Congratulations are in order – not just for Jacinda and her government but for the average New Zealand voter as well. The last opinion poll shows that support for both the government and Jacinda has risen over recent weeks – and that suggests that voters have kept their wits about them, despite a sustained campaign by NZME and their outlets (principally the Herald, provincial newspapers and Newstalk ZB) to persuade them that the government’s handling of the pandemic has been nothing but a catalogue of errors and oversights.

For months now, the Herald has fed its readers a diet of criticism of everything the government has touched. Anyone with an opinion or a comment that shows the government in a bad light can be guaranteed unlimited column inches; on the other hand, the Herald has also repeatedly found space for its own items or interviews that show National party figures as supermen and women.

Fortunately for the health of our democracy, their readers seem to have been unconvinced by this extreme display of partisanship. They seem to have accepted that the government is having to work against unparalleled odds, and can claim a remarkable record of solid achievement, while the National party figures afforded so much time and space have done little more than posture and snipe.

Perhaps the most notable casualty of the latest poll is Act, and their leader, David Seymour, who seems to have paid the price for his disloyal bad-mouthing of New Zealand in an ill-judged article for the right-wing British rag, the Daily Mail.

Those of us who have feared for our democracy in the face of the Herald’s assault on it can, perhaps, now relax a little. The New Zealand voter is a solid citizen, made of sterner stuff than one might have feared. They have their own eyes and ears, and minds, to guide them through the trials and tribulations of recent times. They can work it out for themselves and are not easily misled by biased reporting. Well done, you!

The coronavirus has induced, I think, a kind of psychological confusion on the part of my fellow-citizens – they have conflated the virus and the government, with the result that they now see them as the same phenomenon.

The process works like this. The virus is so pervasive that its effects are felt in all sorts of unpredictable ways. The government, for its part, has undertaken to protect us by negating as many as possible of the manifold and sometimes unforeseeable problems caused to us by the virus. The result is that the adverse consequences felt by us are seen by many as the culmination of a causal process in which the government is directly involved, and unless the government has succeeded in negating the adverse consequence entirely, and – even more, if the government’s response itself brings some unwelcome consequences – some part of the injury or discomfort or displeasure experienced will be attributed to the government. The virus and the government are therefore seen as being a single phenomenon and indistinguishable from each other.

Paradoxically, the government would be seen more clearly as a separate factor if it had not tried to protect us in such an all-embracing way – if it had said “we are all victims, there is nothing to be done, and you’re on your own”. The confusion is of course increased if there are those sniping on the sidelines and pointing to every unwelcome aspect of the pandemic – that is, brought about by the virus – and saying, for political reasons, that it is all the government’s fault.

If we are to avoid this trap, we have to think straighter.

It is no accident that the guest speaker at the National party gathering in Queenstown this week is George Osborne, the former British Conservative MP and (now largely discredited) former Chancellor of the Exchequer in David Cameron’s government.

Kiwis may be surprised to learn of the keen interest shown by British Tories in the New Zealand political scene and, in particular, in the political fortunes of Jacinda Ardern. They are heartily sick of the favourable reports and coverage in the British media of our Prime Minister and of New Zealand in general.

What they fear is that, if the British voters get the impression that a party of the left has performed well as the government of another Commonwealth country, they might get the idea that a similar brand of politics might be a good thing in the UK as well. They are desperate to take the gloss off Jacinda Ardern.

That is why we have seen a couple of apparently unrelated episodes in the right-wing British media over recent days. There was the outrageous interview given by Philip Schofield (born in New Zealand and a recent visitor to our shores) to a right-wing television interviewer; in that interview, he asserted that New Zealand was “essentially closed”; his purpose was to assure viewers that any impression they might have that New Zealand had done, in comparative terms, pretty well in handling the coronavirus epidemic had to be offset by the draconian controls our government had put in place to defeat the virus.

But that was preceded (and exceeded) by an article written by David Seymour, our very own leader of the ACT party, for the right-wing Daily Mail newspaper, in which he described New Zealand as “a hermit kingdom” with an authoritarian government.

Most Kiwis would regard these opinions as not only wide of the mark but also as surprisingly disloyal – if not to the government (what else would you expect from those quarters) – then at least to the country.

It is not often that we can see so clearly how far the politically prejudiced can go to bad-mouth their own government and country. Sadly, we should be enured to any shock or surprise, when we see on a daily basis the lengths to which our own New Zealand Herald will go to skew the news against the government and in favour of National.

There was a time, in the dim and distant past, when “a team of five million” united to beat the coronavirus.

Sadly, some members of the team wanted to form their own team, and the precious unity was lost. The new team concentrated, not so much on beating the virus, but on weakening the original team.

They are still at it. I leave it to you to count the number of items in today’s Herald that are opposed to, or critical of, the original team and that try to help the new team. You might (or might not) be surprised at the total. The beneficiary of the contest between the two teams is the virus.

The political bias of the Herald’s reporting and commenting has now reached ludicrous proportions.

The average reader can no longer ignore the uncomfortable truth. Our supposedly leading news source is now following the dictates of its owners – NZME – who have suborned the Herald to join Newstalk ZB, its stablemate in the broadcast media. The New Zealand public and the country’s political debate are both short-changed as a consequence.

None of this can come as a complete surprise – the telltale signs have been there for some time. What is a surprise is that presumably self-respecting journalists have allowed themselves to be recruited to this disreputable cause.

Some of the Herald’s journalists will not have found this betrayal of their readers to be difficult; they will have found the enterprise entirely congenial since it conforms with their own political views.

But I would like to believe that there are some writing for the Herald who will feel uncomfortable at
serving what has now become just a propaganda sheet for the National party. One such is surely John Roughan who is, I have always found in the past, well aware of his responsibilities to his readers.

I know where John’s political preferences lie, but I continue to think, in light of my earlier dealings with him, that he would always give priority to his principles as a journalist. The Herald – and its readers – rely on those principles.