How did we come to this? A country that has always prided itself on its ability and willingness to work together has fractured.

Bill Ralston in yesterday’s Herald proclaimed that the country has been divided by the delta outbreak, and he might seem therefore to have been making my point for me. But he is referring to the various and differential ways in which the pandemic and its consequences have impacted on us – geographically, for example, and in our readiness or otherwise to get vaccinated.

I am talking about a different phenomenon – the increasingly obvious tendency in some parts of society to allow political convictions to dictate attitudes to the pandemic in a very particular way.

The people I have in mind are those who do not merely allow their political preferences to determine their approval or otherwise of the government’s response to the pandemic (though that is all too obviously true in many cases).

No, I am drawing attention to something more unexpected and, for that reason, noteworthy. There has, sadly, emerged a body of opinion which – asked to choose whether they would wish to see the government succeed in its attempt to bring the pandemic under control – would rather see the delta variant continue to prosper amongst us.

Surely not, you may say. Surely everyone would have as a top priority that the pandemic should stop wreaking its havoc amongst us. Surely, we would wish to see the vulnerable protected, and life return to normal.

For the people I have in mind, however, such a normally desirable outcome would be bought at too high a price, if the consequence was that the government should earn some kudos. They would, it seems, prefer that the pandemic should proceed unchecked, rather than that the government should be able to claim that it has navigated a way through the crisis.

Some of those people would go even further. They would actively try to frustrate the government’s efforts by, for example, refusing vaccination or the wearing of masks or scanning. These attitudes, and the priority accorded to political goals rather than the general welfare, demonstrate just how extreme are the views of this part of society. How sad that the government is having to fight not just the virus but some of our own fellow-citizens as well.

Bryan Gould
8 November 2021

The saddest aspect of the current public debate about the response to the delta pandemic is the extent to which politics has imposed itself on the public policy issues. For many people, it seems, the issue is not a public health one but a political one – and, to the extent that the politics and public health issues are at odds with each other, they have no difficulty in giving priority to the politics.

Even worse, some of them have decided that they do not have to engage with the politics of the situation by conventional means or at all. Fearful that they might lose the political argument, they have decided that they do not have to get into it – they do not have to develop a rational argument or string two thoughts together but have seen that they can take on the government through their actions, rather than through words or discussion.

Rather than offer any rational ground for opposing the government’s pandemic strategy, they have decided that they can make their opposition clear and effective through what they do, rather than what they say.

Accordingly, they have resorted to public demonstrations in the name of “freedom”, and in defiance of lockdown rules. They have encouraged and made common cause with “anti-vaxxers”, they have refused to wear masks or to scan, they have breached boundaries that would limit the spread the virus, and they have – when possible – ignored MIQ or self-isolation requirements. They equate defeating the virus with surrendering to a view of society and of how it might function that they reject.

All of these tactics and behaviours serve a dual purpose – first, to recruit new sympathisers to a far-right, so-called “libertarian” – that is, individual first – view of how society should operate, and secondly, to undermine the government’s strategy for dealing with the pandemic and to damage the chances that it might succeed.

Both the immediate and long-term consequences of these activities and attitudes are damaging to our social fabric. Unless they are resisted, we will become like so many other societies worldwide – unable to work together for a common cause, and always jostling to “get ahead” and putting self first. What is perhaps the most fundamental characteristic of “the New Zealand way” will have been lost.

Bryan Gould
1 November 2021

As a tribute to Dame Cath Tizard, whose death will be mourned throughout New Zealand, I recall a story I heard her tell about a visit she made to a primary school when she was (New Zealand’s first woman) Governor-General.

She asked a group of children at the school what they would like to be when they grew up. A number of answers were offered, and she then asked the question of one little boy who had stayed silent. He struggled to come up with an answer, so she asked him “Would you like to be Governor-General?” The little boy flushed and looked embarrassed. “Aw,” he said. “I’m not a girl!”

