Politics
Politics as usual goes the way of civil liberties in times such as these.
It’s unexpectedly cheering to find that the Government and Opposition initially squabbled furiously about how to run a reduced but still accountable Parliament.
For all that people say this is no time for politics, it’s important to keep its motor in running order. National’s bid to keep the full Parliament meeting on business-as-usual lines was heroic, if impractical. It was also inadvertently patrician. MPs can’t credibly lock up the citizenry but retain the right to carry on travelling themselves, risking spreading infection and – as it would be widely viewed – swanning about. There’s been enough sniffiness about Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters’ exemption from the over-seventies quarantine to remind MPs that “Do as I say, not as I do” never sits well.
With Australia contemplating no federal Parliament for six months, our provisional four-weeks of a mini-me House via remote net-cast is hardly draconian. Constituency work can – and should – be done by phone for now.
But National’s instincts were laudable. All around the world, the state is turning into a behemoth – of urgent necessity – but at some stage countries will have to debate how, when and even if their crisis-sized Governments will be able to restore themselves to previous dimensions. Political parties will need to keep their teeth sharp for that transition – if only to make sure there is a transition. Green supporters could mount a compelling case that our new state-dominated Covid-19 economy is the perfect model to tackle climate change once and for all.
Those not old enough to remember the stultifying social atmosphere under Sir Robert Muldoon’s command, fortress economy might conclude, from this crisis-taste of it, that Big Bruv government is the way to go permanently. The lockdown’s exigencies might prompt some temporary olde worlde measures such as price controls and rationing, which will appeal to the Calvinists among us as long overdue and worth keeping.
The equity issues will be hugely confronting to navigate in the “back to normal” phase, especially now the
Government has laid the foundations for its becoming loan guarantor to an as yet unknown number of struggling businesses. This cannot help but underpin the fortunes of shareholders rather more soundly than those of other groups, such as salaried workers and sole traders. Politicians will need to manage currents of utu when there will be huge temptation to inflame and ride them.
It’s not one political party enforcing this tough love but three quite disparate ones.
FREEDOMS OUT THE WINDOW
Perhaps most troubling are the civil liberties issues. Our lifelong freedoms are now drastically curtailed, and while we all understand why and trust that it’s strictly temporary, these are the last issues to be complacent about.
If New Zealanders want to rebuild, let alone improve, the economy we had before, this pause-button period cannot remain politics-free. Not since the world wars have we had to trust so implicitly that the tough things the state is doing to us are truly being done in our interests.
We have the slight consolation of knowing that it’s not one political party enforcing this tough love, but three quite disparate ones so even now we’re no one-party state. But given persistent predictions that we might not even be able to have our September election on time, it remains vital the whole Parliament retain an effective presence and voice.
Besides the temporary system of small-quorum, online Question Time, MPs might need to consider designing a Covid-19 election combo of postal and drive-through voting. The
extent of premise closures and movement restrictions must remain open for parliamentary debate as the viral spread patterns become clearer.
It’s fair to say Covid-19 has stopped the actual election campaign dead in its tracks indefinitely. Electioneering is ordinarily cockroach-grade ineradicable. But just now, no politician dare be caught opining about anything other than our emergency responses to the pandemic. Personal attacks are, blessedly, beyond contemplation. To slag a rival is to risk looking indefensibly awful if tomorrow he or she is at death’s door with coronavirus disease.
Full-on, ‘tis-‘tisn’t politicking will be back as soon as seems decent – probably a bit earlier. But as National’s unrealistic Parliament-as-usual bid for crisis Level 4 reminds us – we shamingly underreacted to crisis Level 2. It’ll take all of us, MPs included, a while to get the hang of this. Too many of us, when we weren’t anti-socially panic-buying, were anti-socially socialising. This is the ultimate Time Out. Grounded till further notice.
New reality checks come in micro-doses as well as big reveals from the Beehive. Three presenter Ingrid Hipkiss prefaced Monday’s weather report with an apologetic, “I don’t know how we segue into this.” Suddenly a rundown of local temperatures and precipitation seems quaintly irrelevant.
THERE-THERE’S NOT THERE
Maybe the temporarily irrelevant but familiar will help keep us sane. In crises on this scale, no one really gets the special mental-health support they need because everyone is wigging out in their different ways at the same time. As with the Canterbury quake marathon, there is no “therethere” there. Everyone’s worried and everyone’s scared because there’s good reason to be. No one can say when the worst will be over.
Many are mocking wartime equivalences, but there’s a useful relevance in the old Hang Out Your Washing On the Siegfried Line ethos. The flip-side to the mental-health risk is the rare chance to dig deep and reassess priorities, personally and as a nation
– maybe even to find to our surprise that we are on more right tracks than we thought. Those blithely saying we should decimate the dairy, sheep and beef herds might now reflect on how food self-sufficient we are, in contrast to so many other countries. Our disproportionate contribution to the world’s food supply may now seem admirable. Our agri-business is overall the world’s most sustainable, albeit with much room for improvement. Dairy-sector exports look set to be our biggest ongoing economic safety net. We’re unlikely to experience the shortage of staple products most other countries are braced for.
It’s almost relaxing now to contemplate hectic, impossible conundrums like Auckland’s light-rail future, our misaligned ports jigsaw, how to regulate electoral donations and whither the Tiwai Point aluminium smelter. They suddenly seem as non-urgent as a hairdresser’s appointment, new patio furniture or a cafe brunch.
They’ll all be waiting for us when we get let out.
It’s almost relaxing to contemplate conundrums like Auckland’s light-rail.