NZ deserves level 2
At 11.59pm tomorrow our long national nightmare comes to an end. Sort of. After 49 days in some form of lockdown, things will suddenly get a lot more normal. You can go shopping, go to the movies, go out for dinner, go out for a haircut, go out to play sport, fly around the country, and best of all – go out to see friends and family.
But some large restrictions remain, some of them jarringly out of step with each other.
Those gatherings will be limited to 10 people, down from an initial limit of 100 – meaning anyone who has put off their wedding until now will probably not be happy.
Schools won’t fully open until Monday, and bars will remain closed for another week.
This means Kiwis can head off for a rugby game, get extremely close to 29 other people, but can’t head to the pub after. Indeed, they can’t even gather for a drink at home with the whole team.
These kinds of incongruities will likely lead to people treating these new rules a bit more loosely than the strictures of level 4.
It’s hard to see someone inviting nine people to their house then saying ‘‘no’’ when one of those guests asks if they can bring a partner along – unless they really don’t like them.
Unveiling these changes, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern made clear that it was New Zealanders’ hard work that got us here, not just luck. Kiwis rightly feel proud of getting this far with a boatload of sacrifice.
That sacrifice includes a huge record of human misery as funerals were postponed and deathbeds left unattended.
But it is also broader and more measurable: figures out from Statistics NZ yesterday showed a 95 per cent year-on-year drop in hospitality spending last month. That’s a cliff-drop many businesses won’t come back from.
That sacrifice is the reason Kiwis are emerging from lockdown earlier than much of the rest of the Western World. Over the long term this harsh but
It’s hard to see someone inviting nine people to their house then saying ‘‘no’’ when one of those guests asks if they can bring a partner along – unless they really don’t like them.
time-limited lockdown may well look like the best possible outcome for the economy. But for thousands of businesses – and more importantly, their employees – we are nowhere near out of the woods yet.
Thursday’s Budget will not be able to fix this in one swift go.
It appears that the Government and its health experts are generally singing from the same song-book, other than a slight disagreement about when to open bars.
This avoids what could have been an ugly showdown had health officials sought to extend level 3 even further. Kiwis have overwhelmingly backed the Government’s moves thus far, but that patience is not eternal.
As the days with almost no new cases continue to stack up, the streets of our major cities already look more and more crowded.
The next decision day will be in two weeks’ time. With the economy mostly back to normal then, the lobbying to ease restrictions further will be a lot more muted.
But if the Covid-19 case numbers are still looking as good as they have for the past week then New Zealand will want to have a party. And we’ll deserve it.