We need a plan to open Fortress NZ

The Springbok tour was a tumultuous and divisive period in New Zealand’s history, as shown by today’s feature article talking to key players, 40 years on. But it was also, in many ways, a crossroads, and a coming of age for us. It challenged our perceptions of ourselves and our country. It also heralded the arrival of the winds of change.

When, a few years later, the Muldoon Government was swept out of power and along with it some of its extreme interventionist measures like wage, price and interest rate controls, we went from one of the world’s most closed economies, to one of the most open.

Muldoon’s so-called fortress economy was a house of cards, of course.

But that didn’t mean there wasn’t deep and lasting pain when the incoming Lange government tore it down.

While there may be disagreement about the speed of change, there isn’t much dispute that change was necessary.

We may be at a similarly critical crossroads now.

As the world starts to open up, New Zealand is both blessed, but perhaps also blinkered, by our phenomenal success keeping Covid out.

We have become fearful of the world beyond our borders and most of us would rather things stayed the way they are for the foreseeable future. We know this from the government’s own research, which shows most Kiwis are comfortable with keeping the borders closed for now, and largely content with the way life has panned out under Covid.

We can assume some of that fear of opening is driven by confusion over the vaccination rollout; when there are still tens of thousands of vulnerable people in group 3 who are yet to even get an appointment for their first dose, we all know the risks of opening up are too high.

And the snail’s pace of our vaccination rollout isn’t the only justifiable reason for caution; as the rest of the world marches into the unknowns of a new post-pandemic era, we have the luxury of learning from their mistakes.

But nor should we be squandering that time. New Zealand businesses, and workers, have soaked up a huge amount of change during the past 12 months. They have responded with grace and kindness, and by finding innovative and novel ways of working and doing business.

However, the Government has not responded in kind; we have seen few signs of fresh thinking about the challenges that we are going to face as an economy, or of a roadmap for navigating a world where Covid, and its variants, will be around for the foreseeable future.

It’s not just businesses and workers who need to know there is a plan, but younger generations wondering whether they can build any kind of future here.

Recently, former Prime Minister Helen Clark reportedly told a business group she did not expect life to be back to normal, as we knew it, in her lifetime. We all know how formidably fit and healthy Clark is. So drifting isn’t an option.

And nor is a return to the bad old days of Fortress New Zealand.

As the world starts to open up, New Zealand is both blessed, but perhaps also blinkered, by our phenomenal success keeping Covid out.