The period of Matariki, the celebration of the Māori New Year, which began earlier this week, is being celebrated increasingly as an important national event. While many other countries have their own form of New Year celebrations, Matariki is uniquely New Zealand. As such, it deserves special recognition. We already celebrate great annual events from other cultures, such as Diwali and Chinese New Year, which is good, but now is the time to give Matariki the prominence it deserves. 

Yet most of the celebrations around Matariki are locally organised. Usually local communities and councils play their part in putting together local festivities such as fireworks displays or other celebratory events. Unlike Waitangi Day, or even ANZAC Day, the two other uniquely New Zealand special days which we commemorate each year, there is no national occasion organised to celebrate Matariki.

The time has come to change that. Matariki deserves its own special day of celebration and is worthy of a public holiday in its honour. Even though there is a general wariness in New Zealand about creating more public holidays – as the debate a few years ago about ‘Mondayising’ Waitangi and ANZAC Days showed – we are still on the light side of the number of public holidays most countries celebrate. Adding another holiday to celebrate a significant national event is unlikely to bring the economy to its knees as some critics might argue.

In any case, the establishment of a national public holiday to mark Matariki need not entail the creation of an additional public holiday. It could be done by simply replacing an existing public holiday that has become obsolete. An obvious candidate in this regard is the current Queen’s Birthday holiday at the start of June.

As New Zealand culturally diversifies, the celebration of the British Monarch’s birthday, with full military honours and all the trappings besides becomes more and more incongruous. At a time when New Zealand is trying to shake off the final vestiges of its colonial past and assert its identity as a modern Pacific nation nothing can continue to appear more absurd than the annual official celebration of the birthday of a hereditary ruler on the other side of the world. Queen’s Birthday holiday is an occasion whose time has well and truly past, and it should be replaced with an event far more relevant to the lives and world views of contemporary New Zealanders.

Matariki Day would be the perfect substitute for the anachronistic Queen’s Birthday. Occurring at about the same time of year as Queen’s Birthday, Matariki would also have the practical advantage of ensuring that New Zealanders still get a public holiday during the long winter months. The Queen’s Birthday Honours List could easily become the Matariki Honours List, which would be a nice counterpoint to the New Year’s Honours List released in January. And the dwindling pageantry now associated with Queen’s Birthday could be incorporated into the wider celebrations of Matariki, if it be so wished. In short, Matariki has a far more New Zealand ring about it than Queen’s Birthday ever did.

Bicultural New Zealand has been engaged in an often too timid assertion of its national identity for some generations now. Yet while our population has become more diverse, and our absorption of aspects of other cultures more extensive, especially since the 1990s, we have been too slow to move to ensure that our national structures reflect both that emerging diversity and our own bicultural environment. Despite successive Prime Ministers piously acknowledging the inevitability that New Zealand will become a republic, none has done anything to advance that. And notwithstanding Britain’s abrupt casting aside of New Zealand when it wanted to join the European Community in the 1970s, New Zealand has rushed to be near the top of the queue in negotiating a free trade agreement with Britain now that it has decided it no longer wants to be part of Europe after all.  

The time has come for this country to start matching its lofty and bold talk about our progressive and independent identity with some action that shows we take that talk seriously. Continuing the way we are, with no substantive action to follow, will, over time, led to more and more alienation and potential social division. Moving now to replace Queen’s Birthday with the far more relevant Matariki Day would be a simple, but important step forward and a signal that as a country we were genuine in our desire to establish and promote our identity and pride in all facets of what it means to be a New Zealander today.

There can be few more spectacular political own goals than that just scored against the National Party by first-term Clutha-Southland MP, Hamish Walker this week. The consequences for Walker personally, and his eminence grise, Michelle Boag, have been grim and dire, but the incident is potentially catastrophic for the National Party, just over ten weeks away from the general election.

