HDPA: Level 2 announcement is more spin from the Government

Author: Newstalk ZB,
Publish Date: Thu, 7 May 2020, 4:01PM

You know what I took away from the Prime minister today? Don’t get your hopes up for some level 2 freedom.

Once again, we seem to have a situation where we’re going to change the name of the alert level we’re in but maybe not the restrictions we’re living under.

This is what happened with level four, remember? We went from lockdown to lockdown-lite, where level three was just level four with takeaways and a few more workers.

All of the hints in the press conference today suggested we should expect the same thing again.

It sounded great when the PM read out all the freedoms of level 2: bars opening, restaurants opening, super rugby back, weddings back, regional travel allowed.

But that freedom won’t all come at once. The PM made it clear that’s going to come in stages.

What comes first, we don’t know. But logic says they’ll start with the less risky things: maybe being able to see your extended family and friends again.

And the last activities to be allowed will probably be the riskier things, which might be bad news for hospitality and possibly for tourism.

Ashley Bloomfield described cafes and restaurants as “high risk areas”. So hospo businesses may want to brace themselves to stay closed for a while longer.

And tourism? Well how can you have tourism without hospitality operating.

So, how long will we be in level 2.9, level 2.8, level 2.7, before we get to level 2 proper? Who knows, but the government likes to work in fortnightly cycles, so counting in days might be optimistic.

Let’s be honest about what this is. This is spin. It’s playing pretend. It’s telling us we’re freer than we actually will be.

It’s probably designed to trick us into believing the government isn’t still punishing the economy as hard as it is going to continue to.

I’d say the government's nervous. Nervous that more and more of us will blame them for going way too hard on these restrictions when the numbers don’t justify it. One new case today.

Look, I hope I’m wrong. We’re having to read between the lines and we don’t really know what they’re planning – I’m not sure they do either – but I think we should brace ourselves for the chance we’ll get our freedoms back very gradually.