nathan Karotau, was killed in a car accident at age 33 on January 4, 2017.
His mother Carol Karotau, 74, sits in the car at the road's edge while cousin Marcus Karotau, 32, supervises from the longer grass, outside the mowed strip.
Mark Karotau mows the grass next the roadside memorial to his nephew Nathan Karotau on the road north of Palmerston North. Photo / Mike Scott
The three don't draw a wage, between retirement, sickness benefit and solo-parenting. Absolutely, says Mark Karotau, Covid-19 "has changed the way we live our lives". Marcus Karotau, whose days are filled with raising children, says the focus shifts to maintaining "safety for your children, safety for yourself" but "the pay rate doesn't change".
Less financial uncertainty, but "you're still on the bones of your arse". There's a share market term about small, short-lived recoveries, based on the theory that "even a dead cat will bounce if it falls from a great height". The Karotau whanau will tell you dead cats don't bounce when you're on the breadline. It's no great height from which to fall.
We fall and rise with the rolling landscape as the flat lands of Manawatu give way to the edge of Rangitikei District. It feels fresh and lush on approach to Taranaki, where everything grows. A stand of pine brilliantly releases clouds of pollen, caught by the wind, highlighted in the morning sun. It's a mystical, surreal moment.
At this moment, it is weeks, not months, to go until the election. In Whanganui, the politicians are braced to explode into campaigning. National's incumbent MP Harete Hipango has cornered an intersection on the high street. It's locked and quiet, although a peek through the window shows a campaign about to be unleashed.
Further along in a shop space is Steph Lewis, 32, who is hoping to unseat Hipango. In 2017, Lewis shaved Hipango's majority to 1700; different candidates to 2014 and a different environment but National's electorate lead was cut from a 4500 vote gap.
Cushla Robson (left) and Sharon Stuart Duff chat with Labour Party candidate for Whanganui, Steph Lewis, at their campaign headquarters. Photo / Mike Scott
The path to this election was "completely derailed by Covid", she says. Plans devised in January were meaningless by April. Campaign photographs carefully staged in 2017 were crammed in the few weeks after the change in alert levels in May.
"This campaign is like no other campaign I've been involved in," she says. For voters, there's an unrelenting focus on "leadership", she says, primarily by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, finance minister Grant Robertson, new health minister Chris Hipkins and Covid-19 minister for border isolation and quarantine, Megan Woods.
"People understand we are in a privileged position. We are very, very lucky and people want to guard that."
Mist lies on the eastern side of the Saddle Road between Woodville and Palmerston North. Photo / Mike Scott
At the time, Lewis has a good message to sell door-to-door. "I make sure people know how to access the wage subsidy, loan scheme, get tax back."
That was just days before New Zealand knew Covid-19 was back, and this time was spreading through our communities and the country was facing going into lockdown. The election was postponed - "derailed", again.
No to a second lockdown
"I don't think I'll obey it, if it happens again," says Tim Reid, 39, who owns Hawera's Greaves Electrical Ltd with wife Shannon, 42.
"We've got 21 people here. We're responsible for their livelihoods."
They burst out of lockdown ready to go. "Work-wise, we're super busy. I've taken on seven extra people (as contractors) in the last few months."
Greaves Electrical managing director Tim Reid, in Hawera, has been busy since the Covid 19 lockdown finished. Photo / Mike Scott
There's no shortage of business. Spending, too, as Reid talks about having bought a new truck. The car dealer was flat out and asking "is everyone spending their Covid money".
It's not an uncommon tale across the country. Whiteware is flying out the door, new cars rolling off the lot, holidays and renovations, landscaping work and new house builds. It's like the nation is flat out on a massive sugar rush.
"Hopefully there's enough stimulation (in the economy) to keep it going," says Reid.
His company deals with domestic, commercial, industrial and farming electrical needs. Reid - like Corlett in Eketahuna - is a medium-sized business owner who will never have grass grow under his feet.
"You've got to work hard to keep busy," he says. "If you've got a good business, you'll be alright. If you're a bit shaky, maybe not."
A sheep with her newborn lamb among vines at a Wairarapa winery. Photo / Mike Scott
Everyone's looking for answers. In New Plymouth the next morning, economist Cameron Bagrie was speaking at a breakfast meeting of the National Road Carriers (New Plymouth branch) in the Plymouth International Hotel.
A national sugar rush
The sugar rush of spending the country is experiencing runs contrary to Bagrie's advice, which was "capital preservation for when reality hits the market".
"Being patient is really tough but it's a discipline," he tells his audience.
You will need discipline to get through this, he says, for this is only round two of a 15-round battle.
"Buckle up - she's going to be one hell of a ride."
Economist Cameron Bagrie in New Plymouth. Photo / Mike Scott
These are the meetings we stopped having when the virus arrived. About 30 people have gathered for the buffet. Local MP Jonathan Young is present. All eyes are on Bagrie.
