Understanding social unity in NZ as Covid-19 hearings air lockdown grievances

mandates and the lengthy lockdowns in Auckland and Northland. It's part of the coalition deal between National and both ACT and ENZ First and has prompted criticism over being overtly political and spotlighting conspiracy theorists. But with so many in the community still focused on the events of twenty twenty and twenty twenty one, are we ever going.

Or and around the rest of the country. They are also looking at the vaccine mandates and the decisions made around there and hearing from a variety of people who both oppose and praise the vaccine mandates to understand and I guess learn from how we responded and what we can do next time.

leaders in Auckland and Northland. We've heard from Marty, health and social group leaders, community leaders from the Pacific community, so a real briepth and depth of people from around all parts of New Zealand society.

I guess these decisions affected everyone and these were the groups who felt like their experiences hadn't properly been considered. So yesterday, the fourth day of the second phase of this inquiry, we saw groups such as Voices for Freedom.

They were questioned I would say a little harder than I had seen other groups by commissioners asking them to be more direct in their answers, accusing them at least once of avoiding the question questions such as do you see that the government had a right to enforce quite drastic actions in a crisis and a health crisis. But the Commissioner did say right at the end that although he did press them, that is not in any way an indication of their stance. They have not made up

their mind. So they really are trying to emphasize that they are listening and taking everything into account before they conclude.

unable to do so. One woman spoke of losing her husband, who was suffering with dementia, but he, according to her, deteriorated quite quickly after the lockdowns, because she believed it was because she was unable to see him as often

restricted in seeing him. One woman also spoke about losing her sister, what she says was due to COVID nineteen vaccine complications, so it's fair to say that the impact that all of these measures had on people was pretty drastic, and the people who were speaking at this inquiry really wanted to make that clear. There was another one that stood out to me with regards to some MARDI and Pacific community leaders speaking about the use of vaccine vouchers

as an incentive to get people to get vaccinated. One person said this in future probably wouldn't be the best strategy just because it wasn't sustainable, and another woman spoke of having to speak to a member of the public who came through to get these vouchers to get vaccinated three times because he didn't have any food and he wanted to get those one hundred dollar food vouchers that were being given out. So that was an interesting point

that kind of stood out to me. The other thing, though, that stood out to me, was that this hasn't all been negative. There has been praise of the vaccine mandates from people with disabilities who feel that they can now be a part of society and that they are safe and healthy. People who have compared our response to those overseas and the level of deaths at other countries experience. Other people have praised the government's quick action the lockdowns

for stopping the spread for vulnerable communities. So it has been, from what I've observed, a fairly balanced experience and a fairly balanced take on what people went through.

thought they were. Yeah. Sure, the government of the day had a lot of popular support and trust, particularly mid twenty twenty, but it wasn't universal and that was clear from a survey that I did, and that particularly on the right, there was quite a strong level of agreement with the idea that the economic costs of the public health measures outweighed the benefits of those measures, and so that would be a constituents of people, particularly in small

business and things like this who were directly feeling the effect on their businesses, and so I don't entirely agree with the idea that New Zealand was a team of five million at that time. Yes, I agree, of course that the durn led government at that time was getting a really strong level of support and they got an amazing election result fifty percent. But what about the other fifty percent? They weren't so happy. It's just that you weren't hearing much from them at that.

turning the sprinklers on on the protesters. Why does it feel like people who were most unhappy and are most unhappy still with the way that we went about things with COVID.

lost their jobs. They couldn't go into cafes and get normal service and things like that, and so suddenly it wasn't a team of five million anymore. There was a radical exclusion of a minority of people. But here's the other thing. I think we focused too much attention sometimes on that relatively small minority, because what was also going on under the surface, and we weren't hearing much about it, was that people just generally getting worn out and annoyed

with many of the consequences of the low down. These were people who would have been quite moderate, quite compliant, probably got vaccinated, but when they saw the consequences of trying to book online on MiQ or you know, the consequences for people whom they knew or difficulties getting stuff done, traveling and so forth, or the isolation, the loneliness for a lot of people, it started to wear them down.

And so I think we shouldn't put all of our attention, so to speak, when we're thinking about shift of political opinion and social cohesion here on a small minority represented by people who protested outside of parliament for a couple of weeks in February twenty twenty two, because that doesn't fully explain why Labor lost so badly in twenty twenty three.

