Cabinet’s challenge is to strike the right balance between halting contagion and getting Kiwis back to work

Finance Minister Grant Robertson trots out the phrase “go hard, go early”  in the battle against  Covid-19,  as  often as he used to declare  the  underlying fundamentals of  the  NZ  economy  are  “strong”.

Meanwhile   Health Minister  David  Clark   says   responding to  Covid-19   is a  “marathon,  not a  sprint”.

But  New Zealand  didn’t  “go early”.   The  Ministry  of   Health  on  January  24,  the  day after China  locked down  the  huge  city of  Wuhan because of the  outbreak of the disease,  said the  likelihood of a  sustained outbreak in  NZ  is  “low”.

It maintained that  line for  a month.  There was no  visible sign of the  ministry calling on ministers to scale up  stocks of relevant equipment, take precautions in retirement  homes,   or   increase the  number of Intensive Care Unit beds  and ventilators.

When  NZ  recorded  its first  case  of  Covid-19  on  February 28,  Clark  told Parliament  NZ  was using the  approach  recommended  by the  World  Health Organisation of  containment,  using   three main tools :  border   controls,  self-isolation,  and good public   health controls.  So  far,  he said,  NZ had been the best at  keeping Covid-19 at  bay.

“We have a strong public health system. We continue to  work to keep Covid-19  out, but  we are  ready if it arrives in  our community.”

 Just a fortnight  later   NZ  moved  into one of the most  restrictive lockdowns of    any  country.  The Prime Minister claimed then that if strong action was not taken against the spread of the virus, NZ’s health system would be overwhelmed and tens of thousands would die.

“If community transmission takes off in NZ, the number of cases will double every five days.  If that happens unchecked, our health system will be inundated, and tens of thousands of NZers will die”.

There has been no  sign of  those   tens  of  thousands  dying,  but the  economy  has  crashed – GDP is plunging and  NZ  faces  the worst  unemployment  for  more than 10 years.

So  now,  as   the country   awaits  a  decision  on     whether   the lockdown  will   move down  from level four to   level  three,  Cabinet   may   be a  prisoner of   its  own rhetoric. It has  set  “elimination”  as  the  vital  goal — so elimination it has to be.

Now the  political  imperative  is to  preserve  the illusion  it  knew what it   was  doing when it  imposed  a  lockdown  more  severe  than, say,  Australia.   Any  swerve  in direction now    would be to admit it had been  wrong.

Yet  it  could be  argued  that  Cabinet    should   at  least consider  regionalisation.

Could   not those   free of   community  transmission be permitted  to relax  below  level three?     Regions – for  example – like the  West  Coast  suffering severely  from  the  destruction of the tourist industry?

That  would  be a  relief   for  towns  like Westport  where   300  miners could get back to work at the Stockton mine.

Only  last week  Robertson  was  saying  NZ  had  “acted  swiftly and  decisively to stamp out Covid-19”  because  that was  the best  way to protect   the  economy.

But the  problem  for  Cabinet  is   to  decide   whether  Covid-19 has  actually been  “stamped out”.   If there  is a second wave, as  there  has been  in places  like  Hong Kong, and  Singapore,  will  NZ  go  back  to a   level  4  lockdown?

What would the chances of  economic  recovery  be  then?

Dole queues  threaten  to  be  longer than  any  government   could  contemplate.  Even major companies  face  a  liquidity  challenge.  As   much as  30%  of  the small business  sector   has  fallen  over a  cliff.

Roger  Partridge, chairman of the NZ Initiative, says at some point the harm to wellbeing of Kiwis from continuing the lockdown becomes greater than the wellbeing benefit of continuing it.

“Indeed, that time may have already passed”.

The Prime Minister, as he pointed out, claimed  last week  that the ‘essential services’ approach was being abandoned for Alert Level 3 in favour of a

” … safety-based” approach.

“Yet by prohibiting shops other than supermarkets, dairies and garages to open, the new approach continues a significant dose of the former blunt approach. Why is the local butcher, baker or clothes shop less safe than the local dairy?

“It was also disappointing that the Prime Minister did not reveal the criteria for the government’s decisions to move away from Alert Level 4, and then from Alert Level 3 to Alert Level 2.   Uncertainty is a curse for businesses and workers alike.

New Zealanders deserve better than this.  Workers, firms and consumers should not be at the mercy of such disjointed decision-making”.

Academics  have praised the  “brilliant, decisive and humane leadership”  of   the  Prime  Minister.  But the  same academics also said that – in their view – the case for a tougher lockdown in NZ than in Australia rested on the fact that

“ … NZ has had to go to this strong, intense, lockdown, because it started from a pretty low base.  It didn’t have really sophisticated systems for mass contact tracing…Things like basic contact tracing were working better in Australia from earlier on.”

Of  course   there  is a tension  between  health, and  economic, policies.  It might not, as  the London Economist put it   early in the pandemic,  be a fair  fight.

But it is vital  to strike the right balance.   That’s what  Cabinet has  to do this week.

The punters out there  might  demand long odds if asked to  lay a bet  that it  will.