Healthy distrust better than blind faith
New Zealand, it seems, is a very trusting nation. Colmar Brunton polling showing that 87 per cent of New Zealanders ‘‘trust the Government to make the right decisions on Covid-19’’ compares with an average of 50 per cent in other G7 countries.
While that’s heartening, it also suggests we have a relaxed and passive attitude to our responsibility in ensuring the Government honours that trust. We need to ask whether such high levels of trust are appropriate for the increased power of the Government.
Under the Epidemic Preparedness Act 2006, the Civil Defence Emergency Management Act 2002, and the Health Act 1956 our Government currently has ‘‘emergency power’’ that was not available at the beginning of the year. While emergency powers are appropriate for such times, it’s important to remember that they also introduce risk.
As senior law lecturer Alan Greene, of the University of Birmingham, has noted, ‘‘emergency powers have a worrying tendency of becoming permanent. It does not take much imagination to see how powers restricting public gatherings to control a pandemic could be used to other ends’’.
We’ve seen examples in Britain and the United States when some powers introduced after 9/11 failed to expire when the initial sunset clauses were set. Given we don’t know how long we will be vulnerable to Covid-19, it is easy to imagine certain ‘‘new norms’’ as the
Government balances public health with economic and civil liberty imperatives.
The risk of emergency powers isn’t only intentional misuse – I don’t expect our prime minister to use her newfound power to make lockdown permanent. However, they can be misused unintentionally, and so there must be checks in the hope of preventing abuse. The most obvious example of this is the Epidemic Response Committee.
Even with limitations to emergency power, our trust in government must be active rather than passive. ‘‘Active’’ trust could be rephrased as a healthy distrust of government. That is, the public and the media need to be willing to ask the difficult questions of the Government, create room for opposition, be unafraid, and even grateful of differing viewpoints.
We’ve had a taste of this with media discussing the privacy concerns of an app to trace contacts. However, we’ve also seen those who query the Government’s strategy characterised as ‘‘unhelpful’’ and ‘‘contrarian’’. Whether we agree with their critiques or not, deepening the national conversation and discussing the strengths and weaknesses of the policies is essential for accountability.
A posture of healthy distrust requires government to be participatory, transparent, and accountable. It’s more essential than ever that our Government not only maintains but increases its transparency; fully explaining decisions so that New
Zealanders can be completely confident in its use and management of emergency powers. This includes supporting the function of the Opposition to hold the Government to account.
Instead, we’ve seen the suspension of Parliament. Worse, there have been reports that government officials proposed to suspend the Official Information Act during lockdown; removing rather than increasing an important mechanism for transparency.
At the best of times, I think our elected leaders should take a considered and careful approach to avoid the unintended consequences of rushed legislation. In extreme times, when government is required to take sweeping, emergency actions, there is an even greater need for voices to constructively evaluate, challenge, and correct oversights.
New Zealanders are doing an excellent job of pulling together to fend off the pandemic, but we cannot afford to passively trust all that our elected officials say and do.
Surviving Covid-19 isn’t just about surviving the immediate crisis. It’s also about looking to the future and ensuring we preserve the fundamental rights and freedoms that are at the core of our way of life. Protecting this future requires each of us to participate, ask questions, and hold our government to account – to maintain an active trust in our leaders, rather than blind faith.