Category: imported_guest

Public anxiety at the way these blockades are operating – and not just in the Far North, but on the East Coast and reportedly in the central North Island as well – has reached such a level that National MPs can’t ignore it.

If the government wants to get New Zealand working it should get rid of the Resource Management Act. Even one of its architects, Geoffrey Palmer, has said the RMA is broken.

Fear of widespread infection in the community of a virulent disease is now sufficient to lock people up in their homes and suspend Parliament. Really! This not the first such plague to affect New Zealand and it will not be the last. Yet this is the first time our civil liberties and our democracy have been suspended in order to minimise its effect on public health.

The only strategy that makes sense is to screen massively, then confine the positive cases. Neither Hong Kong nor Taiwan nor Korea nor Singapore, territories with the lowest mortality rates for Covid-19, have imposed confinement on healthy people.

Any restrictions anywhere in New Zealand on public movement under COVID-19 Level 4 national emergency criteria should apply equally everywhere and to everybody, regardless of race, and only be imposed and enforced by legitimate authorities of the state and not Maori amateurs.

Looking at what Singapore does differently, the biggest one is Singapore doesn’t let positive patients back into the community.

Investing is an act of optimism. The greater threat for our economy is the damage that has been done to business confidence. Pessimists don't invest.

What we have here is a slick manoeuvre by the current government to gain public approval for a community programme that will make them look good in election year...

This is not the first disease bats have given us. Rabies possibly originated in bats. So did, and does, Ebola, outbreaks of which usually trace back to people coming into contact with bat roosts in caves, trees or buildings.

The cause of rising house prices is basic economics – demand exceeds supply. In the short run, excess demand bids up prices. In the longer run, high prices lead to an increase in supply, particularly in new construction. But we are not yet in a balanced demand-supply situation.