Andrew Dickens Afternoons

So this is awkward.
I go a flu jab this morning. And what makes it even more awkward is that I never even asked for it.
This doesn't bode well for the narrative that the government has lost 700,000 vaccinations
So last week I got a text from my medical centre telling me that I was eligible for a funded jab and would I like to come in on Monday morning.  I phoned the centre and said yes and then asked why I was getting a funded flu jab.  Have I suddenly become old or elderly of frail?  Is it some sort of mistake.  The receptionist had no idea.  I took up the offer after all, just like Damian Grant taking up a wage subsidy he didn't need.You don't look a gift vax in the mouth.
So I turned up this morning and found out that the reason I got offered the vax was that I had cancer and surgery last year. The practice had looked through it's records and determined the perceived vulnerable, made their order quite early in the piece and then the jabs came through.
Their first tranche was a bit slow but since then everything has been fine. To give you a perspective, this medical centre with six doctors identified and administered the vaccinations to 12,000 clients.
So I asked my nurse if the government lost half a million jabs.  She didn’t think so.  She reckons some DHBs and their distribution networks just aren’t as good as others.  Welcome to post code medical care. 
It must be so frustrating as a government to be constantly disappointed by the civil servants at the ground level. It’s much like how the police failed to check up on the self-isolated inside three days.
And speaking of the police, the question has been asked whether they had the legal power to enforce the lockdown and the closure of businesses after a leak of an email from the Deputy Police Commissioner that showed the police were concerned.
This is a question that Simon Bridges was putting to Commissioner Andy Coster last week in the Pandemic Response Committee.  He never got an answer to it because Coster ran rings around him.  Coster is a lawyer too and Bridges just never got the right question together.
If the emails are correct, it doesn’t look so.  It appears Ashley Bloomfield used the wrong Act to issue the specific regulations.  He used the Health Act and not the Civil Defence Emergency Management Act.
I had been wondering why Ashley announced three revisions of section 71.  It turns out he was floundering around trying to get the law right.
I find that amazing.  Saint Ashley Bloomfield didn’t know how to legally enforce the lockdown he ordered.  You would have thought that would have been sorted out decades ago.  The law should have been ready to go at a moment’s notice.  It’s called having a Pandemic Plan.  
You get the feeling that the Department of Health was making it up as they went along. That's not good enough.
There will have to be an inquiry and a very hard look at our health civil servants to figure out how they got the very basic things wrong.
And again, it must be so frustrating as a government to be constantly disappointed by the civil servants at the ground level.
So did the police break the law enforcing the lockdown?  It doesn’t look so.  Because it seems like they just didn’t enforce it for two weeks until it was fixed.
The phrase is non-coercive community policing powers. In other words, they just asked us to shut the country down, nicely.  And being good and polite Kiwis, we just did. Incredible, really.

