There’s no doubt that New Zealand’s success in dodging the worst effects of the pandemic during 2020 felt pretty good. While other nations went into horrendous tailspins, we pulled up the drawbridge and retreated into a safer world.

New Zealand’s elimination strategy made this country the envy of others that patently didn’t have viable strategies for combatting Covid-19. Team spirit and a fair degree of good fortune had brought us through the pandemic’s first wave. Unfortunately, that success led to dangerous complacency.  

The sacrifices of the first lockdowns bought us time to prepare for Delta, and that opportunity has been squandered.

The fantastic response of everyone who has queued for hours to get tested or turned up to be vaccinated in record numbers is evidence of what could and should have been happening long before Delta got here. The team of five million onshore has always been ready to play its part, but we were led by a government that failed to do the same. Now that Labour has finally been forced into action. Where is their long-term plan? The truth is a long-term plan requires milestones and certainty around achieving them but achieving what they’ve promised has never been this government’s strong suit.

It’s obvious that a vaccination threshold needs to be in place in order to confidently predict that the health system will be able to manage the next version of Delta, without sending the whole country into lockdown again. Having a plan isn’t an unreasonable request from health workers or the people who can’t travel within New Zealand, let alone overseas for essential business. And those businesses that are being told once again to take one for the country have every right to know what the game plan is.

Without knowledge about vaccination milestones how are we ever going to open up our country to the skilled migrants we need (45% of our doctors are from overseas)? And how are we supposed to run a business with confidence?

All of us can see that Covid will be a fact of life for the foreseeable future. So how are we going to be a part of that world? We are a trading nation that shipping companies will avoid because of the restrictions. We are a nation that saw the OE as a rite of passage for our young people and now we expect them to cower in fear. We were an example of how to face a pandemic with confidence and a plan. Now we’re looking like a country stuck in perpetual replay. We deserve better than this; we’ve earned better than this.