Here is another reason the Government has lost so much support and why they are now trailing National. This weekend's poll on tourists.  

Do you want tourists? Do you want the borders open? Simple question. Answer 75 per cent say yes.

Why? Because Covid is over. Over in the sense we have done all we can do. We are jabbed, we are mainly boosted, and we have hundreds of thousands of active cases and a comparative handful are in hospital.

We are getting on with our lives and it has become transparently obvious that the Government's view on Covid has fundamentally not changed since Alpha and Delta. They are still pedalling fear and they're still rolling out the ol' "just in case."

Meantime, the number who are paralysed by the message is dropping away daily.

What a joy it was Saturday to go out to lunch in a small town down the road from our place. It was a little country town and it was jammed. You couldn’t get a park, restaurants were full, cafes overflowing, people walking, shopping, and out and about.

Rural New Zealand is ahead of metropolitan New Zealand. Too much of the city is still scared and isolating.

But what most of us have worked out is that Omicron isn't the big, bad bogeyman the Government made it out to be.

I watched the Crusaders on Saturday. No one is there, why not? Super Rugby is desperate for the money to pay the bills and what pays the bills are the crowds. You don't have to fill the place, but look at the stands. Are you honestly telling me you couldn't fit hundreds more in every weekend and still have space for Africa?

Are you honestly telling me a double-jabbed tourist who tested negative can't arrive here without swamping the hospitals? Come on.

We have worked it out. The polls tell the story, both the tourism poll with its common sense and last week's political poll with its reality check for Labour.

When the people are ahead of the Government, the Government is either asleep, incompetent, out of touch, or in this case, possibly all three.