Crisis Management
Another crisis, how many had that been now? It was the anniversary of the first major one, the 15th of March.
She remembered that day, it had started with lots of kids bunking school to protest the lack of action on the climate crisis. She smiled thinking that would’ve been her as a student. Ah the optimism of youth, so many thousands marching, who knew it wouldn’t even make the news that night.
She felt a bit sick thinking of all that coverage a few hundred misinformed souls had received protesting outside of parliament recently over things that would be resolved in coming months. What a contrast to the great mass of youth that day wanting to prevent the earth from becoming uninhabitable for human kind who understandably were not even given a mention in the media.
Then she thought of the reports coming through to her of the terrible events that day. It was so confusing at first, there was someone with a gun and some people had been shot. Then more updates on the number of casualties, like nothing Aotearoa had seen before. Her heart had sunk with every update as it became clear the scale of the extremist hatred inflicted on her people.
The people there had to know that we loved them, that our hearts were broken by this, that we were determined that evilness would not win she remembered. She remembered hugging a woman whose life had been ripped apart, feeling her sob silently, but also the look in her eyes after they had embraced.
She had immediately banned the worst military weapons that were designed for only one purpose - rapidly killing human beings. Maybe one day that would help avert another crisis. Maybe.
Later that year had come more reports, Whakaari had erupted with tourists on the island. More casualties, more stories of bravery, and nothing she could do other than be there for her people.
Yesterday it was two years since she had announced tough border measures to try and stop an awful virus that was causing havoc around the world from spreading in New Zealand.
Had she always gotten everything right dealing with the Covid crisis? Well hindsight is always well and good but she had done everything she could to prioritize the lives of Kiwis over other considerations. It had taken its toll on the team, both her own and the wider team but she couldn’t think of anything she would do substantially differently.
She worried how the country would fare under the leadership of Christopher Luxon in the event of a future crisis. Similar centre-right leaders like Boris Johnson had shown what that could look like.
So many crises, there was always a crisis, and now there was a cost of living crisis.
What is happening in Ukraine is certainly a crisis she thought, she could picture the pregnant woman and her baby killed when the Russians had bombed the maternity hospital yesterday, the place where she was going to give birth.
They would announce 4,000 extra visa places today for the relatives of Ukrainians born in NZ. Alongside the extra money for humanitarian aid they were also announcing it was something, but Jesus what a mess
But the resulting impact price of petrol? Yes it was really impacting the household budgets, as were food prices, but a crisis? It just seemed wrong to call it that.
The media had raged about it, curiously using the same catch phrases and accusations as the opposition. “Look at the cost of petrol, this is a crisis! Why won’t the Prime Minister do something? She is out of touch.”
So yesterday she announced a major drop in the tax on fuel and on road user charges. The media, and the opposition, responded – “look at the cost of living, why won’t the PM call it a crisis? She is out of touch.”
The National leader, and man who opposes the minimum wage increases, was being interviewed on TV. He was saying the tax decrease did not address the wider cost of living. Everyone knows, he said, that only the National Party’s cuts in taxes can help. She yawned and turned it off.
Then she thought again of the kids marching for progress on climate change that day three years ago. How delighted they would have been at the announcement yesterday that the government was dropping public transport fares by half.
Hmm might have to make that one permanent, surely the answer to high petrol costs was to get people out of cars.
She wondered how many people would take advantage of the rebate on electric vehicles with the uncertainty about the future of petrol prices. This tax cut would help people in the short term but there had to be a long term solution to avoid susceptibility to future international crises, financial and environmental.
She hadn’t anticipated quite the number of crises that would occur during her time as leader, heck could anyone? She had imagined she might be working on the big transformational stuff she had thought about when she was the age of those going to march that day three years ago.
Child poverty, inequality, housing affordability, the reasons she was there. So many things she wanted to focus on rather than going from one once-in-a-Prime-Minister-ship crisis to another.
Having the media and the opposition wailing that everything was a crisis didn’t help, couldn’t they have the attention span to think about the big hard problems and some constructive solutions to them for once? “Yeah right” she said under her breath.
She wondered what today’s crisis would be, better find out she thought and looked up Chris Bishop’s tweets for the disaster du jour.