It had been a while since I'd watched a Post-Cabinet press conference, but there I was yesterday, watching the current Prime Minister end our Covid response.

The seven days isolation and the masks that we are supposed to have been following, are now gone.

The irony being, until a week or so back I had no idea they were still in place because I suspect, like most people, I haven't thought about Covid for ages.

I haven't thought about it because I have personally disliked most of what this country has done and was more than happy to put it behind me.

The sadness of yesterday's post-Cab was Chris Hipkins, the Minister of Covid and the man in charge of MIQ was busy thanking people for all their efforts and busy spruiking how wonderfully we had done and how many lives we had saved.

How well we had done is open to a tremendous amount of interpretation. As for saving lives, that’s guess work. You can't put a number on things that never happened.

The most important part of the whole Covid approach is not what happened in a condensed, intense period of time, but rather what the cost of that attitude was and is.

What is the price we paid and are still paying?

Is it the people who can't access health care because too much of it is a complete mess?

Is it the people who died, or have had their lives curtailed? Are their stories offsetting the so-called lives we saved?

The MIQ as a seed of an idea wasn’t the end of the world but the execution was exactly what this Government will be remembered for; a complete balls-up, highly political and dangerous in its largesse. The Wiggles were let in but relatives of the dying were locked out.

"Be kind". If I never hear that again it won't be too soon. Remember the teddy bears in windows? It was pathetic.

Neighbours dobbing neighbours in for standing too close together in fresh air on the street - it smacked of a control regime and that is the worst of this all.

Because that’s exactly what it was . This Government used fear to control us. It was an overbearing arrogance, mixed with incompetence, with rules that were bewilderingly stupid and often pointless.

All the while they were telling us how brilliant they were and how lucky we were. As I have said all along, each country and its Covid experience was as a result of sheer luck and who was running the place when the virus arrived. Some got relatively lucky. We didn’t.

The reason this Government is about to lose the election is because, put simply, they don't have a clue.

Not now and, tragically, not even close during Covid, when it really would have made a world of difference.