Last year, in the early stages of the pandemic, the Prime Minister’s “team of five million” performed well; team discipline was maintained and we all worked well together.

This year, however, has been a different story; team discipline has weakened, and many people have on numerous occasions behaved badly and irresponsibly. The reasons for this deterioration are not hard to identify.

The first is straightforward enough – the delta variant is a different and more difficult beast. It poses a range of new and awkward problems which have required – if they are to be overcome – an even more disciplined team approach, and that has not been forthcoming.

The second reason is, however, more interesting – and even more regrettable. Politics has reared its ugly head and has interceded in what needed to be, and was once, a largely unified approach.

This political complication is not just a simple matter of “right-wing” hostility to a left-of-centre government. The “right” itself is now a more complex beast than it used to be and it takes a number of different and often competing forms.

Even its principal manifestation – the National party – is now a splintered entity. There are now several competing National voices and interest; on the one hand, for example, Judith Collins and her supporters and, on the other, those who want to see a change of leadership, some of whom (such as Chris Bishop) fancy their own chances of becoming leader and all of these therefore speak with different and competing voices and see the possible advantage of being the first to land a blow or two on the government.

And then there is another right-wing party, Act – which fancies its chances of becoming the principal right-wing voice but in the meantime has to try to make its voice heard by taking a different tack from its senior partner and by striking out on a “libertarian” path.

And there is also, more significantly, a hitherto unidentified and unsuspected body of opinion which might accurately be described as “far right”. As has happened in many other countries, not least in Trump’s America, there is an underground upswing in those who believe in conspiracy theories, who are against the very concept of government, who distrust experts, and who resist any idea that they might be part of a “team”. The Brian Tamakis and Billy Te Kahikas have actively opposed any notion that we can, or should, look to government to help us out of our difficulties. To play as a team, they say, is to put our individual liberties at risk (as though the delta variant isn’t doing a pretty good job of that by itself).

And then there are the politicians who are not, in the usual sense, right-wing but who pursue their own agendas in the sense of claiming that they represent various sectional interests that have been somehow overlooked, so that we are not all part of the whole and should not therefore be expected to play in the same team.

This wide range of right-wing and hostile forces has done a huge amount to weaken the efficacy of the government’s efforts this time round. They have eroded the very idea that “we are all in this together”, with the result that the government’s efforts have thereby been crucially undermined.

Sadly, the essential condition for overcoming the virus has been stymied, not only by the virus itself, but by competing forces who actively want the government to fail. It is hard to see how we can regain that essential team spirit when so many voices are calling for different things.

And all of this is compounded by the right-wing media who constantly offer platforms to those who would – by undermining the government – weaken our national effort. Who would be in government!

Bryan Gould
15 October 2021

Barry Soper is one half of one of those right-wing husband-and-wife duos in which the Herald seems to specialise.

In today’s issue, he has a piece that doesn’t quite reach the heights (or depths) of a Hoskings-style anti-government hostility, but which does provide an interesting example of the kind of techniques that he and his co-propagandists are wont to use.

He finds a way, it seems, to reference the Prime Minister’s constant and welcome readiness to offer herself up for public scrutiny, and then to turn it against her. He describes her public pronouncements (and answers to questions) as issuing forth from the “Pulpit of Truth” – a term that is (and is intended to be) redolent with irony and resentment at her constant ability and willingness to communicate with, and answer the questions of, those attending her regular press conferences.

But, no doubt pleased at his cleverness in inventing the label, he sees the possibility of using it as the basis of a further jab. The Prime Minister’s pulpit, he suggests, is not so much a pulpit of “truth” as one of “strewth”. Happily for his readers, he then seems to have exhausted his powers of invention and we are spared any further examples of journalistic guerrilla warfare.

We (his readers) might hope for a higher standard of political commentary, but Barry Soper can no doubt congratulate himself on fulfilling his employers’ expectations of him.

Bryan Gould
14 October 2021

In today’s Herald, their excellent columnist, Simon Wilson, takes to task those “shouty” people whom he further describes as “angry blowhards”. They are those whose prime reaction to the pandemic is anger – an anger they seamlessly (and perhaps unwittingly) transfer from the virus to the government.

The basis for that anger is that the pandemic could be painlessly held at bay, they claim, if only the government would take their advice and implement their own pet solutions.

The problem for the Herald is that many of these “angry blowhards” are to be found in the Herald’s own pages. Their characteristic is that their anger outweighs their rationality. Their primary purpose (and target) is to attack and undermine the government; helping to counter the pandemic comes a poor second.

But it is even worse than that. Their attacks on the government not only do little to help to find a solution to the problems we all face; they actually weaken our ability to fight back. Even if their rantings contained a kernel of helpful advice, its value would be lost in the torrent of anti-government hostility, and the net outcome of their offerings would be merely to weaken that unity of purpose on which a successful campaign against the virus necessarily depends.

Bryan Gould
12 October 2021

So, the Herald has found someone, as we can see from today’s issue, who is able to explain why we should not claim to have been “world-leading” in our response to the covid epidemic.

It seems that we have been kidding ourselves when we celebrated our low total number of deaths from the virus (at just 27 so far) when others – even on a percentage of total population basis – have registered lives lost to the virus at much higher numbers. And we were also mistaken to have congratulated ourselves on the immediate bounce-back our economy has enjoyed. Neither of these measures matters a damn, it seems, and we should concede that others – with much higher death rates and flat-lining economies – have nevertheless done so much better.

Such advice should be gratefully received, if only to reinforce what many of us know already – that critics of the government will reach for any stick with which to beat it, even if they have to defy the evidence and rationality to do so.

Bryan Gould
9 October 2021

I wonder if Mike Hosking ever reads the paper in which he appears so regularly? If he does, he might have noticed a report in today’s Herald about the problem that could face churches in Auckland if a vaccine passport becomes mandatory for those wishing to attend church services.

The chair of the Auckland Church Leaders Group, Jonathan Dove, is reported to have said that the issue placed the churches in some difficulty, but “that’s because of the virus, not the government.”

Such calm common sense is clearly beyond Hosking, whose across-the-board hostility to the government leads him to treat every multifarious and adverse intrusion of the virus into our daily lives as brought about by the failings of the government.

It is comforting to realise that so many of our community leaders have a better understanding of the issues that face us than do some of our supposedly well-informed (and paid) commentators.

Bryan Gould
8 September 2021