Not only will things drag on for a while, as the Herron inquiry, and a possible investigation by the Privacy Commissioner unfold, there is also the possibility of separate legal action arising from these investigations. Then, there is the prospect of a hurried and intense candidate selection process as for the second time in three years the National Party looks to find a suitable candidate to take over what has always been one of its safest electorates. None of this is likely to be good news for the National Party.

It all makes the Jami-Lee Ross saga of last year look like a distant storm in a teacup. That matter is now before the High Court and the National Party will be relieved that a trial date has been set for September next year, so sparing it from any further embarrassing revelations on that score before the election. Winston Peters may be even be breathing a sigh of relief too that any detrimental finding by the Serious Fraud Office in its inquiry into the New Zealand First Foundation may not now look as bad.

National leader Todd Muller seems to have been blindsided by the whole Walker affair, although some are trying to draw links between Boag and Muller, given the assistance she apparently provided during his campaign for the National Party leadership. However, he seems determined to try and make the best of what is an almost impossibly bad situation.

His initial response to Walker’s admission was considered by some to be too bland – a mere expression of disappointment – although we now know that was as much a consequence of the legal actions already being undertaken by lawyers acting on Walker’s behalf. But the decisiveness of his subsequent actions – stripping Walker of all his Caucus responsibilities and asking the Party’s governing board to expel him altogether from the Party – will have taken his critics by surprise. Walker’s recognition that his political career was over and that he should best stand down was no less swift.

Muller has always insisted that his mild demeanour should not be mistaken for a lack of political steel or the ruthlessness need to be an effective political leader. But it is one thing to say these things about one’s self and then have them believed by a normally sceptical public, but something else altogether to be able to demonstrate them. Unwelcome and annoying as the incident undoubtedly is for Muller, its circumstances have allowed him to show the decisiveness and ruthlessness he has said he possesses.

Walker’s rapid journey to oblivion will have been met with approval by his angry Caucus colleagues, perhaps fearing that their own prospects of holding their own seats at the election, let alone being able to form a government, will be rapidly disappearing with him. At the same time, they will have also taken on board the message that Muller is not to be trifled with, and that he will not tolerate disloyal or dishonourable actions by his MPs.

Beyond the National Party, Muller’s handling of the Walker case provides a stark contrast to the way in which the Prime Minister has dealt with cases involving her own Ministers. Admittedly, her cases have been more about sheer Ministerial incompetence – Curran, Twyford, Lees-Galloway and Clark, for example – than actions that have been disreputable. Nevertheless, the general pattern that has emerged over the last three years has been of a Prime Minister disinclined to act decisively when cases of Ministerial incompetence and poor performance occur. The recent example of the prolonged retention of David Clark bordered on the painfully embarrassing, until he finally recognised that he was a liability and resigned.

Muller will be hoping that the public will react favourably to the way he has dealt with Walker, compared to the more drawn-out and indeterminate processes applying to government Ministers. But any kudos he gains will be small, as the consequences of the Walker affair for the National Party are just too overwhelming.

Recent opinion polls have shown high levels of trust and confidence in the government’s Covid19-related actions. While there is an acknowledgement that not everything has been anywhere near as perfect or smooth as Ministers like to suggest, the government was winning support for “doing its best” in unprecedented circumstances. National’s hope was that public frustration with the bungles, such as the recent border control failures, would grow to the extent that concern about competence came to outweigh trust in the government’s “doing its best”.

The Walker incident has blown that hope out of the water. Now, any future concerns National raises about the competence of government actions, based on information it has obtained through official and other legitimate sources, will be easily dismissed as dirty and desperate politics. Any trust in National as the party best to rely on to lead New Zealand through the difficult few years of recovery ahead has been seriously damaged.

No wonder Todd Muller is angry. He has every reason to be. After all, it is not every day one of your most junior MPs turns your party into the best reason yet for re-electing your opponents to office.

Over 20 years after the event, the Scott Watson murder case continues to attract public attention. Last week’s decision by the Governor-General to refer the case back to the Court of Appeal is but the latest step in this long saga.

