The politics of COVID in New Zealand: Ardern's warmth has united us

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Opinion: COVID-19 has returned to New Zealand a little more than month out from the nation's elections. It's a tough time to be a rival of Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, writes Paul Little.

We might have gotten a little bit smug. After 102 days with no community transmission of COVID-19 in New Zealand, many of us thought it was all over. We weren’t drawing comparisons with other countries’ experience – that would be unneighbourly. But if people wanted to make the comparison, there was nothing we could do to stop them.

And, as weeks and months went by, it failed to reappear. There were breaches of quarantine that were quickly addressed. There were no new deaths. So, almost inevitably, as the death toll remained at 22, politics returned to the debate.The government moved too slowly at the start of the crisis. It moved too quickly. The borders needed to be reopened. The borders weren’t secure enough.

The decision to bump the country’s lockdown levels up again re-ignited the resolve that saw such a great result in the first place. Beating COVID? Hell, that’s what we do round here. When the announcement came, we stuck to our routine – banded together, checked in with our families and panic-bought toilet paper in the middle of the night.

 

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