Jane Clifton
The Government’s desire to lecture our national airline and bubble wrap the vaccine roll-out risks provoking tantrums.
‘Dear Air New Zealand”, wrote Finance Minister Grant Robertson this month, followed by a few “suggestions”.
And with that, the lurking fear that the world’s governments, having had a taste of fortress economics and central command economies, would get hooked on these new Covid emergency powers got a good tickle-up in New Zealand’s political firmament.
At a careful read, Robertson wasn’t asking or telling the airline to do anything obviously uncommercial. “And,” he protested, “the Government is the majority shareholder and does get to vote at board meetings.”
To the “we never interfere with business” National Party, this is nevertheless the thin edge of a very large wedge. The temptation for a Labour administration to use the private sector’s Covid-wrought difficulties and the climate crisis as excuses to re-regulate and ramp up state ownership was always going to be considerable.
By coincidence, France’s Government has just announced a ban on all internal flights to places that can be reached by train in less than two and a half hours, to cut emissions. Given our Government has several sectors under competition scrutiny and a highly prescriptive interim report on climate change to stiffen its arm, we do appear to be set for an arm-wrestle with the market’s Invisible Hand.
For those still awaiting the reform of capitalism promised by Winston Peters two elections ago, extreme patience is still recommended. But, as the State the Bleedin’ Obvious Index tells us, the Unprecedented Times needle is still in the red zone. Pre-Covid political and commercial orthodoxies are in flux. Although neither Robertson’s letter nor the Commerce Commission’s market inquiries are the first charge of a neoBolshevik revolution, National is right to scent change that will be confronting to business – the more so because of this country’s market peculiarities. For reasons of history, size and geographical remoteness, our industries are often overly dominated by a few players each. To even characterise the building-product and grocery sectors as “markets” verges on magical thinking.
CLIPPED WINGS
In aviation, we’ve tried and repeatedly failed to support more than one major airline.
Since 2001, when the then Labour Government last rescued Air NZ from collapse, the state has maintained a majority stake. Given a pending second crown capital injection since Covid hit, that might increase.
Both stripes of government have tolerated the airline’s often ruthless culling of uneconomic domestic routes, even though this depresses regional growth. Had any government tried to countermand these in normal times, batteries of lawyers would have enjoyed a bonanza.
But although there’s nothing in Robertson’s letter that instructs the airline to keep particular regional routes open, that “national interest” message is now implicit. Equally, the letter doesn’t explicitly say the airline should never again service military equipment for a customer that is using it to blockade a country. But anyone who thinks the airline will ever again “accidentally” help Saudi Arabia starve Yemen should reread Robertson’s letter with an overlay of realpolitik.
The airline now exists wholly at the Government’s pleasure and will – without the messiness of explicit political compulsion – have to become a different sort of corporate citizen for the foreseeable future.
National is rightly concerned about the potential for undesirable state interference. But the counterbalancing consideration is that the airline is a lifeline to regional development, without which its own viability will remain shaky. Foreign passenger numbers will take years to recover, as Covid-wrought expense and lingering fear will make long-distance air travel far less accessible and appealing.
At least the rest of the devastated tourism sector will finally get its wish for the airline to swap its high-volume, low-value approach to one of bringing in fewer, but much higher-spending visitors.
Air NZ will have to become a different sort of corporate citizen – National is rightly concerned about the potential for undesirable state interference.
VACCINE DUMMIES
As for getting us back on to the Precedented Times Index, the Government is persisting
with the risky strategy of passive-aggressive parenting. Whenever the Opposition demands a vaccine schedule, it’s “all in good time” and “wait and see”, even though we’ve got more than enough vaccines to start on the general population right now.
The excuse given for this “hurry up and wait” stance is that future vaccine supply is unpredictable and the Government doesn’t want to confuse people. It won’t start until all supplies are to hand, and then everyone will get a shot in the same time envelope so the instructional information can be as simple as possible.
All fair enough, except the Government is really telling us we’re too thick to be trusted. This seems wilfully to ignore the evidence of the past year.
New Zealanders proved from the pandemic’s outset they could focus over long periods of time, stay up to date with ever-changing safety advice and follow it meticulously – even when officialdom overtaxed them with confusing jargon and conflicting instructions.
It’s hard to say whether it’s heart-warming or embarrassing that, given the cornucopia of distractions on Netflix, YouTube and the like, so many people here chose to watch updates from the Director-General of Health, Dr Ashley Bloomfield, every day. He even got his own “filmography” listing on the International Movie Database (IMDb) website. But it showed New Zealanders were heavily engaged in their own pandemic management. This surely is a gold-standard result in the annals of public health. Psychologists perfecting “nudge theory” and other streams of motivational population-based health practice will be studying New Zealand’s Covid compliance for decades to come.
A country this involved in the process can surely be trusted to understand and support a vaccine roll-out, even if it’s a bit stop-start. The arc of Covid infections has been like the daily roll of a fruit machine for months on end. If people were so rapt to watch the problem unfold, they can surely be trusted to focus with at least equal concentration on the solution.
Few people can be under any illusions about the likelihood of delays and revision of early assessments of the efficacy of the various vaccines. The urge to report the next official who chirps “We’re building the aircraft as we’re
A country this involved in the process can surely be trusted to understand and support a vaccine roll-out, even if it’s a bit stop-start.
flying it!” to the trite-babble police is overpowering, but it’s an apt cliché.
Everyone makes allowances for the still-unknown. “It won’t happen overnight but it will happen” worked for Pantene, but lustrous hair is a little less pressing than protection from a deadly virus. And can we really deny the IMDb a sequel: “Dr Ashley’s Surprise (Who’s Next?) Vaccine Roll-out”? l