The Watson case is one of a handful of cases from the 1970s to the 1990s which aroused considerable doubt about the original convictions and led to their being eventually overturned. Arthur Allan Thomas was twice convicted for the Crewe murders in 1970, before being pardoned and released from prison in 1979 following a Royal Commission of Inquiry. David Bain’s conviction and imprisonment for murdering his family in 1994 was overturned at a retrial which acquitted him in 2009. Teina Pora was convicted of murder in 1994 and was in prison for 20 years before being released. His conviction was subsequently quashed by the Privy Council. Rex Haig’s murder conviction in 1995 was quashed in 2006, while he was on parole after serving 10 years in prison. Scott Watson was convicted and sentenced in 1999, with a minimum non-parole period of 17 years, and he is still in prison after 21 years.

Separate to these, but no less significant, is the case of David Tamihere, convicted in 1990 of the murder of two Swedish backpackers. His appeals to the Court of Appeal and the Privy Council after the discovery of massive conflicts between the evidence presented and the emergence of subsequent contradictory facts both failed, and he served 20 years in prison before being released, still protesting his innocence. Earlier, this year, the Governor-General referred his case back to the Court of Appeal for further consideration.

And then there is the case of Peter Ellis, convicted in 1993 of child abuse, twice upheld subsequently by the Court of Appeal, and once more by a separate Ministerial Inquiry, who served his full sentence of 10 years before being released. Now, following Ellis’ death last year, a final approach is being made to the Court of Appeal to posthumously clear his name of what many consider to have been an appalling miscarriage of justice.

Over the years, I have read almost everything that has been published about the Scott Watson case, as well as speaking to many people directly involved. I am still unsure whether his conviction was justified by the evidence available. An aspect of the case that has always bothered me is the Police insistence from the outset that the young couple were last seen on a distinctive ketch (a double-masted yacht), whereas Watson’s yacht was a sloop – a single-masted vessel.

Many witnesses came forward saying they had seen a ketch that matched the original description given by the Police in and around the Marlborough Sounds at the time. Indeed, I saw such a ketch in Westport a few weeks later, which I subsequently reported to the Police, who, by then focused on Watson’s sloop,  told me emphatically “there was no ketch”, even as a poster describing the ketch and seeking information about it hung incongruously on the wall behind them!

While our system of jury trials is probably the best and fairest available, there will always be incidences where the complexity of the case, or the paucity of incontrovertible evidence increase the possibility of a mistake being made and a miscarriage of justice occurring. The right of appeal to the Court of Appeal, then the Supreme Court or ultimately the Governor-General, is a sufficient safeguard in most cases to ensure that eventually a just and correct decision is reached. But as the Thomas, Bain, Pora, Haig, Ellis and now potentially Tamihere and Watson cases have all shown, there will still be some cases that will leave a measure of public unease that the legal system, however fully applied, cannot resolve.

In that regard, the formal establishment this week of the Criminal Cases Review Commission is an important and welcome step forward. In essence, it will replace the referral function of the Governor-General, as exercised in the Watson case,  with an independent statutory commission able to investigate on its own behalf cases where a possible miscarriage of justice may have occurred and to refer such cases back to the Courts if it considers that is the appropriate thing to do. The Commission’s statutory independence should ensure that it can proactively examine cases that come before it fully and independently without having to rely solely on the evidence previously collected. In that way, it is hoped that the cases the Commission considers can be judged more holistically than on the current basis of whether the Police and prosecution or the defence got it right.

The prolonged nature of resolution of each of the cases referred to above has been unsatisfactory in many respects. There has been the length of time taken, and the unreasonableness of the impositions on the freedom of the individuals, especially in the Thomas, Bain, Pora and Haig cases where the convictions were ultimately overturned. And each case and its course has also led to a measure of weakened public confidence in the current system, as the ongoing Tamihere, Ellis and Watson cases currently suggest.

