Opinion
24 FARMERS WEEKLY – farmersweekly.co.nz – August 23, 2021
Go hard, go early Alternative View
Alan Emerson
LET me start by saying that I don’t like lockdowns. People have also suggested, hurtfully in my submission, that they make me grumpy. In one case it was “more grumpy than normal”. Let me add that in the current case, I totally support going into lockdown for the entire country. We were holidaying in Australia when the borders shut and took advantage of the week-long amnesty to come home. Watching the Australians attempt to control covid and comparing it with ours was a little like chalk and cheese. For a start, in New Zealand we know exactly what’s going on and why. We have the Prime Minister and Covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins, along with the Director-General of Health, giving us the news and then taking questions from journalists. In Australia it wasn’t as precise. When the Delta variant of covid hit Sydney it didn’t seem to create many waves. It was believed to be started by a limo driver carrying foreign air crew. The driver wasn’t vaccinated and didn’t wear a mask. Since then, it has spread far and wide.
New South Wales (NSW) didn’t go into immediate lockdown because they had a “gold standard” contact tracing app. They then went into selective lockdown before locking down the state when the daily total reached 100. Conversely, Victoria went quickly into lockdown and has less infections than its neighbouring state. Queensland, where we were, closed its borders quickly and had just a few cases. At the time of writing, there were no new cases in Queensland compared with NSW who had a massive 633 cases and three deaths. NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian says “we haven’t seen the worst of it”. Watching the TV news was interesting. Despite the lockdown, the Sydney beaches were packed. People were there despite attempts to move them on. Then, when the state did go into lockdown there was a huge and unruly riot. The NSW police said if there was another similar riot they couldn’t control it. The state government called in the army to assist and they were certainly visible on the streets. By comparison, in NZ we had 100 protesters in Auckland led by conspiracy theorist and political wannabe Billy Te Kahika. The spread of covid to Victoria has been well-documented. A removal company whose employees weren’t wearing masks moved a Melbourne resident back home. They infected the family. One of the family members went to the Melbourne Cricket
Ground to watch a football game and spread it around the crowd. What was sobering was seeing a map of the spread. People several rows and many seats from the infected person caught the virus. It spreads that easily. The main issue for me, certainly in NSW, was that people didn’t take warnings seriously. Despite the lockdowns you could see people in the streets. Others were playing on the beaches. Everybody was blaming someone else, with immigrants getting a real hammering. On one side of the argument you could read that many immigrants didn’t understand English and that communicating by press conference didn’t work. On the other side it was “ignorant immigrants”. My prediction is that the Delta variant of covid has a long and happy life in Australia unless there is dramatic change. It made me glad I was a Kiwi comfortably ensconced in rural Wairarapa. The differences between the two countries over the handling of covid has been considerable. For a start, in Australia you have federal and state governments. It often appeared to me that politics between the states and the federation were all-consuming and that controlling covid was secondary. The federal government was responsible for vaccinations and that effort was roundly criticised. In NZ we had National leader Judith Collins, to her credit, agreeing with the lockdown. I
CHEESE AND CHALK: Alan Emerson says the differences between how New Zealand and Australia is handling of covid makes him proud to be a Kiwi.
couldn’t imagine that happening in Australia. Here we’ve largely played the game over lockdowns. The normally busy road outside our place is dead. In Australia it seemed by the television coverage I saw that the rules were made to be broken. Locally we went hard and fast. In NSW it was anything but. International reaction to our lockdown has been interesting, with the Washington Post incredulous that we would go into lockdown with just one covid case. CNN echoed the Post’s sentiments, as did many other media outlets. Just one case can quickly grow,
as we’ve found out. I was pleased with the local reaction to the lockdown. The first email I received was from the RSA promising support if I needed it and giving me the necessary contacts. That was followed by Federated Farmers and Rural Women. So I’m pleased I’m in NZ where we play the game and not politics over covid. Hopefully, that will also mean the NPC can resume sooner rather than later.
Your View Alan Emerson is a semi-retired Wairarapa farmer and businessman: dath.emerson@gmail.com
Bad but definitely not the worst From the Ridge
Steve Wyn-Harris
I DON’T know about you, but personally I think we need something self-affirming, something uplifting, something positive this week. Most of us knew that it was just a matter of time before the Delta variant managed to weasel itself across the border and get into us. A population that has been so well-protected that we have no acquired immunity, just a million having had both shots of the vaccine and 1.5m of us having had one shot, means that the rapid health response at the time of writing may still not be enough to shut this incursion down. Then we’ve got something decent to be concerned about and for good reason as we look towards Sydney and Suva. Level 4 lockdown has little effect on busy farmers, but much of the rest of the country is seriously
impacted. Hold on Steve, we thought you were writing about something positive. Yes, yes but I’m just setting the scene. Bear with me. Then there is the weather and climate. Some of you have had devastating floods. It seems churlish to mention, here we are still dealing with a second cumulative drought. My annual rainfall here in Central Hawke’s Bay is around half of what I should have had by now and this towards the end of August. The usual windy, dry months of spring are ahead but of course, nowadays, anything could happen. It was so dry underfoot that I had a fertiliser truck driving around on my heavy Hatuma clay soils in July, spinning a bit of nitrogen on to build some feed covers for lambing. That truck could have gone through any gully that usually would have running water in it at this time of the year. I pump from spring-fed creeks so am fortunate, but have mates out towards the coast who are struggling to keep water up to their cows. In August for goodness sake. There’s the pace and scale of legislative change weighing heavily on our minds.
TAKING STOCK: Steve Wyn-Harris says while it’s human nature to count all the things that are going wrong in NZ, one should take a moment to appreciate the fact that it could be a lot worse.
Don’t forget the impact on our sheep and beef sector of the rapid increase in the carbon market that Keith Woodford’s excellent series is highlighting. Gee thanks Steve, I feel really uplifted now. Well, we get to my point now. It could be a heck of a lot worse and our worries are trivial to those experienced by others. Look at the poor beggars in Afghanistan, for example. Because it sits at the crossroads of Central and South Asia, it has
had a hell of a history of foreign invasions and wars. Its mountainous and tough terrain is considered unconquerable and is nicknamed ‘the graveyard of empires’. The three most recent of these being the British Empire, the Soviet Union and now America. The country has high levels of terrorism, poverty, child malnutrition and corruption. And now we have seen the Taliban rapidly retake control of the country after the US forces
and their allies left after 20 years’ involvement. The Taliban are talking a conciliatory game but they have been brutal and cruel in the past and it’s no wonder so many Afghans would rather be anywhere but in their own country. Then there is poor, benighted Haiti. Eleven years ago, an earthquake there killed up to 300,000 people, although no one is sure of that terrible toll. One of the poorest nations on the planet, their corrupt president has recently been assassinated, another devastating earthquake has just killed thousands, injured many more and made tens of thousands homeless. Then a tropical storm followed up to add to the misery and suffering. The majority reading this have their own homes, guaranteed jobs, decent balance sheets and have been getting good returns for our produce for several years with near record prices forecast for the season ahead. Yes, it’s tough out there but we also have much to be grateful for.
Your View Steve Wyn-Harris is a Central Hawke’s Bay sheep and beef farmer. swyn@xtra.co.nz