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Well it’s been a week where some voices from the past have been offering their comforting and discomforting voices. So what did we get? And are there any tricks we’re missing.
John Key has spoken a couple of times and there was some comfort to be found in his predictions.  He, like all of us, knows the rest of the year is going to be extremely tough financially for all businesses and some in particular.
But he believes we’ll start recovering faster than some people have said.  He thinks the regions will be hard hit. That Auckland will continue to grow slowly because of it’s economy of scale. He believes unemployment will reach double figures but not the 25 per cents that some predicts He believes property prices will slump but crawl back relatively well.
He said that businesses will take advantage of the crisis to trim fat from their employees, which is brutal but accurate.  Never waste a crisis.  He also thinks commercial property will flounder as staff numbers drop and more of us continue to work from home
His biggest concern was access to finance particularly to developers.  And this is the big one. You need cash to oil the wheels of business and if it’s not coming in the front door then you have to borrow it from somewhere.
But his only concrete advice about what to do right now was to wake up each day and figure out another business that could go to work.  In other words Level 2 the country or at least some sectors that could trade safely.
Today the pleasant baritone of former Finance Minister Stephen Joyce graced the airwaves.
He was asked what is the government missing.  He too, like most of National politicians thinks we should go to Level 2.
Stephen praised the quick implementation of the wage subsidy, but that needs to be extended now because of the simple reason that firms that are not going to make it need to give thie employees 4 weeks notice.  Which is a good point point.  The 12 week wage subsidy started on March 17 so we’re in the 7th week and there are 5 to go. We really need to know this week and before May 11 or the Budget which is on May 14. 2 weeks from now.
He said the government has done a good job stimulating the manufacturing, forestry and  construction  sectors and he said that farming is still doing well.  But he says the government needs to focus more on retail, hospitality, personal services, tourism, accommodation and international education sectors who are hurting more every day.  He says the government is showing a bias towards the traditional trades and the traditional exports which is no bad thing but it’s not enough.
This is where we come to the uncomfortable truth. Most of the sectors he mentioned are not suffering because of the lockdown and when the lockdown ends they will not be in the clear.  They’ve been smashed by the border shutdown killing overseas visitors.  Tourism and  accommodation are hardest hit and the hospitality that catered to travellers.  You can’t have much of an international education sector if international students can’t enter the country.
No one is asking for the border controls to be eased and no-one will.
So what is the answer to that.  Well Stephen didn’t say. Earlier in the week Mark Mitchell couldn’t tell us what his party would do to save the laundry dependent on washing motel’s linen.  That’s because no-one knows what to do about that.  Including the opposition So far the only policy National seems to be pushing is a change in levels which will do little to fix the endangered sectors
It appears as though the government is picking winners.  The way Roger Douglas and Ruth Richardson did in dark days gone past.  It appears that the harsh truth is that some sectors will not be saved.  But nobody, particularly a politician, is prepared to say that out loud.
So from this week of wisdom from the titans of the past, the concrete proposals are these.
Extend the wage subsidy now and drop the...

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Andrew Dickens has shared his experience of online funerals - after attending his third such funeral since the Covid-19 pandemic began. 
After reading a text from a listener who's mother is working in England and signing death certificates, Dickens spoke of witnessing the funeral of his sister-in-law's mother from the other side of the world. 
LISTEN ABOVE

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We have a saying in our family: No-one needs a could have/should have conversation right now.
We pull that one out at moments of high stress when everything is going wrong and it’s bleedingly obvious that the reason it’s going all wrong is because of a poor choice in the past.
The Covid 19 debate is full of could have/should have conversations with people more than happy to tell us what we should have done in the past.  But we didn’t.
So the latest was Professor Des Gorman. The former dean of the Auckland Medical School was talking to the Epidemic Response Committee yesterday. His hot take reckon was that we should have closed our borders in mid-February rather than late March.  He reckons that we weren’t resourced to do it.
He’s right, obviously, and wrong all at the same time.  Actually, if we closed the borders in mid-January like Taiwan we could have been in an even stronger situation.
But no-one was seriously mentioning or considering a full shut down of that at the time.  Including Professor Des.  I’ve gone back and checked the stories.  The pressure came on early March.
And the reason the lockdown has worked is because of buy in by New Zealanders.
In my opinion, any leader who closed New Zealand at the height of tourism season when there was not one case on our shores would have been pilloried for economic sabotage even more so that the government is being criticised now.
So bless you, Professor Gorman, for your profound 20/20 hindsight at this difficult time. How about you tell us your wisdom going forward, rather than looking back.
Which he has.  His other hot take reckon is that based on the numbers, we could be at Level 2 now and if we’re not he reckons that’s because the Ministry of Health is worried about something that they haven’t told us about yet. Which could very well be the case.
But this is not the time or place backwards-looking blamestorming.  Instead of upsetting people over things we can’t change we might want to urge them to get up off the floor and get us going again.
And I thought the same thing when Foreign Minister Winston Peters started grumbling that New Zealand might join Australia in an inquiry as to whether China told us the truth in a timely manner about the virus.  
Scott Morrison has already gone full ham on an inquiry and the word is that the China/Australia relationship is much rockier now than most people realise.
We don’t need to be part of this fight right now.  We need China to buy some of our stuff.  Finding out how China screwed up does nothing for the situation we are currently in.  In my opinion, the Foreign Minister is committing a little bit of economic sabotage by mentioning it.  I guess it makes him seem tough but it’s not smart.
I’m sure China didn’t tell us the whole truth but knowing that changes nothing.  Right now I think it might be wise to hold your nose and take a march on Australia and sell China as much of our milk, beef and lobsters as we can right now. We’ll sort out the screw ups when we’re back on our two feet.
So Winston. Zip it sweetie.