Arguably, the system eventually got it right in the Thomas, Bain Pora and Haig cases, leaving us all to ponder how much more tragic the outcome might have been had capital punishment still been in place.

Whatever the eventual outcome of the Tamihere, Ellis and Watson cases, the establishment of the Criminal Cases Review Commission should mean that where such cases arise in the future, as they will inevitably, an outcome can be reached much more rapidly, without those affected having to prove their innocence while spending many unnecessary years languishing  in prison.

New Zealand’s collective smugness at apparently beating Covid19 earlier than most took quite a hit when new cases started to appear at the very time separate questions were arising about the efficacy of current border control and quarantine practices. Some of the national sense of relief felt when the country moved to Alert Level 4 a couple of weeks ago dissipated suddenly, harming the restoration of confidence that was becoming a critical part of the economic and social recovery needed to restore a sense of the normality so many have been yearning for.

Now, there are fresh challenges to be met. Amongst the most dramatic of these is the likelihood of even stricter measures to control who is coming into the country. Rather than looking forward to a relaxation of border controls and the possible establishment of travel bubbles with other countries or regions, it now appears we are going to have to put up with a much longer period of international isolation than was previously considered reasonable or desirable.

And this brings us hard up against a hitherto unquestioned reality. New Zealand citizens and residents, wherever they may be in the world at present, have an inalienable right to return to the country they call home. Just as we accept the international obligation to support those who hold a New Zealand passport, whatever political or legal strife they may be in and wherever they are, so too do we have an obligation to ensure those citizens and residents who wish to return here are able to do so.  

Now that we require all those coming to New Zealand, including citizens and permanent residents, to go through a period of managed isolation or quarantine before being released to their homes, families and friends, a serious issue has arisen regarding the costs of managed isolation and quarantine. As these escalate, and show no signs of reducing any time soon, it is being suggested that the price of managed isolation and quarantine should shift to a user pays basis. Cabinet is reported to be about to consider the proposition within the next few weeks.

It is time to draw a line in the sand here. Any New Zealand citizen or permanent resident returning to this country and being required to enter a period of managed isolation or quarantine because of government policy on the management of Covid19 should not be required to pay for the costs of that period of effective detention, under any circumstances. The commitment New Zealand makes to protecting those to whom it accords citizenship or permanent residence cannot be compromised in this way, and it is intolerable that the issue is even being considered. Making New Zealanders pay in such circumstances would be the start of a very slippery slope.

However, given the nature of the current national emergency it would not be unreasonable for the government and authorities to expect there to be full co-operation from all those returning, and for some sanctions to be applicable when that co-operation is not forthcoming. But that is quite different from charging citizens and residents directly for being quarantined upon arrival.

While the rights of citizens and residents are virtually inalienable in these circumstances, the same does not necessarily apply in the case of other people coming here, especially those whose visits are for private reasons, not directly related in some way to New Zealand’s national interests. In such circumstances, it may be quite appropriate to consider some form of payment to help defray the costs of their isolation or quarantine, although even then full cost-recovery is unlikely to be entirely appropriate.

But a measure of reciprocity would need to be considered. Many countries are presently facing similar questions. At the very least, it would be prudent for us to be keeping an eye on what they are contemplating and then making sure any actions we take on this score are at least consistent with those being taken elsewhere. The last thing we would want is for costs to be imposed on a retaliatory basis – if you impose these costs on our people entering New Zealand, then we will do likewise to your people entering our country. That would be a very silly and short-sighted approach on the part of both countries, and one we would be best to avoid.

As with so much of Covid19 the question of what to do about the costs of managed isolation and quarantine sounds easy. The complexities become more apparent when it comes to actually doing something. It appears we fell into that trap originally regarding managing the border, and now we have to extricate ourselves from what has become a messy, inconsistent and generally unsatisfactory situation. We should learn from that when it comes to the questions of the costs of managed isolation and quarantine and avoid populist and apparently solutions likely to bite us very hard a little later on. 

