The Olympic Games had been canned and New Zealand was declared to be in a state of emergency. At 11.59pm the entire country would go into isolation. One year on, Political editor Jo Moir looks at how Covid-19 changed politics, and the nation.
March 25th – it was the day New Zealanders headed home, shut their doors and waited to be told a deadly, mostly unknown, virus had been contained.
The only exceptions were essential workers.
One of them was Finance Minister Grant Robertson who was about to become one of few people in the Prime Minister’s bubble until May 14, when the country was released into level two life.
Robertson describes that day in March as one he hadn’t properly thought through.
He arrived at work and recalls having a conversation with the Prime Minister’s chief press secretary Andrew Campbell about what sort of documentation was required to get to and from work.
He contemplated what he might need if he was stopped by police.
He also contemplated what he would eat given he’d failed to go to the supermarket before lockdown to stock up his office fridge.
With the Parliament café closed and his own fridge bare, he wandered next door to Kelvin Davis’ office where he was delighted to find a loaf of bread he could pinch.
“From time-to-time moments come back to me that will stay with me for a long time, particular situations.
“I haven’t had a long reflection on the whole year and what it’s meant but the people I meet and the conversations I have, it’s the extraordinary impact it had on people that stands out.
“We were making decisions at an extraordinary pace,’’ he told Newsroom.
With all other ministers told to stay home and save lives Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, Director-General of Health Doctor Ashley Bloomfield and Robertson became the face of the Covid response.
Each of them felt the weight of the decisions that were being made, Robertson says.
And it strengthened what was already a strong bond between Robertson and Ardern – the pair have been friends for years.
“In times of stress we look out for each other as both friends and colleagues.
“We both had good and bad days during that time – it was helpful if one of us was having a good day when the other was having a bad one, particularly in Level 4 when there weren’t other ministers around in person.’’
Robertson says Ardern’s leadership during that period has changed political leadership in this country on the whole.
“Her style of compassionate, but decisive and firm leadership – we haven’t seen that combination in New Zealand before,’’ he says.
Asked whether he was surprised the country united in the way it did and stayed home and listened to instruction, Robertson tells a story of a conversation he had with a business leader in February when talk of lockdowns first surfaced.
“I remember that businessman saying to me that it won’t work, he said New Zealanders weren’t disciplined enough, and I wondered if he could be right.’’
Ultimately Robertson says the country had faith in each other to do the right thing and while the response hasn’t been perfect, there was a sense of wanting to look after each other.
There’s no hindsight here
As people stayed home the toll began to hit on business owners and employees.
Robertson began rolling out significant packages, including the wage subsidy.
Cashflow and confidence is what Robertson says he was aiming to deliver during that period.
“There is no hindsight here, I’m very proud of the way we were able to roll out the packages we did.’’
He recalls talking to a builder in the Wairarapa after lockdown, who came up to him to say the Government had saved his business.
“He was telling me how he told his staff on a Friday that he didn’t think he’d be able to keep them on because everyone was cancelling their contracts. His wife rung and told him about the wage subsidy scheme and he told his staff to come back to work on the Monday and they’d talk about what he might be able to do. By the Monday he already had the money in his bank account.’’
Robertson says there were some problems with it and people collected cash when they shouldn’t have but “warts-and-all I’d say it’s what we should have done’’.
“It was a high-trust model, yes, but it was the right thing to do.’’
One of the “unexpected consequences” of the economy holding up better than most expected was the impact it’s had on housing.
The exact opposite of what the Government and economists predicted ended up occurring, and what has been a long-standing problem is now an even bigger one.
Robertson says low interest rates and the economy recovering quickly have contributed to the “unfortunate outcome’’ of eye-watering house prices.
But internationally politics has changed.
Many of the problems registering with voters before Covid – housing, inequality, child poverty, climate change – have been put on hold due to a general acceptance a pandemic is the only thing that can be dealt with at this time.