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So the pressure cooker that our businesses have been in due to our response to Covid 19 yesterday exploded.
It was the turn of small business to appear before the Pandemic Response committee and it was a heartbreaking litany of broken hopes and dreams from the sector that employs a quarter of all New Zealanders.
Amongst all of them, there was a commonality.
Ever since we closed our borders, which killed hospitality and accommodation, and then the lockdown, our small businesses have experienced a dramatic reduction in cashflow that will be fatal for many enterprises.
The committee heard that while the government’s wage subsidy has helped them meet one of their liabilities, namely paying the people who do their work, there are many other costs that are sucking their reserves dry.
They’ve got no money coming in but they still face debts around rates, insurance, rent, utilities, equipment leases, and all sorts of other business costs.
They’re going to the wall and they want the government to do something about it.
In their grief, many small business owners believe that the rest of us and the government don’t understand their plight.
Can I assure small business that we do.  That we care.  But the thing we all need to know is what should we do and what do you need.  Our problem is that we've hit a wall and no-one knows what to do
So, this morning Stuart Nash and Mark Mitchell faced off about it.  Nash is the Minister for Small Business. Mitchell ran through the pain our small business is feeling and then made the blindingly arrogant assumption that the Minister of Small Business has no idea how small business is feeling.
I’m pretty sure Nash has been yelled at by enough small businesses to know how they’re feeling.
Mitchell’s sweeping assumption is part of a common complaint against the Coalition.  They’re academics and have never run businesses.
Well ,I don’t know whether you watched yesterday’s committee but the best questions came from Tamati Coffey.  He is a small business owner.
Take our current Minister of Economic Development and Trade David Parker.  He’s been involved in starting the bio-tech export start-ups A2 Corporation, BLIS Technologies, Botryzen and Pharmazen. He is an experienced CEO and company director.
Compare that to Paul Goldsmith who in an alternative world would be Finance Minister now. He’s been a press secretary and speech writer for Phil Goff, Simon Upton and John Banks  In 2000 he got into PR and worked for Tranz Rail and the University of Auckland.  For three years he was an Auckland City Councillor. He’s got an MA in history.  You can say he had his own business.  He wrote 10 books. He’s basically a writer and a spin doctor.
People in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.  Based on a lot of the aimless questions from our parliamentarians from both sides I would say lack of business acumen is widespread in parliament.
What really bugged me about this morning’s debate is how short it was of ideas.
Nash tells us somethings coming next week.  They better hurry up because temperatures rising.
Meanwhile, Mitchell runs through the story of a laundromat operator who’s business has dropped 70 per cent since in the pandemic who sits in his office with his head in his hands.  But never says what he thinks we should do.
And I tell you why.  Because the Mark Mitchell and the Opposition don’t know either.
70 per cent of the laundromat’s business came from doing motel and hotel laundry.  That business is gone until borders are opened and domestic tourism restarts. He could borrow money from a bank with a 20 per cent guarantee from the government.  But the bank would take a look at the business and its prospects going forward and say you model is shot so we don’t want to lend you money.  Harsh but true.
So what did Mark Mitchell want Stuart Nash to do.? Throw government money at a failing business so it fails a...

