Penn Raine: Goodbye Prof Blakely

You can’t really accuse the Coalition MPs of bad manners, especially in the case of the dismissal of Tony Blakely as the chair of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Covid 19 – Lessons Learned. He has been, to use The Herald’s  words ‘eased out’, rather than ‘sacked’ as some might have thought appropriate.

That Blakely was an Ardern appointment was problematic enough in terms of how bright a light would be shone on edicts surrounding Covid but that he was a friend of Bloomfields and a Government advisor on those same contentious edicts, suggested to most of us that he would experience difficulty in steering the inquiry to any conclusion other than NZs performance had been exemplary.

Of course, the terms of the first Inquiry presented a permission structure designed to ignore grave mistakes and simply suggest what we should do next time. The new Inquiry has widened terms of reference and I am hopeful that my submission below might now be read and not binned as the ravings of a dangerous far-right conspiracy theorist.

‘Given the lack of experience and competence of the Government in 2020 my expectations of a wise and intelligent covid response were low.

It would be difficult to explain in acceptable language my amazement and rage at the hysteria the Ardern Government engendered and the mix of arrogance and icky faux niceness with which all the edicts were delivered.

I donated twice to the group challenging MIQ and once again the word 'rage' comes to mind when, despite the Government's best efforts, the stories trickled back to us about our citizens who were stranded, visa-less, jobless, homeless and many bereft with grief as people they loved died alone.

The inept software that obliged applicants for MIQ to re-queue after each failed toss of the dice for places was beyond belief. Did they have primary school kids writing the program?

It may not have been totally accurate to believe that Ardern and Gayford's cool muso friends and entertainers were let into the country, no questions asked, multiple times ahead of desperate NZ’ers but you know what they say about the appearance of ducks.

MIQ was bad enough - in fact it was criminal - but the obfuscation and lies surrounding the vaccines was so much worse. 'We're at the front of the queue,' we were told. It's possible that it may have been better if we hadn't been in the queue at all but it's galling to find out that the wonk who should have answered Pharma's invitation was too clueless to reply.

And 'It's not compulsory BUT you will lose your employment if you don't get vaccinated,' is not a free choice.

Who thought up the untruth that the vaccine prevented transmission and thus you had to be jabbed for granny's sake? Was there so much conceit amongst those responsible that they thought we were so stupid that any old lie would do?

There has been a large amount of respectable scholarship both during the pandemic and after it querying both the safety and efficacy of the vaccine but even asking questions at that time invited the slur of 'conspiracy theorist' and purveyor of 'disinformation'. It was from this platform that many subsequent rabid activists have attacked those of us who have queried ideologies currently in favour and the muzzling of reasoned debate in this country has become an ideology of its own, clamorously supported by our universities and media.

It seems that at some point the puppet-masters of the modelers and epidemiologists must have realised that Joe and Jill Kiwi had heard enough of their scaremongering and stopped wheeling them out every day. It's a pity that a similar awareness was not engaged when responding to the Parliamentary protest - the Government's blundering responses were scandalously stupid and showed them at the discouraging level of the oafish playground bully.

Once again MSM, hang your heads in shame.

As are many others I am disgusted by the behaviour and attitudes of those in whom we had expectations of trust and reliability. It is my impression that from 2020 to 2023 our country has been run by jeering, complacent, misinformed bullies.

At the end of this survey we are asked if we want our responses kept private. I do not understand this question - what is the opposite of 'private'? On a billboard along the north-western? In an op-ed in the Herald? TV1 News? Could you please clarify this option.’

The Herald’s Kate MacNamara summarises succinctly the safety of the Blakely appointment.

‘Blakely’s advice may well have been valuable. That’s not at issue. The question is whether anyone involved in pandemic events and decisions as they unfolded, and in the Government’s gut-wrenching trade-offs, is well placed to weigh them now and provide sober second thought.’

Let’s hope that the new Inquiry’s commissioners have the courage to present an honest reflection of what we really thought of Ardern’s Covid ‘triumphs’.

Penn Raine is an educator and writer who lives in NZ and France.