Approval ratings for leaders across the world went up in the first few months, regardless of how well liked they were before the health crisis.
Patriotism trumped politics in a way that had rarely been seen since war times.
It’s only now, one year on, that the public is turning its attentions once more to the other crises the country has and continues to still face.
The role of the Opposition
National Party leader Judith Collins is the first to admit getting any sort of Opposition cut-through during that period was impossible.
“People were willing to do what they were asked to do. There was an extraordinary advertising campaign underway, reaching people every few minutes almost,’’ she says.
“People thought, someone has to make the decisions, so that’s what they did.’’
During the Level 4 lockdown, what Collins remembers most was the difficulty people endured when facing death.
She had to get her beloved dog, Holly, put down by the vet during that period and said only her son was able to put PPE on and go in to be with her while Collins and her husband waited outside.
“It was really awful. Poor little Holly went to doggie heaven without Mum and Dad there.’’
During the second lockdown the family cat, Minnie, had to be put down and Collins wasn’t able to be there for that either.
“I can’t imagine what it was like for people with parents or children dying – because it was hard for me as I see our pets as family.’’
Collins says during the lockdown period the Opposition went out of its way “to do what we could’’.
“The Government made a serious error in not allowing businesses who could operate safely to operate, for example suburban butchers having to close, I thought that was incredibly unfair.’’
By the time the election came around, first in September, and then eventually in October after a second Auckland lockdown put the brakes on going ahead, Collins says the playing field was already uneven.
On National’s election result, she says Covid has to be an “overwhelming factor in that’’.
“One reason is clearly shown by the fact we couldn’t have a launch for our campaign because Auckland was put into lockdown a few days before.
“We couldn’t have meetings with more than 100 people and every time we raised the issue of Covid and its response, people were worried we weren’t supporting best efforts to keep people safe,’’ she says.
“It was an impossible situation. The second lockdown took enormous momentum off us and we were back into a situation of fear for people around Covid.’’
Ardern was quite open and strategic about calling it a Covid election and for the Opposition it meant no matter how much it talked about the economy it fell on mostly deaf ears.
Collins admits there were moments when she thought there was no way it was going to happen for National.
“But then I thought to myself, well you can’t sell if you don’t believe.’’
She said the second lockdown, an email from MP Denise Lee being leaked to the media, and a fiscal hole on the day of the virtual campaign launch were all difficult moments that made her doubt the party’s success.
Opposition parties across the world have been dealing with the Covid effect though.
And while the 2020 election could be compared to war time elections in terms of one single issue dominating, in this case Collins says the election went ahead, where in war times they don’t.
Robertson agrees it’s impossible to “disentangle Covid from the election’’.
While it’s hard to know what result would have been delivered without it, Robertson maintains the outcome was an endorsement of Labour’s Covid response plan.
He’s not convinced the delay of the election impacted the result and pointed to all political parties, bar the Greens, supporting the delay.
But in saying that he says nobody can deny Covid on the whole had a major impact on the election and its “extraordinary result’’.
A new face of Covid appears
It was just a few months before that result that Chris Hipkins came on the Covid scene to take over from the embattled Health Minister David Clark, who had been caught out breaking lockdown rules, and had ultimately become a distraction for the Government.
Hipkins told Newsroom he had some discussions with the Prime Minister about taking on the role but “wasn’t initially enthusiastic’’ because he didn’t want to have to give up his much-loved education portfolio.
A deal was struck where he would become Health Minister only until the election and that way be able to keep education.
Hipkins says he saw it as an opportunity to get in front of some of the issues that had been bubbling away around contact tracing and testing.
“I had a degree of trepidation about it though, there’s no doubt about that.’’
The election came round and Ardern undertook a major reshuffle which saw health passed on to Andrew Little and Hipkins held onto the Covid response part of the portfolio, along with education.
He described working alongside Doctor Ashley Bloomfield, who has become something of a celebrity, as a constructive relationship where they share the burden.