The reason, one of the reasons why they lost so badly in twenty twenty three was that they lost the confidence of quite a large swath of the population who weren't necessarily protesting outside of parliament and that kind of thing. They were probably even vaccinated, but they were just worn down by the effects, and quite reasonably so, because there were real impacts on people's businesses, their private lives, their

family lives, and the government. I think that it was lacking the leadership at that time to reach out to those people and just say, hey, we understand the effect that this is having.

to comply with the government's orders. So let's not just focus on the conspiracy theorists for a moment and think about the broad middle ground of New Zealand opinion. I think that they've been through this experience. They know the drill now, and they know people are pretty savvy. They know what works and what doesn't work. They know what kinds of risks they're prepared to take if once they understand the nature of a pandemic. And I personally think

that if we had a COVID two point zero. The government of the day would need to take quite a different approach, put much more responsibility on individuals and non firms, employers and people like that to take more responsibility for how they protect themselves and the people around them.

those complaints. But unfortunately, I think we should hear them out, and a sensible commission of inquiry, will you know, explain that you know, these are the views of certain people. They may be minority views, there may be reasons why, perhaps some of those views are incorrect, why they don't stack up against scientific evidence, et cetera. But that's the purpose of a commission of inquiries, to sort the wheek

from the chaff like that. But it would be worse in the long run if those people kept saying, look, no one's listening to us.

We forgive, and we forget. Maybe don't forget, but we just forgive one another a little bit, and we do come back together. But the nature of a democracy is of course that there will be a division more or less down the middle between say, you know, forragments sacer left and the right. That's perfectly normal. One of the problems that we have now is not just in New Zealand but elsewhere, is that polarization is rather more intense, and it is exacerbated by a whole range of issues.

You know, even for instance, the attacks on the Gaza Strip for example, are really roiling up a lot of those kinds of divisions. So these things happen. The question really is not can we bring in everyone together and make them agree? The question is how do we reach across our disagreements, and how do governments handle all those kinds of conflicts, and how do we well, we start by listening to people. It is a democracy and so the first place, the first thing to do is to

listen to what people have to say. If we have to disagree with them, we disagree, but we ought to do it respectfully. And I think that's where Kitkens and Adoern got it wrong in February twenty twenty two. They refuse to listen and disagree respectfully and explain to the people out there outside Parliament why their demands could not be met. And that was a complete failure of political leadership on their part and they paid the price for that.

This is the thing. But they're still, i think, refusing to admit that they got it wrong and they paid a price for it. Maybe deep inside they do, but publicly they won't admit it. So these are the sorts of things that I think need to be done. And so New Zealand has been through these polarising moments every now and then. We get over them, we move through them. Sometimes we sweep the issues under the carpet and they just arise again. With the Treaty Principal's issue, it'll be back,

I can assure you. But with COVID, for instance, yes, the difficulty. There is of the obvious risk that the in our lifetime there may very well be another such event, and we need to be better prepared. New Zealand was simply not well prepared in a public health sense, or in terms of law, or any of those responses. Back in twenty twenty two, the government fumbled around for about three months before anything serious was done. This whole idea that we went and hard and went in fast is

absolute nonsense. The New Zealand government fumbled around was about three months of fumbling around doing stuff, all before effective pandemic measures were taken to close the border for instance, way behind the ball compared to Taiwan. So we need to be much better prepared like Taiwan was in twenty

twenty for the next one that comes along. But also, and this is the point of this Royal Commission, we need to make sure that people's disagreements have been aired and heard and responded to so that when the next one comes around, governments are better prepared in terms of the kinds of messages that they give about why we're doing what we're doing and why we need to do it this way. Given that you know, as we learned from the last pandemic. There's no nice way through it.

There's no kind way of getting through a pandemic.

happen every now and then. What happens is that a quiet, underlying division has brought out onto the suit by some kind of event that divides public opinion, and it becomes a politically crucial yes or no kind of question for or against question, and it polarizes public opinion. But what you're seeing there really is the surfacing of what's what's previously been under the surface, and part of the thing of being a democracy is that people are permitted to

argue and express their differences of opinion. And so I don't think we should be aiming for a ten honestly well, because as you say, that's a kind of utopian dream and we'll never get to ten perfect social cohesion. So the question really for a society like ours is how do we manage our differences when they do come up, and how do we act democratically to hear one another out and to act respectfully across the political divide.