In a distant corner of the national fairground sits an old piece of equipment that has been around for years, but only gets turned on every decade or so. It never quite manages to do all the things it was supposed to, and so, in frustration, it is closed down after a while, and put aside for years, until someone decides it is worth having another attempt to make it work properly. It is called the health sector reorganisation merry-go-round, and it has just been wheeled out again this week.

Prior to 1983, health services in New Zealand were primarily structured through 19 District Health Offices and 29 elected Hospital Boards. A further 230 Territorial Local Authorities had basic responsibility for wider environmental health and town planning issues. By 1980, there were over 180 public hospitals in New Zealand and a further 163 private hospitals offering a total of just over 31,000 hospital beds.

It was a bureaucratic and financial nightmare, and the heavy emphasis on hospital-based approaches dealt poorly with the growing challenges in public and community health and general diversity. So, from 1983 the process was streamlined through the establishment of 14 Area Health Boards to replace the Hospital Boards and District Health Offices, and to deliver a wider focus than the previous intensively hospital-based system had proven capable of. The Boards were still elected, to ensure there was sufficient regional and cultural diversity.

However, financial constraints in the wake of the 1980s economic restructuring followed by the 1987 Sharemarket Crash and the slow pace of change meant that the new model never quite worked. In 1990, for example, the Minister of Health was forced to sack the Auckland Area Health Board and replace it with a Commissioner to try to get it back on track.

At that time, there was a brief focus on getting a more business-like approach to the provision of health and hospital services, and more integration between the public and emerging private sector healthcare providers, but the Gibbs Report – which was supposed to lay out a pathway for meeting these goals – went too far. Its recommended virtual American-style privatisation scared the politicians, who ran a mile from it.

However, the problems identified by the Gibbs Report and the failure of the Auckland Area Health Board could not be ignored indefinitely. So, the merry-go-round was unveiled in the early 1990s and produced, after a few splutters, the centralised Health Funding Agency, four Regional Health Authorities, 23 Crown Health Enterprises, and a stand-alone Public Health Commission. None of these agencies was publicly elected, with the Minister of Health making all the board appointments. A split between the provision of funding and services was established, with public hospitals funded on the basis of the volume and quality of services that they had been contracted to provide by the funding agencies.

However, once again the model did not work out quite as intended. Arguments quickly arose over the Public Health Commission. Its autonomy brought it into conflict with the government, irritated by its advocacy for various public health issues, and the autonomous Regional Health Authorities who saw the Commission’s role duplicating and cutting across their own responsibilities. So, it was abolished in 1995.

As Crown Health Enterprises started closing down small, usually rural, hospitals that were often poorly attended and financially troubled, there was mounting public pressure to restore local democracy through directly elected local boards. Therefore, out came the merry-go-round once more after 1999, and the Health Funding Agency and the Regional Health Authorities were replaced by initially 21 (now 20) partially elected District Health Boards. By 2000, the numbers of hospitals had risen to around 400, but the numbers of beds provided had reduced about 25% from those available in 1980.

Over the last twenty years, complaints about the adequacy and fairness of the funding model, the duplication inherent in a large national system of autonomous District Health Boards, the unevenness in workforce planning across a number of key disciplines have intensified. In short, although the health system has grown immensely, is generally better funded and resourced than it was, and has become far more innovative, flexible and capable of ensuring people have access to the best care available to ensure that they can maintain a decent quality of life, the challenges that have bedevilled it for almost the last half-century remain.

Therefore, the merry-go-round has been cranked into life again and has produced the Health and Disability System Review which released its final report this week. In many ways, its diagnosis of the system’s weaknesses is not all that removed from the findings of the Gibbs Report, over thirty years ago, although its solutions differ markedly.

