Even a pulp hero must face scrutiny
Witnessing the Government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic first hand I’ve been as impressed as anyone by its response. The prime minister’s decision to lock down the country was the right one, saving many lives.
Likewise, the response of director-general of health Ashley Bloomfield has been remarkable too. Questions from regional reporters about Covid-19 cases in far-flung parts of the country will be answered with such a high degree of detail that it feels as though he’s arrived at the Beehive fresh from the ward.
Bloomfield has been mythologised for his role in the response. He’s a pulp hero, a pandemic pin-up, a symbol of bureaucratic competence and deference to experts – a rarity in our populist age.
The secular canonisation of Bloomfield is understandable. Every crisis needs its heroes – it’s comforting.
But as we emerge – touch wood – from the darkest days of strict lockdown, it’s time to start questioning whether our response really was as robust and effective as our low number of cases and fatalities would suggest.
The angry and aggressive commentary directed at the media and the Opposition for raising questions about the response suggests New Zealand isn’t quite ready for such probing questions.
Somewhat ironically, one of the people most keen to inquire into the Government’s response is Bloomfield himself. He’s at various stages of several reports into the response, many of which were partly triggered by his own ministry. It’s already received a review into the health system’s contact tracing ability, and reports are also being done into aged care and the management of personal protective equipment (PPE).
Bloomfield seems to wear his hero status with a laudable sense of perspective. His actions suggest he’s humble enough to know that fighting Covid-19 effectively means knowing where we’ve screwed up and where the health system simply doesn’t work. We can’t respond well to a crisis unless we know where we’ve failed.
Contact tracing is one obvious area for improvement. The Ayesha Verrall report released on Monday noted the lack of capability here, saying the system, which has since been vastly improved, was overloaded by fewer than 100 daily cases of Covid-19.
We need to ask if our response would have been quite as effective if New Zealand hadn’t been so lucky; what if we had our first case on February 2, the day we stopped travellers from China, rather than on the 28th, when our first confirmed case was announced? My guess is that the story would be very different.
The ongoing Heather Simpson-led review of the health system should look into whether sweeping changes are needed to better manage crises like Covid-19. There’s frustration in Wellington that decentralised district health boards are unwieldy and make fighting a pandemic difficult.
But we shouldn’t allow our thinking to be hijacked by unrealistic fears of rare pandemics. Resources should always be proportional to risk.
It’s also important to consider how our politics has responded to the pandemic. New Zealand’s plan for responding to health crises elevates the role of the director-general of health. The epidemic notices that have triggered a lot of the restrictions we now know as level four have to be recommended by the director-general and then approved by the prime minister and minister of health.
This seems wise – ministers shouldn’t really have too many opportunities to give themselves extraordinary powers (they have enough means already). But in cases like the current one, it puts public servants like Bloomfield in an extraordinarily political position, which isn’t necessarily a good thing.
Bloomfield’s become Ardern’s health minister in all but name. This is partly the fault of the incumbent, in self-exile in Dunedin, and partly the fault of Ardern. Her approach so far has been to make decisions based on the advice of experts. It’s a strategy that any sensible person would find little to disagree with, but it neglects the fact that she and her ministers have a role to play too: the role of a politician, which is to make the decisions and adjudicate differing points of view in public.
Too much of Bloomfield risks politicising the role of what is currently New Zealand’s most important public servant. It makes it difficult for the Opposition to make fair and reasonable criticisms of the Government’s response. Attacking policy and its implementation is absolutely fine, but attacks on civil servants are rightly reserved for only the most severe transgressions.
While the temptation for triumphal celebration may be strong, we owe it to ourselves to investigate properly just how well our system has functioned. Bloomfield’s openness to multiple reviews of particular parts of the health sector that haven’t worked well is a good place to start. Covid-19 will be with us for a a while yet. Now’s a good time to prepare ourselves for the next wave.
Too much of Bloomfield risks politicising the role of what is currently New Zealand’s most important public servant.