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I know I’m about to be judgemental. I know that some people will say you shouldn’t impose your beliefs and values on other people who are doing nothing wrong.
But - I think the people who thought it was a valuable exercise to queue at 4 in the morning at a Merivale McDonalds would be well advised to go home, look in the mirror, and reappraise their life goals and aspirations.
I know you’re a burger aficionado, I know it’s been a long five weeks, but seriously? Stressing your body and it’s immune system to wake outside your temporal zone to ingest a tasty snack of debatable nutritional quality just seems to be nuts to me.
Speaking of judgemental, I am over the pile on to Deborah Russell. Not because I approve of her inappropriate question asked at an inappropriate time but because it’s an insignificant scuffle as part of personality politics and not at all helpful to getting back on track.
To make the claim that her question in a committee, that was promptly shot down by the man in charge of our finances, is indicative that an entire party does not understand small business is drawing a longbow.
In front of the same committee, the Leader of the Opposition also said something stupid when he asked the CEO of TVNZ why the Government funds them. TVNZ is, of course, a self-funding commercial entity. In fact, it funds the government through any dividend that they pay in a good year.
Using the Deborah Russell example we could say the National Party is too incompetent to run a government because they don’t understand the basics of Government finances.
But we didn’t. We said silly old Simon made a mistake. So did silly old Deborah.
But all this judgemental assumptive flannel took up so much time this morning that the most critical question was never asked.
What will happen to get to Level 2? Yesterday the PM said we’ll review the levels on May 11. Two weeks from now.
But if conditions are appropriate to drop to Level 2, will we be able to do that on May 12?
I ask this because when we went from 4 to 3 there was a five day transition period which extended the lockdown period. If there is a similar transition period it will effectively extend the lockdown from 7 to 8 weeks.
In my opinion that extension would be even more damaging to business than the one we’ve just had. And for businesses planning for the transition, this sort of surety is necessary.
We know we won’t know whether we can go to Level 2 until May 11. But if we can I want to know we can do that on May 12.

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So here we are.  After what seems both an eternity and the blink of an eye we come to the time to decide the next step in the battle against Covid 19.
The choice is simple and stark and yet so complicated and fuzzy. It is, as we are prone to say these days, unprecedented.
Do we extend the Level 4 lockdown or do we ease the strict rules and move to Level 3? There is no right answer because the cases for both are powerful.  The consequences of both are also potentially calamitous.
On one hand, the business people of this country are right to fear an extension of the lockdown.  Every day that goes by sees more life ebbing out of our economy. An extension will be the straw that breaks many enterprises backs. 
Meanwhile, the health cost of a failed economy should not be discounted. A recession is bad for you.  A depression is worse.  It means a lift in poverty. Poverty means bad food, bad houses, bad mental health. Poverty kills you.  It’s been estimated last week that the global Covid slowdown has put the global fight against poverty back 30 years.
On the other hand, lifting the isolation measures too soon could see wave after wave of infections meaning that in the lockdown could come back for an even longer period of time.  Causing even more economic damage and killing more people in the process.
Health experts naturally tend to favour more conservative measures, because they have proof it worked throughout history. 
The word quarantine was invented during the Black Plague in the mid-1300s. It was defeated when everyone was told to stay in their houses for 40 days.  Sailors arriving in port were confined to the boat for 40 days. No argument. Quarantino.  40 days.
Guess what?  A fortnight extension would bring our lockdown up to 42 days.
Both scenarios carry risk.  Any decision will be a calculated list.
So, on one hand, people like Rob Fyfe will be pushing for an easement of measures.  Health officials will be advocating for an extension.
This has always been a pragmatic government. And in that, there is an argument that they will go halfway between the opposing points of view which would see an extension of five days until we’re past the Anzac weekend. Giving the country another week to truly figure out how to do Level 3 properly.  Because I believe the concept of Level 3 is not well ingrained in our heads as yet.
But the risk in that is that both sides will be unsatisfied and the airwaves will be full of accusations of indecision and a lack of leadership.
And that is why, I think there is a very real chance the lockdown status will be changed.
And then the ball is in our court.  You and me. If we go crazy, pile the whole family in the car, scream off to a KFC 20 kilometres away and then picnic in the park, en masse, then Level 4 will be back quick smart.  And you’ll have to ask yourself whether that family bucket was really worth it.