"Do I think we can go back to level 4? The answer is no," says Bagrie. This is Friday. By next Wednesday, Auckland will be in level 3 lockdown. Possibly, says the economist, the country can handle regional shutdown if there is community transmission.
"We have to learn to live with it. It's lives versus livelihoods. Next time around, the attention has to be on livelihoods."
Bagrie talks about the virus working against globalisation, which - in turn - he says was just "a fancy word for getting stuff out of China".
"Some countries are going to relocate essential items back on shore," he says. "The problem is going to be if you unwind globalisation, where do you think interest rates and inflation are going to be in 10 years."
Bring the sacred cows
Bagrie turns his crystal ball to economies floundering more than a decade into the future where a tsunami of debt washes away prosperity. Reform, change, brace to meet the impact - "we have an opportunity to put a lot of sacred cows on the table to get stuff done".
"New Zealand is sitting at the most critical juncture I have seen in my entire lifetime."
The road ahead near Mokau in northern Taranaki. Photo / Mike Scott
Young takes time after the meeting to talk about the campaign ahead. "What does it look like if you can't social distance or have large meetings?" This will be his fifth election contest for New Plymouth, his fourth as the defending, incumbent MP. There's a benefit to being recognised as the local MP but this contest has no correlation with previous elections.
There's advantage for Labour in its handling of the first lockdown and the difficulty in forming an argument against that. And the difficulty of raising questions about the ongoing management without being seen as knocking the national interest.
"Politics has never been like it has been now," says Young.
National MP Jonathan Young in New Plymouth. Photo / Mike Scott
New Plymouth always feels buoyant. There's an underlying cushion of dairy wealth. Also, the edict that gas and oil exploration will end has brought on a rush to find viable deposits before the deadline.
The sharemarket is showing the same buoyancy, reports Gary Wycherley, a retired merchant banker who now runs the Awakino River Lodge, on the road north from New Plymouth.
And the poor get sicker
"I think the rich boys in New York couldn't give a f***," he says. "They're ramping (the market) up and they don't care. America is a society where the rich get richer and the poor get sicker. They don't care. And Trump's on their side."
He's got a caricature of Trump hanging on the wall in his lodge next to one of NZ First leader Winston Peters. "I've got all the despots there," he says. Wycherley is wearing a Make America Great Again T-shirt. "I just wear this to piss people off."
Awakino Lodge owner Gary Wycherley. Photo / Mike Scott
Wycherley doesn't seem troubled about annoying anyone. He recounts his lockdown-busting drive to Auckland. "I ran the gauntlet," he said, detailing a little-known route that avoided obvious police pinch-points on the road North.
"If she hadn't eased off the lockdown like she did, everyone would have gone. Everyone around here was getting fed up."
Still, Ardern was "the right person in the right place doing the right job". "We're all still here, aren't we?"
From Taranaki we rose through the Awakino Tunnel Bypass works that continue to choke the gorge road east before dropping into King Country and Te Kuiti. It shows all signs of a faltering town, bereft of the investment into homes and shops seen in Taranaki or north of Wellington.
The coastline from Awakino Heads on the northern Taranaki coast. Photo / Mike Scott
The statue of All Blacks' legend Colin Meads feels the newest, most solid of Te Kuiti's installations - a monument to an age gone, a demi-god permanently brought to earth.
Since the death of her husband, Maria Raivaru, 52, has made money by selling a lifetime of accumulated items on TradeMe. She collected all her life, he collected even more. "He said, 'I will pass away, you can sell it'," and so she has.
Raivaru's income stream keeps her indoors. For someone with Type 2 diabetes - and her son has Type 1 - she's conscious she has a condition with high mortality among those afflicted with Covid-19.
Maria Raivaru, 52, in Te Kuiti. Photo / Mike Scott
The absence of the disease in New Zealand - almost 100 days at this stage - hasn't dissuaded her of the risk. She shops to avoid shortages, makes sure she has the medication she needs. "I'm preparing in case it bounces and comes back."
Nature seeks a balance
The ebb and flow of life were disrupted enormously by Covid-19. At this stage, ahead of the Auckland resurgence, the disruption was focused on the lockdown period and the immediate return to normality. It impacted our lives and the existence of those creatures who share this planet.
"Nature always has a way of coming back to balance," says Taupo District fishery manager Dave Conley, 50.
At the Tongariro River, Conley points to the whio (blue duck), a species considered vulnerable yet emboldened by an absence of humans. The kārearea - the New Zealand falcon - hunts in the streets of Turangi, rocketing along at waist-height on the hunt.
Conley points to where the river flows under the swing bridge. "You would notice the fish in places they never normally went. It was really obvious how quickly nature would move back into the space we made."
Department of Conservation Taupo fishery manager in Turangi Dave Conley at the Tongariro River. Photo / Mike Scott
The fish, since lockdown, have been bigger. Conley's seeing an average of 1.9kg where the historical average was 1.3-1.4kg. There also seems to be an increase in the numbers of anglers. Perhaps the fish took a month to feed. If so, the surge in anglers has passed on the benefit.
