Even after the government announced it was relaxing Covid restrictions on Wednesday, business leaders responded with a familiar call for more freedom. But looser restrictions haven't shored up their bottom line so far, and some businesses aren't comfortable with the dominant media narrative.
Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone
On Tuesday Newshub’s Patrick Gower delivered a to-the-point assessment on how the government should respond to Covid going forward.
"Open the hell up. Open this country the hell up and get a move on."
Gower's call to "get on with life" was a familiar one in the media over the last two years.
Though the government’s conservative Covid strategy has proved popular with most people, as polls have showed, it’s always had loud detractors among commentators and business leaders who have combined to call it draconian overreach that’s harming the economy.
In the first week of a level four lockdown he had previously campaigned for in 2020, Newstalk ZB's Mike Hosking denounced the government restrictions for unnecessarily killing the economy.
"Every year heart disease claims 6000 lives, one every 90 minutes. We are not crashing the economy for that," he said.
"Overall we had over 33,000 deaths in 2017. By the way those deaths were the highest rate in 25 years, you won't remember the alarm - because there wasn’t any."
Hosking’s claim that clamping down on Covid was destroying the economy has since been echoed by an armada of bosses and business representatives.
In late-April, 2020 Glenfield Mall owner Dallas Pendergrast called for an earlier end to lockdown restrictions on retailers.
“Nobody can understand why they can't be open. It just seems to me prolonging the agony and making it 10 times worse for them all."
As Covid cases returned to zero, Flight Centre chief executive Graham Turner was among those calling for New Zealand to open its borders and learn to live with the virus in order to keep the economy running.
“The virus is going to become endemic, and some people are going to die from it. Just like in Australia... about 2000 people on a normal year die from the flu. Thousands of people die in road accidents. I know in the United States, hundreds of thousands of people die of smoking. So it's just another one of those minor risk factors in the country that we've got to learn to live with," he told RNZ.
This strain of commentary remained pervasive even as Turner's prediction came to pass, and Covid became widespread in Aotearoa New Zealand.
In December, Northland Chamber of Commerce chief executive Steve Smith complained to RNZ’s Checkpoint about the region remaining in a red traffic light setting over summer due to low vaccination rates.
"Have not done enough? Can we not just please get on with things? You can hear the frustration in my voice I guess, but [staying at the red setting is] just not what we needed at this time of the year, that's for sure."
In recent months, these commentators and business leaders have got most of what they wanted.
Traffic light settings have loosened. Lockdowns are a fading memory. Shops are open and the border is following suit.
Indoor gathering limits have just been increased from 100 to 200, which is still a significant imposition if you’re into night clubbing or churchgoing (or both) but the vaccinated can visit as many bars, cafes, and car dealerships as they want provided they mask up and scan in.
From 4 April, the unvaccinated will be able to do the same without even scanning.
Predictably as these freedoms have built up, so has the country’s number of Covid cases.
We are, as many have proposed, living with the virus.
But so far, that hasn’t provided the economic boost some expected.
Last weekend the Sunday Star-Times reported that spending in Auckland's city centre was down 63 percent on two years ago, with Heart Of The City chief executive and mayoral candidate Viv Beck saying that businesses had just endured their worst week outside of level four lockdown in March 2020.
Stuff’s report also described parts of Wellington as a "ghost town" and noted that 40 percent of Canterbury businesses are adopting flexible work practices to deal with Covid isolation rules.
Meanwhile, the Herald warned that if Wellingtonians don't "snap out of their self-imposed mini lockdowns, there won't be much left of the city as we know it to come back to".
None of this was a surprise to Newsroom's Marc Daalder, who's monitored how people in other countries have responded to their own Covid outbreaks.
He’s been a critic of the idea that more freedom always equals better business.
"Regardless of whether you have government restrictions or not, the fact there's a pandemic on will depress business activity. People won't want to go out if they think they might catch a virus and they might not be able to go out because they're currently sick with the virus," he said.
Daalder said business and overseas governments had pushed the narrative that restrictions are the problem, and once we get rid of them "things can go back to normal".