“He’s calm and pragmatic and relatively unflappable in a crisis, which is what you want amidst a pandemic.’’
But while he feels the support of the nation as part of the team leading the response, he says there’s a downside too.
“It’s never-ending. The enduring part of it can be really challenging and you just have to be prepared for anything.
“You think you have things sorted and in a calm spot and then something happens and every day you wake up wondering what you’re going to have to respond to.’’
Hipkins said it’s absolutely a 24/7 job and it requires having an understanding family (he has two young children) given it’s not uncommon to get phone calls in the middle of the night.
Now that the vaccination rollout is underway there will be opportunities that arise from that, though Hipkins is quick to point out the country and the world are still in the middle of a crisis.
“I think New Zealand support for our elimination strategy is still rock solid and in some cases the commentary has moved beyond where the public might be at,’’ he says.
There’s a degree of reluctance from the business community, he notes, and accepts that’s understandable as decisions weigh heavily on their minds.
In general there is more questioning of the decisions the Government is taking and Hipkins says that’s “not an unhealthy thing’’.
As the number of positive cases in New Zealand have dwindled, Hipkins says more scrutiny has come on - “a luxury’’ other countries haven’t had.
“Take the Pullman case for example, we were having a debate about how it could have been passed on, whether it was through the air conditioning or a lift button.
“We are one of the only countries in the world having those discussions – such abstract conversations.’’
Asked about the emergence of rule-breakers in the more recent outbreak cases, Hipkins says there’s always a small percentage of people who “bend the rules and don’t fully accept they’re being asked to do what they’re being asked to do’’.
And that’s all the more obvious in a smaller case number environment.
That’s led to some calling for those who break the rules to be punished and Hipkins acknowledges when he came into the job he was in favour of that approach.
But having now seen that people would likely shut down and not freely give up information if given the right to silence under a punitive approach, he’s changed his mind.
“It’s understandable that people want other people to be punished but if it makes the whole thing harder in the long run then it’s not worthwhile.’’
What the future holds
This year has been labelled the year of the vaccine and Hipkins says that will allow more opportunities for travel, but first is the hurdle of getting everyone vaccinated.
There’s a group of people who for whatever reason will be reluctant to get vaccinated and later in the year once the willing population has already been jabbed, the number in the reluctant camp will become more clear.
“That’s when we will see that challenge,’’ he says.
When the country is finally ready to open back up to the world, Hipkins says there will be a lot of adapting to be done.
“We won’t be going back to the world it was instantly, it’s going to be several years of work.’’
There will be plenty of issues too, even things like the number of planes available.
So many will have been grounded for so many years they’ll no longer get the go-ahead to fly because they’re too old.
It will be a “progressive opening up’’ and the Government will need to be nimble.
Hipkins says even he is having to change his ways having got into a bad routine during the height of the lockdown period.
“I’m back on the bike – Covid-19 has not been good for my physique’’.
In an attempt to at least look more healthy he’s stopped drinking copious amount of Coke Zero (in public at least) and joined the kombucha band wagon.
Collins is also looking to the future and says the best possible year ahead would be one with no lockdowns.
Technology is becoming so relied on and she says the ultrafast broadband rolled out by the last National government has proved its worth after a year of living online.
In terms of travel, Collins says nobody should underestimate the demand that is going to exist to leave New Zealand’s borders once a decent chunk of the world is vaccinated.
“When it comes to travel and tourism, once the majority of people are vaccinated you’ll find people will still want to travel, and there will probably be pent up demand in some places.’’
Collins says New Zealanders have generally bought into the concept of the team of five million.
“They feel like they’ve done their bit and when the message is to all stick together and do the best you can, ultimately people will start saying if we’re doing our best then why isn’t the Government doing its best,’’ she said.
And that’s when problem areas like housing, child poverty and inequality will truly return to the political stage.
