COMMENT:

Here we are. On the edge of the end of the beginning in the fight against Covid.

Here's my call. Tomorrow Stage 3 of our campaign to burn off the virus will end and New Zealand will return to a domestic normal amongst a global economy still many weeks away from catching up.

I say this because it was laid out clearly at the last change of Levels and yet so many forgot what was said.

One of the frustrations of my job is that I'm either on all the time or else I'm not and this past week I have not been on the radio but I've been shouting at it because of the constant misrepresentations of our position.

In the middle of May we were given a week's notice that we would transition to Level 2. Which we did and with it came the Prime Minister's promise that we would review the situation on June 8 and we would be at Level 1 NO LATER than June 22.

I have lost count of the number of people who have written or spoken that we're in Level until AT LEAST June 22. Fake news I'd shout at the radio, June 8 was always the first deadline.

At the time we heard that Ashley Bloomfield prefers 2 cycles of incubation before a move between levels. That’s 28 days or 4 weeks or June 22.

What I took from that is that Uncle Ashley wanted June 22 but the Cabinet wanted to see if they could move earlier, because they're not totally stupid and they knew that the more we got zero results, and the more the world said look at the kiwis, then the more we wanted to get on with things.

Well here we are on the eve of June 8 with 15 days straight of no Covid and a week ago a member of the Cabinet started saying let's go and that member is Winston Peters. Who is perfectly aware of the Cabinet musings and voting. He's also aware that it's election year and that he needs to differentiate his party from Labour. And Labour knows he needs to do that. So he's gone for it. I believe with a tacit permission.

Because this is politics. The government wants to get it right and they don't want to get it wrong. The health wonks want the longest isolation they can get for the good of our health. The political and business world wants to get back to some sort of normal as soon as possible.

The compromise to Ashley was saying we'll have a crack at June 22. The political reality is that we all believe we've made it to a pivot point and tomorrow we’ll throw the switch.

One of the phrases that has been said time and time again is that Labour is playing us like a fiddle. Yes they are. But so is Winston. They are playing a pragmatic game. The government knows how and when to give us the treats before Ashley does.

But they're not getting it all right.

The delay to the commercial rent deal was untenable.  Winston held it up because of his belief in the sanctity of contract but also because he didn’t want bigger business riding in on its coat tails.

He got it wrong.  What he did was leave small business owners in limbo through May.

But in that limbo most landlords and tenants just sorted it out themselves.  80 per cent of leases were renegotiated down. And that’s not all bad.

While many landlords would have liked the government to give free cash to their tenants to pay the rent, they know they will have had to pay it back eventually through their taxes. Instead we didn’t splash the cash and an answer was found without government intervention. Isn’t that a good thing?

Business keeps talking about wanting a private sector led recovery.  Well this is what it looks like.