Source: Radio New Zealand
The Deputy Prime Minister is pointing to parts of the Covid-19 pandemic response the government will avoid in navigating potential fuel shortages, saying “our long-term future must not be eroded by short-term political theatrics”.
David Seymour, who was highly critical of parts of the previous government’s pandemic response, spoke to the Wellington Chamber of Commerce on Tuesday morning about “the event affecting every part of business right now”.
He said there was no point pretending the conflict in Iran was “abstract or somebody else’s problem” given the impact it had on an “isolated island nation like ours”.
He referenced current fuel stocks as being robust, and said “if, and only if, there is a risk of running out, would we go to demand-side restrictions”.
Seymour then outlined five lessons to learn from the Covid period, saying it would be “mad to ignore a live experiment in politics and policy during a scary global situation” given the country was facing another global event that “could be scary”.
David Seymour. RNZ / Mark Papalii
1. Avoid the time trap
He said the first and most important lesson was not to let the situation “warp time”.
He said during Covid, the daily press conferences made “24 hours seem like a year” and the “first 24 minutes we spent waiting to hear the day’s figures felt like a month”. He also said the fiscal situation was the “most obvious time warp victim”.
To date during the current global situation, he said the financial support announced by the government in response to the current crisis was targeted, timely, temporary and funded.
2. Balancing human needs
Seymour said he was still astonished at how quickly education was “glossed over” during Covid.
“How educated the population is will trump any other variable across a generation. But, in the Covid time trap we abandoned it,” he said.
Seymour said he did not think students should be learning from home because of the fuel crisis, “because we cannot afford to put education back at the bottom of the totem pole after working so hard to get students back at school”.
He said education would not be sacrificed if the government needed to move to demand-side rationing.
3. Do it with, not to, the people
Seymour said the Covid response “took on its own momentum” and by the end of 2021, “we’d been in a state of crisis management for 18 months”.
“Many others felt the response was being done to rather than with them,” he said.
That was why the current government had been working “double time” behind the scenes to “keep fuel supply up and be ready to manage demand as a last resort”.
“Rather than jumping to the podium, we are quietly making plans we hope to never use.”
He also encouraged businesses to come directly to the Ministry for Regulation with suggestions for where regulations could be relaxed.
4. Remember we’re all human, all New Zealanders
He said when it came to democracy, the Covid response was a lesson in “what not to do”.
“People accepted the suspension of democracy and the rule of law so easily.”
He said any move to ration demand or limit normal activity would affect millions of New Zealanders, so people were entitled to know the rules and legal basis for them.
“Otherwise, you risk ignoring the fourth lesson, and people feel they haven’t been listened to. That’s when you get riots on the lawns of Parliament.”
5. Learn from the world, and don’t reinvent the wheel
He said New Zealand’s isolation was a big factor in the current fuel situation, similar to Covid.
“Then, we had several weeks’ notice as each variant crawled across the globe. Today, we’re tracing back ships coming to Marsden Point from Korean and Singaporean refineries, and then the ships going to those refineries.”
He said if the government could see what was coming, it could take time to prepare, and watch what others did to plan New Zealand’s response.
“We should never be too proud to learn from another country. We’re pretty good, but we don’t have a monopoly on wisdom.”
He concluded these lessons mattered because the government could not let “today’s crisis erode our country’s future”.
“Fiscal discipline is what stops the first shock being followed by a second one.
“So, when we say do not take your eye off the fiscals, we are not changing the subject,” he said.
He said with “cool heads” the government could respond to fuel shortages from the war without committing the “knee-jerk mistakes made during Covid”.
“We cannot prevent every external shock. But we can make sure New Zealand responds with fiscal discipline and common sense.”
Watch David Seymour’s full speech in the player above.
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