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Day 12 and things are getting real.
People are losing their jobs and people are worried about losing their homes. For many it's a surprise as to just how close to the edge their businesses and jobs were.
Budget advisors have always warned that too many New Zealanders were only one wage packet away from insolvency and we're seeing this happen, from individuals and families through businesses and corporations. And it took just 12 days.
It took just a week to kill magazines. Magazines and periodicals are very vulnerable all the time. They have to pay their staff to write the stories. Then they have to pay the printers. Then a punter has to buy the product and only then can they bill the advertisers. Magazines and community papers were dead in the water pretty much as soon as the government decided that they weren't an essential service.
A friend of mine runs a monthly community magazine. She was just about to distribute the April issue when the lockdown hit. She's got 12,000 copies sitting in her garage. No money to pay a month's worth of costs.
It makes a mockery of the claim that Bauer offered the government their business for $1 as a going concern. Because it wasn't a going concern. Otherwise they would have made a go of it. But that's because they're German and they're not in this with us. They're in it for themselves.
Which brings me to my point. We're all in this together so let's spread the pain.
If your business is going to the wall then remember your employees are going to the wall too. So be fair. Our redundancy laws on compensation and notice are loose. They merely prescribe that employers act in good faith and reasonably. So act in good faith and be reasonable and strike a deal that, while still heartbreaking for everyone, is the fairest you can do. Because we're all in this together.
If you're asking for staff to cut their wages do it fairly. I was impressed by Mediaworks solution. CEO Michael Anderson has the company's workers to take a voluntary pay cut of 15 percent. The executive team is taking a 20 percent pay cut, he would be taking a 25 percent pay cut, and the Board will take a 50 percent pay cut.
Because the guys at the top of the tree can wear it. A 25 per cent cut to people being paid a million means they still getting 750k but a 25 per cent cut to, say, a Newshub trainee on 40 grand is a death knell. And make it temporary. To give us hope. Because we're all in this together
And finally, buy New Zealand. It amazes me that Kiwis are online buying buying clothes and stuff made in Australia during lockdown. Buy from New Zealanders. So what if they can't deliver today. The lockdown won't last forever. So you'll get your blouse or your sneakers in a month, and you'll have helped keep a New Zealand business and a New Zealand business owner and New Zealand families last a little bit longer
It's your duty. Because we're all in this together.

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It seems counter-intuitive to be in the middle of a public health crisis and to hear that one of the first financial victims of the pandemic will be our doctors and their practices.
Many GPs will be making the decision today and in the following days to close up shop because of a whirlwind of situations that has made them deeply unprofitable.
In the days before the lockdown GPs were besieged by clients seeking medications and treatments before they were confined to barracks.  The doctors worked huge hours and in many cases took on new staff to cope.
Meanwhile, they were busy investing in pandemic equipment. Perspex screens, portacabins outside their practice for Covid patients to keep them apart from others, and of course scrubs and masks and gloves.
Then there was the decision to move to virtual consulting so doctors invested in phones and laptops and applications.
And then the country shut down. And no-one went to the doctors.
30 to 40 per cent of a practice's income comes from the co-payments from you and I. So the cashflow immediately plummeted. The extra staff still need pay and the porta cabin still needs its rent paid.
So here we are five days in and doctors are falling. Financially.
It doesn't seem right, does it? A pandemic has always been predicted. They come with regularity amongst human populations. Smallpox ravaged the Roman empire killing over five million. The flu after the First World War, the TB, the polio and SARS not so long ago. We should be ready but we're not.  Pandemic preparation seems to be a no brainer for any healthcare community and yet we fail to invest time and time again.
 
