Let’s hope some good can come from all this
As we deal with Covid-19, and head to Alert Level 4 tomorrow, Wellingtonians will also be watching their local bodies closely to see how they respond to the pandemic. Up until now there has been some good and notso-good leadership. Following the early lead set by Auckland, councils in the Wellington region closed their libraries, pools and other facilities. Great. But was I the only person to look in horror at the images of hundreds of people at the Harbourside Market touching fruit, putting it back, and standing close together in long queues?
The same council officials who thought that a bowling club serving drinks to 75-year-olds without a sign-in book should be closed had no hesitation in letting a large public event proceed.
The rationale was that the stallholders would face a stiff financial loss if the market was closed. Sorry, but under measures already announced by the Government, those stallholders would have had a great case for compensation.
Another sad sight was hundreds of young people queuing in Courtenay Place on Saturday night as some bars and nightclubs overflowed. After watching the dreadful rich kids on Spring Break in Florida – worried more about partying than a public health crisis – I was convinced that, though this sort of thing might happen in Trump’s America, it would never happen in Jacinda’s New Zealand. How wrong I was.
Not that you can entirely blame the revellers. If they’d turned on a sport or news channel in the weekend, they would have seen the New Zealand Warriors pushing, shoving and tackling their opponents, and then shaking hands and hugging afterwards – hardly great behaviour to be modelling in these social distancing times.
But it’s not all bad. In the last week I have heard many stories of kindness and support from people of all ages and from different walks of life, including the Wellington Student Volunteer Army.
However, I also hear tales of stupidity of pandemic proportions. Like the friend whose neighbours had numerous guests around for a barbecue at the weekend. A loudly coughing individual announced to everyone that he was putting himself in isolation – from tomorrow!
Also of concern to our councils must be the overcrowding in rental accommodation. Six students in a small flat with a lounge converted to a bedroom, all working from home, is hardly ideal in stopping the spread of a pandemic.
One problem that has disappeared, for obvious reasons, is traffic congestion. As a usually packed double-decker bus drives by with just four passengers, I realise we won’t have to worry about overcrowded vehicles. The Greater Wellington Regional Council did the right thing by banning cash sales and telling bus drivers over 70 to stay at home. Its move to halve the price of monthly train passes was a generous act which will hopefully stay in place once the crisis has passed.
I hope we learn from this pandemic. The reason for less traffic congestion is because everyone must work from home. Once all this is over, if Wellingtonians who were able worked at home just one or two days a week, that could lead to a drop of more than 20 per cent in traffic congestion.
Even though our councils have taken some positive action, could they do more? Ex-mayor Justin Lester, who had to deal with the Kaiko¯ ura earthquake, certainly thinks so, and made some useful suggestions. They included a zero rates rise, and no penalty for late payments. He described Mayor Andy Foster’s recent announcement of a 9.2 per cent rates rise as ‘‘tone deaf and ill advised’’.
But let us also remember that Lester presided, along with other mayors, over the underinvestment in Wellington Water. While debt increased, he was a major cheerleader for the $200 million convention centre even after it because obvious that Sir Peter Jackson would pull out as the Film Museum would be uneconomic. Lester also supported the council subsidising the airport runway extension. Both these projects look ridiculous in the current crisis.
Given that construction has already started on the convention centre, it’s probably too late to put a halt to it. One of the most sensible ideas I have heard recently, via the Scoop website, is that if it is found to be too expensive to strengthen the current central library then turn the bottom space of the Convention Centre into a public library.
What would we call it? Why not name it after every mayor and councillor who voted to build the damn thing – a monument of shame to remind us that serving ratepayers should always take precedence over hobnobbing with celebrities and chasing the tourist dollar.
In the meantime, take our prime minister’s advice and be kind. Make sure that elderly neighbour in your street is being looked after and please only buy what you really need.
As a usually packed doubledecker bus drives by with just four passengers, I realise we won’t have to worry about overcrowded vehicles.