COVID-19 in retrospect: what was the political fallout for Labour?

The Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Covid-19 response – and the pandemic's role in Labour's downfall.

The Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Covid-19 response has released its first report. It’s a balanced critical appraisal that gives due regard to New Zealand’s successes in dealing with the pandemic and in minimising deaths and to the economic and social impacts and the corrosion of political trust.

In striking that balance, the report may displease those who are truly one-eyed and who want to lay blame relentlessly on others. But it’s an important first step for learning how to do it better next time. And, of course, the Royal Commission is unable to talk frankly about the politics of it all – so I will.

In real-time during early 2020, the government as a whole was having to respond rapidly to an unfolding situation with deep uncertainty. It wasn’t clear, for instance, how long it would take for safe vaccines to be produced, nor how effective they’d be.

A big problem was that NZ was unprepared for such a pandemic, especially when compared with Taiwan. This was clear when writing in May 2020, in the thick of the lockdown, in an article published that August. The Taiwanese had a system in place, ready to go, which had sprung into action in January 2020. In contrast, there were still only lax controls at Auckland International Airport through March. Covid-19 gate-crashed and started partying. To use another metaphor, the enemy had breached the border and so the second line of defence was “us”: an imaginary “team of five million” who were told to stay at home and not come out except for essential purposes. Critical instruments, notably a contact tracing system, had to be invented from scratch.

On the whole, Kiwis trustingly complied at that time, and successfully eliminated the disease – for a while. Opinion polls showed high levels of public approval and trust, and support for the Labour Party went over 60% in mid-2020 polls.

Prime minister Ardern and the Labour Party were rewarded in the October 2020 election with a record 50% of the party vote and a single-party majority in the House.

Most New Zealanders at that time were satisfied that the government’s “people first” approach was the right one: a hard lockdown “now” would save lives and take pressure off hospitals. The economic impact would be a sharp downturn, but a successful public-health effort would mean less harm to the economy further down the track. Loose disease controls, on the other hand, would cause longer-lasting economic uncertainty and losses, and over-crowded hospitals.

There was an alternative view which argued that the public-health benefits of the NZ response were outweighed by the economic costs. This was upheld more on the right. But the 2020 election result, with a high turnout, spoke for itself as a public verdict.

This majority consensus unravelled, however, as the lockdown, border closures and vaccine mandates wore out people’s patience and trust. Mis/disinformation did play a part, but there were objective reasons for being more than just “fed up”, for example the horrid MIQ booking system.

The Royal Commission recognises the decline of public confidence, especially as it came to a head in the protest camp at parliament grounds in February 2022. Two politically significant things happened at that time:

1. Cabinet ministers refused to talk with the protestors.

2. Winston Peters walked among the protestors, and the Speaker did him a big favour by trespassing him.

Winston, the wily old fox, gained the support of those who felt excluded by Covid-19 policies, campaigned in provincial town-halls up and down the motu, and thus achieved his return to parliament in 2023, and ultimately his role in Luxon’s coalition as DPM and foreign minister. Most of the anti-vax/anti-mandate community followed the Pied Piper of Whananaki and boosted him over the party-vote threshold.

Labour, in contrast, was busy losing. They didn’t pivot away from their extended lockdown and vaccine mandates in time to save their political butts.

There were other reasons why Labour lost in 2023, which I’ve covered previously. But again, results speak for themselves: Labour’s party vote plummeted from 50% in 2020 to 26.9% in 2023. That was their second-worst result under MMP, just above their humiliating 25.1% in 2014.

The Royal Commission rightly recognises the loss of social cohesion and political trust as Covid-19 restrictions persisted. Added to that, though, was the predictable post-pandemic rise in inflation, caused to a large extent by the extraordinary fiscal response. Consequently there was a “cost-of-living crisis” that became issue number one in Election 2023.

NZ Labour suffered from a post-Covid anti-incumbent sentiment that has affected governments in elections around the world. Bad luck. But will anyone learn?

The Royal Commission’s Summary report says:

“Many of our public submitters expressed concern about the protest, the divisions that emerged between many people over COVID-19-related matters, and the potential long-term consequences of these. Other stakeholders commented that the loss of social licence and breakdown of social cohesion that occurred during this pandemic may shape how the population is likely to respond to public health responses like lockdowns and vaccine requirements in any future pandemics. Repairing, fostering and maintaining trust and social cohesion will be key to both countering the impacts of COVID-19-related misinformation and disinformation, and ensuring Aotearoa New Zealand is in a good position to respond effectively to a future pandemic.” (p. 63)

A future pandemic response will need to acknowledge the bad memories from the last one. Gaining public cooperation may be much harder next time. The NZ government needs to be better prepared with disease-control systems and legal powers, and it will have to be even more transparent and evidence-based than last time, to anticipate a now ingrained scepticism.

The major political parties will need to collaborate on this, as we can’t know who’ll be in office when the next pandemic strikes, and it’s too big an issue to play political football with.

Some of our top public-health specialists agree with the Royal Commission that there needs to be a collaborative whole-of-government planning effort, with a lead minister, to prepare for the next pandemic, so we don’t get caught napping like in 2020. NZ needs to be ready to snap into action in the way that Taiwan did. But the staff cuts in the health sector suggest that there won’t be enough people on board to do that preparatory work.

Is the whole damned country on auto-pilot now?

The NZ Labour Party were responsible for a good deal of this mess and they will, of course, need to change. Following their well-earned defeat – and the Democrats’ defeat in the US – there have been many examinations of what’s gone wrong on the left. There are two basic remedies that numerous authors are suggesting:

1. Stop talking like supercilious lawyers and censorious school teachers.

2. Get back to improving wages and working-conditions.

The problems are writ large in the US. One of the best American analyses I’ve read lately is from the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank:

“For ages, Democratic leaders have tried to have it both ways, calling for marginal improvements to the tax code but shying away from anything that might repel the corporate interests that are also in their coalition. But, at some point, the worsening suffering of tens of millions of workers must convince them to take the risk.”

(I can email a pdf copy of the whole piece if you want it.)

Tax policies are important but they don’t swing elections leftwards. Workers want to become wealthy too and they may not welcome a proposal that will tax their (or their parents’) hard-earned wealth in old age. A Labour party can win on a well-reasoned case for lifting real wages, if they dare to challenge the corporate interests on which they implicitly rely.

There’s no vaccine against reality.