A bone for the planes just in time for the holidays, which in and of itself is good news for places like Queenstown.

The irony, of course, is that nothing has changed for the change to take place.

There must be a middle row left empty – no, hang on, we can fill that. What’s changed? Nothing.

Like so many of the decisions made, it may or may not make any sense.

You could argue the country outside Auckland got a bit of a bone too, if things go well, whatever that means, we can be in level 1 this time next week.

Not so good for Auckland: Auckland will be stuck here for over a week and a half more, which basically means we write off September.

The Prime Minister tried in her pulpit of truth announcement to explain that the economy was fine we are seeing a fabulous bounce back not dissimilar to what we saw in level 1 last time

I don’t know who’s telling her that, or whether like the SANZAR Rugby Championship line, she literally made it up. But I think come Wednesday with the government’s fiscal update we will see the truth, and come Thursday, the GDP number will indisputably show how crushing their attitude and inability to unlock the country economically has been.

The sadness of course is the virus numbers and scenario they deal with today is no different to what they dealt with a couple of weeks ago. A handful of cases, a bit of a tail, and a few things they clearly can’t control - this sadly is our lot.

They can get on top of virtually nothing: a handful of cases are crippling our economy, simple as that.

A number the PM gave gives us a clue as to how frightened they are: 25 per cent.

That’s a 25 per cent chance according to the ministry of health of the virus getting out of Auckland. Here’s another way of looking at it: a 75 per cent chance it won’t.

I take the second odds, and a lot of people take the second odds.

That’s why her claim that we have one of the most open economies in the world is simply not true

Having lost the elimination argument, she is now floundering, making stuff, up justifying the unjustifiable. We are writing off vast swathes of this year for increasingly no good reason.

Having said that, did you expect anything different? Of course not, and in that is the complete abdication of leadership and any sort of vision, beyond the one stop shop of panic, lock up, and hope no one notices the country collapsed.