The real question, however, is what, if anything of substance will emerge once the government has had a chance to consider the Review’s recommendations. If history is any guide, the decisions eventually reached will fall well short of the problems identified by the Review, so will fail to get to heart of the problem. Add to that, this government’s serial incapacity to get any reform process right or underway, and the likelihood of significant change diminishes even further.

Meanwhile, the merry-go-round has been given a good clean, wrapped in its tarpaulins, and shifted back to the edge of the fairground, to rest quietly, until next time.  

   

The Police decision to abandon its Armed Response Teams trial was a no-brainer. The concept was never going to work or be acceptable to a sufficient section of the community to make it viable. Indeed, the only mystery is that it took the Police so long to come to that conclusion. Although Police officers are not routinely armed as they go about their daily duties, unlike, for example, their colleagues in Australia or the United States, they do have ready access to firearms if required, including high-powered rifles, and receive firearms training.

Also, a dedicated Armed Offenders Squad was established in 1964 after four Police officers had been killed in two separate incidents. Its role has been to attend incidents requiring an armed response, often situations where some form of confrontation has taken place.  Over the years, the Armed Offenders Squad has been involved in many difficult and serious incidents. While no Armed Offenders Squad members have been killed in the line of duty, many have been injured, some seriously. The Squad attends around 800 incidents each year, with shots being exchanged at about 260 of these.

But, like all policing, an effective response by the Armed Offenders Squad relies on there being quality information available and an ongoing situation for them to respond to. They are not the right response team in all situations. For example, even though they were quickly on the scene of the Christchurch mosque shootings, just ten minutes after being deployed, they were too late to stop the slaughter. This is in no way intended to denigrate their courage or their efforts, but rather to make the point that the Armed Offenders Squad may not always be the appropriate response.

It is against that type of background that the Armed Response Team concept should be considered. Policing today relies on two elements – the support and compliance of the public, and the nimbleness of response. The early stages of the Covid19 crisis showed that people were unlikely to take positively to heavy-handed policing of the restrictions being imposed, but were far more  positively and co-operatively disposed towards an educative approach that sought their compliance rather than just demanded it. And in their daily work, Police officers in New Zealand are frequently seen working alongside their local communities, gaining their trust and confidence, quite unlike their counterparts in the United States, for example, whose multiple deficiencies have been dramatically exposed in recent days. Community involvement is an important link our Police cannot risk being disrupted.

However, the harsh style and tone that would automatically be associated with the presence of an Armed Response Team would destroy much of that goodwill local Police have built up with their local communities over the years. It would have placed an unnecessary barrier in the way of Police securing the ongoing compliance of the community and created very unfortunate stereotypes. Overall, it is by no means clear that the presence of Armed Response Teams would have had a positive impact on the safety and security of the community.

A retired senior British Judge observed recently that it was the role of the Police to be the community’s servants, not the government’s agents. The community-focused role of the New Zealand Police over the last 30 or 40 years is testament to the wisdom of that view. Police are better trained and prepared to deal with a range of complex and unusual problems, with the overriding ambition of building safer communities. The new Commissioner of Police appears to personify many of those positive values.

But, for all that, the very nature of the Police’s work means they will always face a challenge gaining the confidence of every sector of society. That is an impossible task. But the risk of alienating sectors of the community by getting it wrong is also a very real risk. Police therefore are constantly involved in a community balancing act. Minimising or avoiding unnecessary risks is an important aspect of that. Getting things wrong can create rifts that take years to mend, as the aftermath of the abortive Urewera raids in 2007 has shown. None of that is conducive to good policing.

While there remain unanswered questions about aspects of the Armed Response Teams trial, including the level of political involvement, and who knew what, when, the decision to abandon the plan is nevertheless the proper one. The Commissioner has claimed the decision was reached after community and sector group consultation, although it is far from clear how widespread this was, or when it took place.

Nevertheless, the outcome is a positive one, and the tone the Commissioner has set bodes well for the relationship between the Police and the wider community over the next few years.          