This morning we heard the opinion of a French public health expert called Jean Dominique Michel. He talked about much we already know about. How no-one really tests enough, the stupidity of wet markets and the blame of modern lifestyle for creating under-lying symptoms.
If you look at Italy half the people who died had three or more other diseases. Only 0.8% had just Covid. He lays the blame of these underlying symptoms squarely on four factors. Junk food, pollution, stress and physical activity.
But he also lay much of the blame on the elephant in the economy room. Italy's shocking level of fatalities was partly due to an under-investment in healthcare facilities. There were just not enough hospital beds
He points out that Germany has 6 ICU beds per 1000 people. Switzerland 3.5. France 3. Italy had just 2. But all those nations had seen the ratio falling over the past 20 years. It's been a modern structural disease. Population has swelled but the infrastructure to care for that population has been left to deteriorate.
So to our New Zealand doctors going to the wall, I wonder why they were not prepared for a pandemic and why successive governments did not ensure an adequate pandemic plan including the provision of kit for the practices? They should not have had to pay for porta cabins and PPE.
And I don't really want to tell you how many ICU beds we have. OK I will. We have just under 5 per 100,000. Australia has just under 9. The European average is just under 12 and Germany has 30. That's embarrassing
A recent audit of our medical facilities found 11,000 to be poor or substandard. Palmerston North's operating theatres are 50 years old. That's bordering on criminal.
You can't run the sort of immigration and birth rates that we have over the past 20 years and not spend proportionately on your health infrastructure. But we did. And now we have tents in hospital carparks and GPs going bust in five days.

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I don’t want to discuss whether our coronavirus restrictions are right or wrong, or if they’re too early or too late, or whether they’re too harsh or too lax.
Because now is no longer the time or place. It’s time to just do this and any argument that might weaken people’s resolve and personal responsibility will only weaken the fight against mitigating the virus’ effect.
It is what it is and it’s time to do our bit.
This morning Mike Hosking was talking to the Prime Minister about the travel bans.  One of the first questions was about some friends of Mike’s who arrived recently from Italy via Doha and waltzed through the airport.  Mike questioned the PM as to whether our borders are truly closed.
Now the first thing I thought was how much responsibility Mike’s friends took for their actions.
Say they arrived a day or two ago, before the blanket ban.  The authorities would only know that they had flown from Doha, which had no restrictions.  At the time the e-passport gates were still operating so Mike’s friends could then just waltz into the country.
I wonder if they feel they got away with it. It was only later in the programme, he informed us that they did self-isolate because they’re not stupid.
To me, anyone who’s been in Italy at any time over the past two or three weeks has a responsibility to self-declare their travels to authorities and they have a responsibility to self-isolate.  Maybe Mike can tell us if his friends did that.  That would be more informative rather than informing the PM that people allegedly sneaked in.
Because that’s what thing is all about.
New words have entered our language. Flatten the curve. Social Distance. Self-declaration.  Self-isolation.  And the active word in that phrase is SELF.
A number of people have already phoned talkback asking how self-isolation can be policed. The fact of the matter is that it can’t be, completely. It's SELF isolation.
There are procedures in place so that health authorities can phone the self isolaters to check that they’re doing it properly, but if the infection rate rises even a little, it will be a tsunami and not everyone will get a call.
This is the ultimate age of personal responsibility. The information is there and you need to make decisions for yourself.  If you will only isolate because an authority told you to then in essence you’re asking for a nanny state and ultimately a police state.
We need to drop our selfishness. We need to think about everyone and not just ourselves and any inconvenience might be caused.
As someone texted me yesterday, it’s time for us to stick together. Two metres apart.

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