Ardern in unseemly battle over covid

PM would do well not to cast stones while asking others not to

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern does not like to be wrong and so prides herself on her love of detail and determination to find everything out before pronouncing judgment.

The problem is, this can result in a rather stubborn inability to acknowledge she may not always be right: or at least a level of intolerance with others who do not know as much as her.

That has ended up pitting her in a rather unseemly battle in public with Case L: a person with Covid-19 who defended herself after the PM criticised her for going to work before her sibling was tested for Covid-19. It transpired L herself also had Covid-19. Ardern had first claimed Case L was supposed to be selfisolating when she went to work at KFC before her sibling tested positive for Covid-19. It was, she said, one of several “frustrating” breaches that had resulted in the need to go into lockdown.

Both sides can point to some evidence that they are in the right.

Case L had said she was never told she had to isolate, and in fact, one message had specifically said she did not: only her sibling needed to.

The PM — adamant she was right — fought back by releasing the number of times health authorities home until that happened.

That may be true, but relying on common sense to prevail over confusing advice is a tough ask.

Director general of health Ashley Bloomfield was asked about “luck” in Covid, and said the ministry left nothing to luck. But it was bad luck that the single “casual plus” student at that school who turned out to have Covid-19 was also one of the last to get tested.

The Ministry of Health should be asking itself hard questions about the decision to split the school’s students into close and casual-plus contacts depending on which class they were in — and what the advice for close and casual contacts should have been.

The PM would also do well not to cast stones while asking others not to do so — especially those who do not have her encyclopaedic knowledge of the rules.

Some mention has been made of the imbalance of power: the PM, who people know and have tended to trust, versus those she is criticising.

It was always a stretch for her to argue that people should not seek to blame or pillory others, while in the next breath doing just that herself over and over again. She was one reason those people are now facing “the judgment of the entire nation”.

There is as yet no suggestion that the people who made mistakes in this cluster were motivated by malice or defiance: they were at best thoughtless and at worse reckless.

Yes, the consequences were dire. But the question Ardern didn’t ask was whether they were letting her down — or whether she (or at least officials) was letting them down, even if just a bit.