Universal public compliance has been one of the major reasons why New Zealand has apparently been so successful in curbing the spread of the Covid19 virus. Fundamentally, people complied with the restrictions imposed during Alert Levels 4 and 3 because of an overwhelming fear of the risk they could catch the virus. The clear and decisive rules of engagement from the government backed up that fear. With only a few exceptions everyone knew where they stood, what they could and could not do, and what the risks of non-compliance were.

The invocation of the idea of “team of five million” built up a culture of our all being in this together, and the individual privations we were all enduring being an individually small but overall important part of a wider national picture. In an almost wartime atmosphere, we were encouraged to believe that we were all playing our part towards the achievement of a greater national goal, and we all apparently believed it. Consequently, we accepted a level of intrusion upon our personal freedoms most of us would never ever have imagined occurring in our lifetimes. Somewhat more darkly, some even embraced the notion of snitching on others whom they felt were not playing the game. But, in the interests of the greater good, such concerns were quickly pushed aside because it was comparatively easy to go along with what was happening.

However, those days now seem past us. That initial spirit has dissipated and will be difficult to recapture as we start to think about life beyond Alert Level 2.  In no small part, that is due to the unexpectedly rapid success in virtually stamping out Covid19 in New Zealand, at least for the time being. After all, if there are no new cases being reported, now day after day, how can there possibly be a crisis to be concerned about anymore? Or, so the argument goes.

But a bigger factor is that the urgency around Covid19 has waned. The absolute imperative of uniform national compliance has all but evaporated.  When the Prime Minister and the Director-General of Health – the two faces of compassionate reassurance but unflinching authority during Levels 4 and 3 – are photographed conversing with groups of people, the way we used to, it is difficult to maintain the line that for everyone else strict social distancing rules must continue to apply. Likewise, when a demonstration of several thousand people takes place and the Director-General says it poses no threat to public health, because we have no cases occurring, it becomes very hard to tell business premises that they still need to regulate the numbers of people on their sites in the interests of preventing Covid19’s possible spread.

The issue here is not whether these things should be occurring – the government, after all, seems to be giving clear hints that a move to the far more relaxed Alert Level 1, when virtually the only restriction still in place will be a closed national border, is maybe barely a week away – but rather the mixed messages currently being sent, and the difficulties they are causing for compliance. Where we once were united in the pursuit of a common goal, we now seem to believe we have achieved that, and are increasingly frustrated that we cannot get back to life as we knew it more quickly.

It is probably also a clear indication that as the numbers of Covid19 cases have virtually disappeared the public interest has started to move on too. It is now becoming much more focused on the impact on individual circumstances – jobs that have disappeared, the struggle to pay the rent and the mortgage, the long winter ahead, and what happens when the wage subsidies run out. Worrying about catching Covid19 is increasingly taking second place to these more immediate domestic concerns, especially when it appears that, even at an official level, things are not being treated as seriously as they were just a few weeks ago.

While none of this should come as any great surprise it also shows that the government’s authority on this issue has now peaked. As things start to become more relaxed, the unique authority the government possessed and demonstrated so effectively during the lockdowns will ebb away and New Zealanders’ natural instinct to be less automatically obedient to every government call will return. So too, one hopes, will the genuine contest of ideas so necessary to a functioning democracy, especially in the lead-up to an election.

The mixed messages of recent days notwithstanding, most New Zealanders will welcome and take in their stride the pending return to something approaching the normality they knew, albeit with a typically quiet sense of pride at what they have been able to achieve. They will be hoping Covid19 shows no sign of a significant return during the coming winter months, as we begin to reopen our border. So too will the government and the public health authorities. For they know only too well that the level of sudden public compliance and acquiescence achieved during the lockdowns was but a moment in time – a shocked reaction to what was happening overseas and the abrupt arrival of circumstances that no-one had properly anticipated. It is unlikely to be achievable to the same extent even if future circumstances warrant it.