As manager of the fishery for the Department of Conservation, Conley adjusts settings such as bag limit numbers and fish size depending on the number and size of trout, which is dictated by the availability of food, breeding patterns, the number of fish caught and myriad other factors.
There is balance, too, in humanity's relationship with the world. As the line between domestic and wild animals thins, as people move into spaces where they have never previously lived, there are impacts from "pushing on the boundaries too hard", he says.
"Is this nature's way of fighting back," he wonders. There is, he adds, the Gaea theory of life on Earth being one requiring balance and harmony among living things and in their interaction with inorganic materials, and the planet's way of asserting that even keel.
And then with a laugh, he says yes, most anglers do develop into amateur philosophers.
Vision NZ leader Hannah Tamaki in Taupo. Photo / Mike Scott
Hannah's got a fast car
To the east, Hannah Tamaki was on the Taupo foreshore campaigning for votes. Her usual territory is at the side of Destiny Church leader Bishop Brian Tamaki, her husband, but this year she's taking a terrestrial run at a seat in Parliament.
She's bright and breezy in Vision NZ clothing. Covid-19 is going to push families together, she believes, and extended tight-knit family groups should be encouraged and supported by the government.
For a change, Tamaki's messages are a long way from the controversial end of the campaign trail. That space is owned by Billy Te Kahika and his NZ People's Party which actively pushes bizarre and untrue Covid-19 conspiracy theories.
Yes, she confirms, there was talk of a merger with NZPP but it went nowhere. Te Kahika has since hooked up with National Party ejectee Jami-Lee Ross.
Tamaki: "I said, 'we started this last year. I'm not moving aside. I'm not giving you my vehicle when I only got the vehicle last year.
Hawke's Bay resident Teahine Hakiwai was in Taupo for a family gathering. Photo / Mike Scott
"It's like asking for their new car. I'm not letting him drive off in my car. I only got it last year. So he's got JLR's car."
Taupo was buzzing, not just with Tamaki's electoral effervescence but with day-trippers, and weekend visitors, and extended family holidays.
Duncan and Melissa Bradley, 40 and 42, were there with kids Zara, 9, and Hunter, 5, from Ongaonga in central Hawke's Bay. "This is our very first time out since lockdown," says Duncan Bradley.
They farm sheep and beef. Like other farmers, they relish the opportunity to once again be recognised as the backbone of the country's economy. Melissa Bradley runs through the red tape already a factor in farming and that due to land which had left farmers feeling marginalised.
In Taupo for a weekend break were Duncan and Melissa Bradley, of Hawke's Bay, with children Zara and Hunter. Photo / Mike Scott
"We're kind of enjoying feeling valued for a change," she says.
Also on holiday was Teahine Hakiwai, 28, of Hawke's Bay, who was with partner Taru Kamo and Taylor, 5, along with a heap of extended family.
"This is our coming-out-of-Covid holiday," she says. That was Saturday. Just an hour away in Rotorua, the family at the centre of the cluster to emerge 10 days later were also enjoying a family break. Like the rest of New Zealand, they were embracing our relative freedom.
"We're doing 95 per cent better than other countries in the world," says resident Louise Hargraves, 63, who was talking her usual morning walk along the lakefront. It's grim offshore, and sad, she says, and isn't confident at talk of a travel bubble beyond our borders.
She looks up and down the path. "There are so many people here in Taupo. I don't know where they are all coming from. It's amazing."
Taupo resident Louise Hargraves on her morning walk. Photo / Mike Scott
We relished that freedom to travel, freedom to work. Now we accommodate necessity as alert levels change and freedom becomes constrained. So too may our freedom to work, or to be picky about what we do. In Hawke's Bay, Bay of Plenty, Far North and at both ends of the South Island, primary industry thrives on foreign workers.
Money makes the world spin
There's a lot of give and take between New Zealand and the world. Grapes harvested by foreign workers and the wine often sold to foreign buyers.
"A lot of the workers are still here," says Hawke's Bay Wine Ambassador Nic Olsen, 35, of Hastings. "There's a core group for a lot of companies." Like other industries, they are specialised workers who have developed skills season after season.
Not having those workers for seasons ahead would put the industry in a crisis situation, as in other areas with surge demands in agriculture or horticulture. It is unclear, yet, what will happen.
It's not just growing grapes and making wine, but selling it. "There are those who have poured a lot of money into their business and they need to get that back," says Olsen.
Hawke's Bay wine ambassador Nic Olsen with Leo at Crab Farm Winery. Photo / Mike Scott
"A $100 bottle of wine is selling for $40. Money coming in is money coming in."
Money makes the world go around, sang Liza Minnelli in the musical Cabaret. Covid-19 is one big spanner in the works.
