It keeps the country in suspense, creates uncertainty for those who actually have to make sound economic decisions based on the Beehive's latest pronouncements and leaves us all in a state of bewilderment and confusion.
Why on earth a government can't do its job and actually govern, make a decision and announce it - and then stand by it - is beyond most of us.
Is it about power or just plain incompetence?
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern tells us they want to make sure their decisions "don't have any knock-on effects or consequences", which doesn't to me say a hell of a lot for the decisions they have made.
But there's more.
Ardern told us "no one will be fundamentally worse off as a result of the Government delaying until Wednesday before the decisions are announced".
Why? Well because many of the decisions, if any, won't take immediate effect so no one will be worse off in allowing the Beehive to take an additional 48 hours to make sure they get it right!
So yet again there will be an upcoming announcement of an announcement on Wednesday, from the announcement of the announcement made after Cabinet today.
And there's every indication that the announcement, whichever one is actually being made to take effect in short order, won't take us out of the red traffic light we've been stuck at for months now.
The wiring might be changed, which could hopefully see crowd sizes for example being increased from 100, for those who are vaccinated, and from 25 for those who haven't taken the jab.
In fact, vaccination status should no longer be a factor if you consider the decision that was actually made last week but not announced - unvaccinated Kiwi travellers being allowed into the country without the need to isolate.
We were all taken by surprise to find out it came into effect at midnight last Friday.
It wasn't announced because it's patently ridiculous. It will affect just a handful of travellers, with all the big airlines flying into the country, including our own Air New Zealand, still refusing to carry unvaccinated travellers.
It seems the only flights that allow the un-jabbed to get on board are those from South America - and there's only one of those a week.
But if we're talking silly, the Prime Minister's admission that delaying tourists from coming here until May 2 from destinations other than Australia will prevent up to a thousand Omicron cases a week defies logic when you consider how many cases are being recorded every day.
It's time for a real decision to release us all from this madness.
Barry Soper, the political editor at Newstalk ZB, is one of the country’s most experienced political broadcast journalists.
But there's more.
Ardern told us "no one will be fundamentally worse off as a result of the Government delaying until Wednesday before the decisions are announced".
Why? Well because many of the decisions, if any, won't take immediate effect so no one will be worse off in allowing the Beehive to take an additional 48 hours to make sure they get it right!
So yet again there will be an upcoming announcement of an announcement on Wednesday, from the announcement of the announcement made after Cabinet today.
And there's every indication that the announcement, whichever one is actually being made to take effect in short order, won't take us out of the red traffic light we've been stuck at for months now.
The wiring might be changed, which could hopefully see crowd sizes for example being increased from 100, for those who are vaccinated, and from 25 for those who haven't taken the jab.
In fact, vaccination status should no longer be a factor if you consider the decision that was actually made last week but not announced - unvaccinated Kiwi travellers being allowed into the country without the need to isolate.
We were all taken by surprise to find out it came into effect at midnight last Friday.
It wasn't announced because it's patently ridiculous. It will affect just a handful of travellers, with all the big airlines flying into the country, including our own Air New Zealand, still refusing to carry unvaccinated travellers.
It seems the only flights that allow the un-jabbed to get on board are those from South America - and there's only one of those a week.
But if we're talking silly, the Prime Minister's admission that delaying tourists from coming here until May 2 from destinations other than Australia will prevent up to a thousand Omicron cases a week defies logic when you consider how many cases are being recorded every day.
It's time for a real decision to release us all from this madness.
Barry Soper, the political editor at Newstalk ZB, is one of the country’s most experienced political broadcast journalists.
6 comments:
So, if I've read the blog right, the reason announcements about announcements are made - rather than just one announcement - is to ensure the government hasn't made any cock-ups in its first announcement. I think!!
But hold on. If that were true then, since the government does this all the time, across a whole raft of issues, then regularly enacts bad, unworkable, unpractical or just plain stupid decisions, it means their system for spotting cock-ups doesn't work.
Or maybe they did find some but not enough to put a dent in the terrible decisions anyway.
Either way it smacks of incompetence, indecision and confusion - never a good look for any government.
No DeeM,
The delay from the announcement of the announcement to the actual announcement is to ensure that there are sufficient cock-ups to piss everybody off enough to distract them from what other sneaky legislation they are passing at 2359hrs on a Friday night before a recession. It is otherwise known as deceit,artifice, cheating, cozenage, craft, craftiness, crookedness, crookery, cunning, cunningness, deceitfulness, deception, deceptiveness, dishonesty, dissembling, dissimulation, double-dealing, dupery, duplicity, fakery, foxiness, fraud, guile, guilefulness, wiliness and most likely neither honest or transparent.
Sounds like the labour cult?
Right Terry.
So the time between the announcement of the announcement and the actual announcing of the announcement is to allow the government to think of even more deliberate cock-ups, other than the ones they couldn't spot, so as to distract us from the really bad He Puapua announcements which they would rather never announce but sometimes are forced to announce because of even more cock-ups.
Perfectly clear now - thanks!
Actually the reason for the announcement of an announcement by this poll-driven Government is so that they can test the waters. At present - before the 1100 announcement later today - the Government has just decided on what they will allow. Last week and early this week they would have floated some formless ideas out there in the political ether to test the waters. What got push back and from who(important in appealing to certain constituencies over others), how much support there were for this or that proposal, rather than for how sound scientifically an idea was. Once the results are tabulated then Jacinda will make the annoucement based on the decision reached by Labour's informal polling. That way she announces what appear to be popular decisions while seeming to respond to Kiwis - even if it is ill-concieved, ill-coordinated and half-cocked. This Government will have been seen to do something - anything - rather than the right thing.
Terry, you forgot surreptitious and stab in the back bastards. This bunch of woke lying socialists / communists don't have the intelligence or common sense to make clear decisive decisions based on facts and figures. Every thing has to be approved by racist cultural groups, have some " indigenous" prayers said over it, plenty of koha spread around the cuzzies then the Red Queen be dazzles the Labour indoctrinated from the pulpit, again and again. But never to be seen if it may be bad news. Kiwialan.
3 reasons
1. When they make the decision they dont know why they have made it, therefore they then need time to think up a whole lot of reasons.
2. Also refer to 1 above, they then need to engage with their spin machine, upon which they spend millions, to figure out how to bull...... the most intellectually challenged of us i.e. their supporters, that they have done a remarkable job.
3. I don't have time to list all the other reasons as I have work to do but probably can be summed up in one word - incompetence.
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