"But it's never been about the restrictions, it's always been about the fact that there is a pandemic on, and that's not something any government can do anything about. That was the magic of the elimination strategy. We got to live like there wasn't a pandemic on for 18 months."
It wasn't fair for businesses to criticise people for exercising that caution in an Omicron outbreak, Daalder said.
"The government has now devolved responsibility for the pandemic response to each individual, and it's hardly fair for the government and businesses - many businesses have been pushing for this for two years - to now say 'hang on, we've given everyone the right to choose what they'd like to do, and now they're not choosing what we'd want them to choose, that's unfair'," he says. "No, to a certain extent, welcome to free market capitalism. People will make their own decisions and in this case, people are deciding not to go eat out while there's a pandemic."
Daalder said it was inevitable that ballooning Covid case numbers would depress economic activity, and rule changes on virus mitigation measures would make little difference to that fact.
Businesses calling for restrictions to end were misidentifying the problem, he said.
"It goes back to magical thinking about what the alternative was to elimination or tightly controlling the virus. It was never going to be 'sure the hospitals are full, and sure, 1 in 20 people in the city has Covid right now that we know of, but I'm still going to go out and pretend there's nothing different from 2019'. It was always going to be 'well hang on, there's a pandemic, I'm going to do things a bit differently'. Congratulations, we opened up. This is living with Covid."
Many business lobbyists and commentators have rejected those arguments.
They’ve prescribed the same treatment for our current spendthrift ways as usual: another dose of freedom.
After the government’s Wednesday announcement on further easing Covid restrictions, Hospitality NZ chief executive Julie White put out a statement calling the indoor limit of 200 people a ‘nonsense’.
'Restaurant owner Krishna Botica said the pain won’t stop for restaurant owners until rules around seated service and physical distancing are gone too.
Meanwhile, others have denounced messaging aimed at stopping people catching Covid.
Beck pinned the current retail downturn partly on the psychic damage inflicted by the colour of our traffic light setting.
"Red symbolises stop. The customers aren’t here. They’re staying away because they have to isolate or they’re fearful of going out. This is a lockdown in all but name," she told Stuff.
In an interview with Duncan Garner on Today FM, Canterbury chamber of commerce chief executive Leeann Watson and Auckland business chamber chief executive Michael Barnett echoed that message, urging the government to abandon cautious messaging and replace it with calls to go out and enjoy life.
"We need a better narrative and we need a change in the narrative. It's been about red light, it's been about stop, it's been about hesitancy and fear, and we need to change that now. So I think allowing greater personal responsibility is a part of that," Barnett said.
But do these business spokespeople actually represent the position of most businesses? Are there at least a few business owners who see not only a safety - but potentially a commercial benefit - in retaining some Covid restrictions, at least while an outbreak is on?
Rebecca Smidt, co-owner of the award-winning restaurant Cazador, has more nuanced views than some of her peers, but doesn't see her stance reflected much in the media.
"There are lots of business groups and lobbies that advocate for abandoning safety measures - moving to orange is the call right now - and essentially opening up. But our industry has been changed by Covid and I'm just starting to accept 'back to normal' is not going to happen for us," she said.
"We need advocacy to consider things like liquor licensing, rates payments, more support with sick pay, assistance with ventilation, factors that will influence our ability to trade through the new normal. I think that's the voice that's missing from lobby groups. I think the focus on opening up doesn't necessarily consider the wider view of our industry."
Smidt said the focus on opening up might be pointless when people's decision-making seemed less influenced by rules - and more by their reluctance to catch Covid.
She saw some potential commercial benefits in retaining Covid measures which gave customers confidence they weren't being put at risk.
"It's implied that if restrictions stop, the pandemic ends. Trading through the Omicron outbreak has shown us that many people just have an aversion to catching the virus. People can go out right now but people don't want to," she said.
"Removing restrictions doesn't mean the threat is over, and for some people [removing them] will be a deterrent."
That prediction will be tested from 5 April, when the government lifts most of the remaining Covid restrictions.
The country will return to something like the "normality" business lobbyists and media commentators have long requested, but in the eyes of Smidt, Daalder and others, getting what they wanted might not be all it cracked up to be.
