Dunne Speaks

  The most consistent aspect of the government’s response to Covid19 has been that at no point throughout the global pandemic so far has it ever acknowledged that there is merit in any of the responses other countries have adopted. The strong implication has been that no country understands the pandemic the way New Zealand does or has the calibre of scientific advice available to it as we do here. And somehow, the impact of Covid19 on human beings in New Zealand is different from its impact on human beings anywhere else in the world.   The government has said throughout that its decisions have been guided by the evidence and focused on the health impacts of the virus. Consequently, the advice it has been guided by has been primarily from the preservation of the public health perspective, with little regard for the wider social and economic impacts of both the virus and the response to it. Fair enough, given that the near unanimity of the advice it has been receiving was that...