14 September

Political strategy is one of my areas of expertise. The constant talk about Delta being too hard to control is political strategy. NZ is controlling it as easily as it did in 2020. What’s happening in NSW and Victoria then, why can’t they? We need to look outside the States, to the federal government. Notice in 2020 JobKeeper payments were targeted at employers, to keep businesses afloat while employees went home. In 2021, they (deliberately) changed the payment to go to individuals, if they lost work. In other words, they made it much harder for businesses to close, because the business had to suffer first before employees qualified for a payment. On top of that, these individuals only qualified for a payment if the business was in a ‘hotspot’, as defined by the federal government. In other words, the virus had to have already smashed an area, before income support kicked in. And we wonder why the virus got out of control in 2021. Look at the PM and Treasurer - there’s your main answer.