1
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:02,160
Speaker 1: I'm very glad the COVID report has been released. I mean,

2
00:00:02,200 --> 00:00:03,920
Speaker 1: why wouldn't it be It's ours? But for a while

3
00:00:03,960 --> 00:00:05,840
Speaker 1: there it looked like it might not be. We lived

4
00:00:05,880 --> 00:00:08,480
Speaker 1: and we are living through. It says a lot of

5
00:00:08,520 --> 00:00:11,360
Speaker 1: stuff you thought it would say. Compulsory mandates were one

6
00:00:11,400 --> 00:00:14,520
Speaker 1: of the most controversial measures. No kidding, the country was

7
00:00:14,560 --> 00:00:17,920
Speaker 1: not prepared for border closures or MiQ. Really they run

8
00:00:17,960 --> 00:00:20,079
Speaker 1: the line that we had fewer infections and therefore fewer

9
00:00:20,120 --> 00:00:23,160
Speaker 1: deaths than other countries. I know Chris Hipkins yesterday was

10
00:00:23,160 --> 00:00:25,840
Speaker 1: still rejecting the idea that vaccine mandates were a mistake,

11
00:00:25,880 --> 00:00:28,080
Speaker 1: and in that is the real problem. Of course, in

12
00:00:28,080 --> 00:00:31,960
Speaker 1: competent government leads to incompetent response. Arrogance leads to an

13
00:00:32,000 --> 00:00:35,199
Speaker 1: inability to do things differently, which I think, in part anyway,

14
00:00:35,800 --> 00:00:38,080
Speaker 1: is the point of the report. Give us a blueprint

15
00:00:38,240 --> 00:00:42,000
Speaker 1: for next time. The blueprint says mandates were a mistake. Hepkins,

16
00:00:42,000 --> 00:00:44,040
Speaker 1: who could be PM as soon as twenty twenty six,

17
00:00:44,360 --> 00:00:46,880
Speaker 1: seems to think he's more right than the inquiry. So

18
00:00:47,080 --> 00:00:49,159
Speaker 1: are we any further ahead at all? You need to

19
00:00:49,280 --> 00:00:52,360
Speaker 1: also factor phase one. Despite what Tony Blakely told us

20
00:00:52,360 --> 00:00:54,480
Speaker 1: on the programme yesterday is not the full picture. It's

21
00:00:54,520 --> 00:00:57,720
Speaker 1: a comprehensive picture within the guidelines he was given. Now

22
00:00:57,760 --> 00:01:01,200
Speaker 1: the guidelines he wasn't given. Why we're having Phase two.

23
00:01:01,600 --> 00:01:03,160
Speaker 1: I still argue it would have been better if we

24
00:01:03,200 --> 00:01:06,199
Speaker 1: had taken the British route, the adversarial approach, put Adern

25
00:01:06,240 --> 00:01:09,520
Speaker 1: and Hipkins and Bloomfield on the stand, asked some penetrating questions.

26
00:01:09,720 --> 00:01:12,000
Speaker 1: Doesn't have to be a court to willit material. This

27
00:01:12,080 --> 00:01:14,720
Speaker 1: report hasn't found. The really important part for me, though,

28
00:01:15,480 --> 00:01:18,440
Speaker 1: is not what we did then, but what the outworking

29
00:01:18,560 --> 00:01:21,679
Speaker 1: of what we did then produced, what we have now,

30
00:01:21,880 --> 00:01:25,319
Speaker 1: what we're still living through and why. Because what we

31
00:01:25,360 --> 00:01:27,959
Speaker 1: have now so badly damaged, we must learn not to

32
00:01:28,120 --> 00:01:30,319
Speaker 1: do what we did last time. Are the kids not

33
00:01:30,360 --> 00:01:32,880
Speaker 1: at school, the behavior of so many that's been out

34
00:01:32,880 --> 00:01:35,440
Speaker 1: of control, the moral fatigue, the social decline, the malays

35
00:01:35,720 --> 00:01:38,960
Speaker 1: that is not measured totally in stats, but the overarching

36
00:01:39,040 --> 00:01:41,920
Speaker 1: feeling this country is a shadow of what it once was.

37
00:01:41,959 --> 00:01:44,399
Speaker 1: That's the real story of COVID. But I still maintain

38
00:01:44,520 --> 00:01:46,520
Speaker 1: right all the reports you want inquire until you blue

39
00:01:46,520 --> 00:01:49,000
Speaker 1: in the face. A pandemic is luck. If the government

40
00:01:49,040 --> 00:01:51,440
Speaker 1: that is in on the day the pandemic arrives. As good,

41
00:01:51,880 --> 00:01:55,320
Speaker 1: you'll be okay. If it's labour twenty seventeen through twenty

42
00:01:55,360 --> 00:01:58,720
Speaker 1: twenty three, well you don't need the report. Just look

43
00:01:58,720 --> 00:02:02,040
Speaker 1: at us more or from the Mic Asking Breakfast. Listen

44
00:02:02,160 --> 00:02:05,120
Speaker 1: live to News Talk Set B from six am weekdays,

45
00:02:05,320 --> 00:02:07,400
Speaker 1: or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio