The complexity of Covid-19 calls

An immediate transition to alert level 1, as Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters is suggesting, could just be the best move for New Zealand right now. Yet it could also be the worst. That’s generally been the equation for the coronavirus crisis.

As much as the Government has leveraged decisiveness and cautious science in navigating the country through Covid-19, its path has also relied on a serving of political gut instinct.

So far it has worked, and New Zealand is seen internationally as one example of how to beat the coronavirus.

We should acknowledge that this success does not necessarily make it any more or less likely that the approach will continue to work. Good and bad decisions are ahead of us, and we won’t always know what category they fit into until we have lived through them.

The future is like that.

It is not surprising that Peters would wade into that misty unknown with a proclamation that may make sense, but at the very least thrusts him back into the limelight after weeks in the shadow of Jacinda Ardern’s leadership juggernaut.

In positioning himself as the champion of a rapid reopening of the economy, he will undoubtedly find support for NZ First among the business community.

Because even the most optimistic economic projections make for gloomy reading. The billions spent on the wage subsidy scheme has not stopped thousands losing their job or companies going belly-up. Like the rest of the world, New Zealand’s economy is ailing.

There are real costs to a poorer society that will impact on all of us, not least of which is less tax to pour into education, healthcare, infrastructure and paying debt down. And there will be plenty of that. The longer we keep the handbrake on the economy, the longer we will be paying for it and the less flexibility we will have in taking the future path we want.

Yet not everyone is baying for a rapid return to the pre-Covid-19 way of life. In an election year, that matters.

For many, the lockdown experience was revelatory. They discovered a new joy in their family, a contentment in fewer choices and an improvement to their work-life balance.

While many have now returned to the office, tens of thousands are continuing to log in from home. They may be unwilling to forget the glimpse they have had of a new way of living.

For them, any support for transitioning down the levels is not necessarily a given. They will require reassurances from their Government and employers that getting back to ‘‘normal’’ is more considered than simply getting back to how things used to be.

Peters is a sharp political operator and, with the election less than four months away, breaking ranks with his senior coalition partner will do him no harm.

It is also healthy to see the Government being asked to explain itself. A peculiar outcome of its successful handling of the crisis is that any questioning of its decisions often looks petulant.

But better decisions come when they are challenged and refined. That’s the reason for our adversarial parliamentary system.

Now more than ever we need it working as well as it can. The complex decisions our leaders must make this year and the next may make them nostalgic for those of the past two months.

Breaking ranks with his senior coalition partner will do [Winston Peters] no harm.