Let’s cheer, but there’s hard work ahead

And just like that, New Zealand was free, or mostly free. At 1pm yesterday, we discovered that, for the first day since February 28, the country had no active Covid-19 cases, after the last person with symptoms recovered. It’s also been 17 days since there was a new case reported.

But for most people, the big news came at 3pm, when Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced the country would move to level 1 alert at midnight – life would return to normal. Or close to normal. As Ardern herself remarked, when there are still 100,000 new cases announced every day around the world, we’re going to have to readjust what our vision of normal looks like.

New Zealand is one of the only countries in the world to have had a large outbreak of Covid-19 that was subsequently brought down to zero cases.

While far from flawless, the response from both the Government and citizenry has achieved the incredible. The response on the Government side must be one of the most successful policy achievements in generations, something many wealthier and more sophisticated nations can only dream of.

Each part of the constellation that is life in this country has held up well: the courts probed the legality of the lockdown, the Opposition pushed hard on testing and border restrictions, and most importantly the citizenry quietly and patiently got on with unimaginable restrictions to our civil liberties.

That is now at an end. Those arguing for an early lifting of restrictions now have buffet quantities of egg on their faces. That’s not just because the merits of strict lockdown have been proved in terms of lives saved, but in early signs of optimism from the economy.

Westpac chief economist Dominick Stephens noted that spending levels are back at something close to normal, just 2 per cent below last year. And the firing free-for-all seems to have slowed. The number going on a jobseeker benefit was rising by more than 6000 a week during level 4, but in the week ended May 22, that pace had slowed to 384.

While the jury has returned a very definite verdict on the Government, we shouldn’t ignore the fact that some Kiwis have paid a very heavy price. The question that will dog politicians for years, and perhaps even decades, is how to dig the country out of an economic hole, and who should pay for it.

This is more difficult than it seems. The cost of the economic decisions made by the government of Robert Muldoon in the 1970s was being paid until the 1990s. The Government is taking on $140 billion in extra borrowing to pull us out of the economic hole – voters of different incomes and generations will rightly want to know where the burden for paying that debt back will fall.

All eyes now turn to the border. It represents the conundrum going forward. Economists are united in saying it would be catastrophic for the economy to be put back into a form of lockdown. Keeping the border closed is vital to ensure this doesn’t happen.

But with tourism and business travel crucial to so much of our economy, opening the border is also essential to our ability to get growing again. Expect to see considerable pressure on both sides of this debate heading into the election.

Further cases are inevitable – hopefully these are quarantined at the border. Our economic success will depend on being able to rapidly trace and stamp out any outbreaks that occur.

As we turn towards recovery, it’s also worth looking at calls to investigate what went right and what went wrong with the health response. ACT leader David Seymour has called for a royal commission. New Zealand should not be complacent. Shedding light on the rights and wrongs will be vital in the coming years.

We should celebrate Covid-19’s disappearance from these islands, but we must get used to it being in the world for some time.