Bryan Gould
1 November 2021

As I await Sunday morning’s test match between Wales and the All Blacks, my mind goes back to the last time that Wales won against the men in black – 68 years ago, in 1953. I was then 14 years old, and I was allowed to stay up (or, rather, to be woken up) to listen to Winston McCarthy’s commentary on the match.

The match was a close-fought affair. The two teams each boasted star players – Bleddyn Williams and Ken Jones for Wales, for example, and for the All Blacks, Ron Jarden, my own particular hero. As the tour started, one commentator had opined (rather unkindly) that the backline was “weak from the scrum out to Jarden, and then back again”; the forward pack, on the other hand, was reckoned to be pretty good.

As the match reached its closing stages, the All Blacks had a narrow lead (or perhaps the scores were even?) and they had spent much of the second half camped on the Welsh line. They were unable, however, to engineer what would have been the conclusive score, and this failure was (perhaps unfairly) attributed to the inability of the first five, Laurie Haig, to set the line alight; Haig, of course an amateur, was a coal miner and – it was suggested – his unaccustomed freedom on tour from his usual hard work had led to him putting on weight and slowing down.

In any event, the game reached its climax when a Welsh forward suddenly found himself in possession close to the touchline and briefly unchallenged; in a panic as to what to do, he hoofed the ball diagonally across the field to where the two great wings, Ron Jarden and Ken Jones, were stationed.

The New Zealand defenders had to turn and run back for the ball. Jones, however, was able to run on to it, it bounced kindly for him, and he scored for the Welsh to win the match. My recollection of this vital episode was no doubt originally formed in my mind’s eye by the radio commentary and has undoubtedly been since confirmed by the many times I have seen the video recording of it.

It is hard to believe today that, at that time, the Welsh were regarded as our greatest foes; they had a winning record against us at that time of two to one and the 1953 match was a sort of unofficial World Championship final.

I was distraught at our loss, which seemed to me to be the greatest possible catastrophe. That sentiment was widespread; I seem to recall our teacher on the following day treating me and my class mates gently, and not requiring too much of us, as if he was sharing our grief.

How amazed I would have been if I had been able on that morning to look forward over the next 68 years!

Bryan Gould
29 October 2021

We must now accept that our national response to the Delta variant has not been as successful as our initial effort last year when the coronavirus first made an appearance. This, we can assume, is partly because the Delta variant is a more formidable opponent but also partly because our “team of five million” has fractured and has failed to work together.

That split has been brought about by the emergence of an unofficial body of dissenters who have refused to work with the rest of us and have, in many cases, tried to undermine the efforts we are making to beat the virus. Those dissenters are partly made up of dedicated political opponents of the government, who would resist and oppose any initiative of the government – on the virus or anything else – simply because it comes from the government; their goal is to prevent Jacinda Ardern from winning a further term – for them, to defeat the virus is to concede the next election.

But this group of party political opponents has been supplemented by a hitherto unrecognised and subterranean body of far-right, “libertarian” activists who oppose anything that comes from government (of whatever colour or persuasion) and whose antipathy towards authority or experts or science leads them into the ranks of “cranks” on issues like vaccination and lockdowns and conspiracy theories more generally. These innocents have then been exploited by those with other agendas of their own.

And, supporting these two sometimes disparate groups, has been NZME and the Herald. Their position has at times been somewhat ambivalent; they have been active supporters of vaccination, but have on other issues maintained their traditional stance of offering their column inches to any critic of the government.

So, we have had constant sniping in the pages of the Herald from such as Mike Hosking and Barry Soper (and their spouses), and from in-house contributors like Fran O’Sullvan and former right-wing politicians like Richard Prebble and Steven Joyce. As a result, the Herald has at times been caught in a kind of no-man’s-land – supporting vaccination but doing what it can to undermine a government that is pinning its hopes on vaccination as the centre-piece of its own strategy to beat the pandemic.

A couple of conclusions might be drawn from this sad picture. It is not the government that has, as Judith Collins proclaims, divided us into two classes – the dissenters and anti-vaxxers have done that all by themselves. And, it is not the government that has failed us; we have failed the government. The team spirit that worked for us last year has failed us this year.

Bryan Gould
27 October 2021