In the latest edition of the NZ Medical Journal, former Ministry of Health employee, Ashley Bloomfield, who was head of our health system during the pandemic, has written a paper called "Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness and Response: Are We Better off Now than Pre-COVID?".
The paper seems to argue that Kiwis are now better off. The authors seem to have missed something called the "cost-of-living-crisis", which has seen GDP per capita - that is, Kiwis personal incomes - decline more over the past several years than even during the Global Financial Crisis. That decline is directly attributable to policies implemented during the pandemic that never traded off economic & health outcomes. The underfunding of our health system happening now is collateral damage.
Bloomfield argues the pandemic showed the need for "Rapid, highly co-ordinated cross-government leadership & decision-making". Is he referring to a "need" to suspend Parliament to quicken decision-making and suppress opposing voices? Is he alluding to a need to bring the Main Stream Media into the government fold to quicken the "coordination" process so the public all hear the same line?
The main argument of his paper is that next time round the response must be implemented as "one of national security". He repeats the line, over and over, "that pandemics should be considered primarily as a security threat rather than simply a health threat". Planning "should be owned & led by the country’s security apparatus, currently based in the Department of the PM and Cabinet". Pandemics are "a fundamental aspect of national security". New Zealand must view pandemics "through a security lens".
Is Sir Ashley aware of the majority of New Zealanders' feelings about how the pandemic morphed from a health issue into one in which the government insisted on removing civil liberties and locking down entire cities, like Auckland, even right into 2022? Is he aware of the strength of feeling against former PM Ardern by huge swathes of the country? She has practically become persona non grata in NZ, and lives in exile (an over-reaction by many Kiwis, it must be said). Is Sir Ashley aware Labour lost the election last year since people rejected the overbearing, all-of-government control over their lives during the pandemic? The swing against Labour was biggest in Auckland, which was locked down the most. Is he arguing for even more forceful government intervention next time around? When he refers to a nation's "security apparatus", one presumes he means our Armed Forces & Security Intelligence Service (SIS). The equivalent in the US is the CIA, in Israel Mossad and Shin Bet, in Russia the KGB, and in the UK MI5 and MI6, together with those nations' militaries.
My father, a retired General Practitioner, showed me written orders that were sent to GPs in NZ at the time of the pandemic, ordering them what they were allowed to say, and not to say, about Covid and safety of the vaccine. Their own views became irrelevant. Failure to tow the Party Line could have meant losing one's license to practise. Nurses & health practitioners who didn't want to take the vaccine lost their jobs. New Zealanders who held Kiwi passports were not allowed back into their own country. Kiwis lost their civil liberties.
Isn't it odd to argue, after all these searing controversies that marked the beginnings of terrible cracks & divides in NZ Society, tearing us apart like never before, and culminating in the occupation of Parliament, that "the next" pandemic should involve an even bigger, stronger, more forceful government intervention that we experienced in 2020, 2021 & 2022? That next time the full might of NZ's "security apparatus" should be thrown at the "security threat" posed by pandemics, since they endanger our "national security"? That we must declare an All-of-Government-Response, Total-War, and Full-Mobilization, regardless of non-health related consequences? Can't the cure become worse than the disease? Doesn't freedom count for anything in such times?
Not, it seems, to Sir Ashley.
You can download his article here.
Robert MacCulloch holds the Matthew S. Abel Chair of Macroeconomics at Auckland University. Rob blogs at Down To Earth Kiwi