4850 reasons why this wasn’t such a bad year
The year 2020 is getting a bad rap. Moans abound on everyone’s lips, stating a desire that it were all over. Politicians reflect on the year with unmitigated gloom. Musicians write songs about it. A viral TikTok hit is called Lowkey F... 2020. Everyone is picking on 2020.
As email auto-response fields populate with ‘‘Back in 2021’’ and parents launch their summerlong battle with their kids’ technology, it’s worth remembering some good things about this eventful year. For one, half of all Kiwi voters got what they wanted in our national election, a rarity under MMP. And voter turnout was 82 per cent, which is nothing to frown about when you consider turnout in the UK last year was 67 per cent of eligible voters and, in the hottest national election of the century, was a similar 68 per cent in the US.
Concerning America, the Trump error appears over. Even though the high entertainment value of American domestic politics is coming to an end, that political experiment is petering out fast. The institutions of democracy seem to have triumphed, despite being used as spittoons by Trump and his powerful enablers for four astonishing years. We have 2020 to thank for that.
Which means that climate change is officially back on the international agenda in earnest. This just has to be a good thing for everyone who is interested in anything outside themselves, or next week, or breathing air.
Speaking of air, New Zealanders are still talking about the weather during our autumn’s lockdown. It was incredible, remember? Contrasting our anxieties in those first weeks of mandatory isolation, the fine weather helped make our domestic imprisonment a bit more bearable – like being jailed with an amenable friend rather than amonster.
Not everyone despised the enforced isolation. Some enjoyed aspects of it, the downturn of the engines of life. A 16-year-old I know reflected on how she liked getting closer to her family without all the activities and pressures of her busy school life.
At this time of year, when a lot of us are busy to the core, many yearn for the relative calm of the lockdown. And that weather.
Amajor takeaway of the lockdown period was demonstrating to ourselves that sometimes bold, extreme measures are needed to affect a big problem. New Zealand took radical action quickly to address the pandemic and it worked.
As alert levels were lowered and we slowly returned to pre-Covid activities, there was new energy for making more systemic political, environmental, and economic changes that could help solve some of the world’s most complex problems.
Maybe this is part of the reason why the language has shifted around the housing crisis. This time last year, housing was being debated by the coalition government in terms of capital gains tax, a defence of KiwiBuild, and fuelling the fire of price increaseswith falling interest rates.
Twelve months later, and after proving to ourselves as a country that massive, complex problems like homelessness and international pandemics can be instantly addressed with the right amount of political will, the housing story is finally sounding like the urgent one that it is.
Our Government now seems poised to bring in some new characters and plotlines. Let’s keep working hard to keep the narrative heading towards a healthier, happier ending for many more families, beneficiaries and first-time homeowners.
While no-one was paying much attention, 2020 quietly brought us a rise in the minimum wage, improvements in the antiquated domestic violence legislation, and a new album from The Beths.
We learned to value supermarket workers while also raising concerns about the duopoly that employs most of them. Let’s hope the Commerce Commission’s inquiry into the lack of competition in the sector brings better pricing next year.
Extraordinary things to the rest of the world – like busy daycare centres, live concerts, and going to a crowded pub – continue to happen here in Aotearoa, a bright star in a dark galaxy of the Covid universe.
In defending 2020, we can compare ourselves to what could have happened. The UK has had over 65,000 Covid deaths for a population of 66.65 million. In New Zealand, we’ve lost 25 lives to the pandemic, with a population of just over 5m.
If we had not closed our borders and initiated an elimination strategy, the pandemic may have led to the same ratio of Covid-related deaths as the UK.
That’s about 4850 deaths that were likely avoided because of the economic and psychological sacrifices our country made. Like the Mt Erebus disaster of 1979, everyone in New Zealand would have known someone who knew someone who died. Our nans and pops, our neighbours, our workmates, our kauma¯tua, our friends.
And that’s another 4850 living reasons to call 2020 a fantastic year for New Zealand.
Like the Mt Erebus disaster of 1979, everyone in New Zealand would have known someone who knew someone who died.