The Herald has returned to form with a vengeance. In today’s issue, Barry Soper snipes at Jacinda’s handling of her regular press conferences. It seems that she did not give him an early chance to ask his very important question and took no account of his need to depart immediately in order to host his equally important radio show. These Prime Ministers! Don’t they know who are the important people around here?

And someone called Jamie Mackay apparently woke up in the middle of the night with a brilliant idea for an article that would suit the Herald down to the ground. When he woke up and started to write it, he seems to have realised that – once having said what the idea was (the drawing of a parallel between Jacinda Ardern and Ian Foster) – there was not a lot more to say. But that didn’t stop the Herald from publishing it.

And there was a “blast” (the Herald’s own term) from Duncan Garner about home isolation. All in all, about par for the course.

The below-par All Black performance against France was – sadly – afflicted, again, by what has become a feature of New Zealand rugby – the scourge of the aimless kick.

It is surely a truism that, to win a rugby match, you must have the ball. But time and time again, we see our rugby players – in provincial rugby as well as at international level – deliberately give away good possession with an aimless kick down field.

There may be several good reasons for kicking the ball away. It may be seen as a painless way to gain territory; but if that is the aim, then the ball must either land within reach of your own advancing players, so that they can contest for it, or it must find the touchline where a lineout (assuming that, notwithstanding that the opponents will have the throw-in, it is successful) might provide a chance to launch an attack. A well-placed kick might perhaps be seen as an attacking weapon that will put opponents under pressure as they field it, but then the same requirements of precision and “reachability” will apply.

If, however the ball is kicked so that it lands in the arms of one’s opponents, or lands in open space where it can be gathered up by those opponents, the kick represents nothing more than an invitation to grateful opponents to run it back, something the French did all too well.

The lesson is, surely, that it better to be in possession, even if in your own half of the field, than to present your opponents with an opportunity to launch an attack against you. It will almost always be safer and more profitable to run the ball out of a defensive position than to risk having it run back by one’s opponents.

One thing is surely clear – to hoof the ball down field without regard for what the opponents might do with it when it is presented to them is a recipe for disaster. Any follower of the game can recognise all too easily when that mistake is made. Don’t coaches see it too?

Has any New Zealand Prime Minister had to face as many challenges as the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” that Jacinda Ardern has had to confront?

The coronavirus epidemic alone has presented a myriad of problems, impacting as it does on so many different people and groups of people, and in so many different and sometimes contrary ways.

The point is made, neatly but no doubt inadvertently, in today’s Herald. They carry two pieces – one by Barry Soper, bemoaning the delay in opening Auckland’s borders, and another by Derek Cheng, expressing anxiety about an exodus of Aucklanders spreading the virus throughout the country. As with so many virus issues, she is “damned if she does and damned if she doesn’t.”

Throughout this protracted crisis, Jacinda has dealt with problems and critics alike, with courtesy and good temper, and without complaint. Her critics, however, have become increasingly vitriolic, scarcely able to conceal their excitement and pleasure at the possibility that, as they put it, “her halo might be slipping”. For these critics, any concern they might feel on behalf of New Zealand as a whole is far outweighed by their partisan and slavering welcome for the possibility that our Prime Minister does not have all the answers at her finger tips.

How disappointed they must be that, despite all the brickbats thrown at her by those who are in some way adversely affected by the virus – each brickbat faithfully reported and amplified by her political opponents in the media and in opposition parties – Jacinda Ardern remains by some margin the most popular political leader we have.

For one who has had to weather the storms that have beset her, the good ship Jacinda Ardern is in remarkably good shape.

Many anti-vaxxers choose to frame the question of “to vaccinate or not to vaccinate” in terms of personal rights and freedom. The decision they take on that issue is, they claim, for them and them alone.

We should first register that they need approach the question in that way only because they have first rejected the medical and scientific advice in favour of vaccination. If they had accepted that advice, they would presumably have had no qualms about following it.

But having decided that the virus does not exist, or that the vaccination does not work, or that the vaccination causes unwelcome consequences – or, perhaps, because they simply have an entirely different agenda in mind – they then claim the right, as individuals, to refuse a treatment that most of us (around 90%) believe to be the key to saving lives, ending lockdowns and other restrictions, and restoring normality to businesses and citizens alike.

They claim that the right of dissent is an essential element of what it means to live in a free and democratic society. But should we not pause for a moment to consider the individual rights of the rest of us as well?

For me, too, as someone committed to freedom and democracy, there is an important issue of individual rights embedded in the refusal of some of my fellow-citizens to be vaccinated. I decided, after assessing the evidence, to be vaccinated; and for me and others like me, those who refuse vaccination have turned themselves into agents of oppression – of me and of the rest of society.

They threaten me and my loved ones with the increased risk of potentially fatal illness – certainly one that could require hospitalisation and could, even if survival is achieved, have damaging long-term consequences for those who contract the illness.

They threaten the possibility of continued restrictions on my freedom of movement, and on my ability to run a successful business and to pursue many other of my individual interests. They threaten me with the loss of loved ones and the blighting of their life chances.

Am I, as an individual, not entitled to protect my rights and freedoms, when they are threatened in this way? If I am threatened with harm by the actions or inaction of others, am I not entitled to ask my fellow citizens to join with me in defending ourselves?

I have, of course, limited ability as an individual to protect myself and others similarly placed.
But, like so many others in our society, I had foreseen this problem, not just in relation to the delta virus, but also – as history shows – in relation to other existential threats (such as world wars and depressions) to our way of life.

I had taken the precaution, with many others, of helping to develop a democratic form of government which could – through advancing the general interest – protect me against such threats, even when I could not, acting alone, do so myself. It has usually succeeded in the past (though it sometimes, as in the case today of global warming, struggles to recognise and deal with challenges quickly and effectively enough).

But it remains in place – a democratic government that we have elected for the purpose, standing ready to protect me and all others against the tyranny of others – both individual and collective. If it were unable and unwilling, for any reason, to protect me against the sheer ignorance and cussedness of those who now threaten to hold us hostage to the virus, I would feel betrayed, not only as a member of society but also as an individual. Individual rights and freedoms accrue to all of us in a democracy, but they avail us little if we cannot protect ourselves, especially when we should be able to rely on our elected government to do so. It is one thing for a single individual to claim that their individual right is more important than mine; it is taking it a good deal further to say that it must also prevail over the rights of all of us, both individually and collectively.

I claim my rights and freedom to be protected and delivered to me by the government that I and a majority of others have elected for the purpose. Those who claim that they can act to my detriment simply because their individual interests take precedence over mine do not know what it means to live in a democracy.

Those Kiwis (plus a ragtag of others) who have seen fit to protest over recent days against lockdowns and vaccination requirements have actually done us all a favour, though not quite in the way they intended.

They have revealed themselves to us, and reminded us that they exist. The picture of themselves they have painted for us is not a pretty one.

We need to have it demonstrated that there are those in our midst who are so – literally – anti-social. Some of those who demonstrated are innocents, simply – and simple-mindedly – duped and exploited by others pursuing their own, and more nefarious, political and religious purposes.

They have been duped into believing a variety of far-fetched conspiracy theories – such as Q Anon, or that the virus is not real, or that the vaccine will make you magnetic or change your DNA.

But there are also those who are perhaps a little more able to think for themselves – though their thinking is strongly conditioned by an unusual view of how a modern and functioning society must necessarily operate.

These are the people who seem genuinely to believe that to recognise any obligation to other members of the same society is somehow to diminish themselves, that cooperation for a common purpose necessarily prejudices the individual, and that any restraint or accommodation of the interests of others accepted in the general interest must be resisted in the name of “individual freedom” and “rights”. These are the “libertarians” who exist and have always existed in most societies, and who are opposed to the very concept of government or to any attempt to work together for the common good.

These are the people who opposed seat belts and child restraints in cars – “it’s my (and my child’s) body and I can do what I like with it”. They agree with Margaret Thatcher that “there is no such thing as society’’, that we are all just an agglomeration of atomised individuals, and that there is no role for, or benefit to be gained from, working together and cooperation – no shared interest or purpose that can best be furthered or achieved together rather than alone.

In economic matters, they are content to “let the dice lie where they fall’ – “the market will decide” and there is no role or need for measures designed to provide a safety net for the less fortunate.

They seem to be unfazed by the degree to which their beliefs are at odds with the Kiwi way – and with the Maori view of the world. To them, the very concept of a team, of any size, let alone “a team of five million”, is anathema. The only “team” they recognise, it seems, is one assembled for the purpose of disrupting the rest of us. As the demonstrations showed, they are not only prepared to withhold their cooperation, but to go further and actively to frustrate the efforts that the rest of us are making.

By coming out of the woodwork, they have at least shown us who they are.