Kate Hawkesby: Ditching the lights and masks will be a good political move for this Government

I think the only feasible thing that can happen now with the mask mandate is that they get rid of it.

When even the Government’s favourite boffin (Michael Baker) says masks aren’t that essential anymore, you’ve got to wonder whose left supporting them. Add to that the fact they’re even up for discussion – the fact they’re now being talked about by the PM herself as something we may be able to review – and you can kiss the mandate goodbye. Because what happens when people in high places start questioning stuff, is that the general public get a whiff of it, and just go ahead and ditch them anyway.

Where we live rurally, masks have been a distant memory for a while now. Most of our local shops don’t bother, it’s rare to see people in them, I’m not sure if other rural parts of the country are the same but I think it’s largely a city thing these days. Wellington I hear, (unsurprisingly) is still hot on masks, Auckland is hit and miss, some parts of the city still do them, others don’t bother. You certainly don’t get told off anymore if you wander into a shop without one. In fact more often than not if it’s an owner operated store the staff aren’t wearing them either, it’s just the chains and franchises like supermarkets who’re still having to wear them. 

But I was in a supermarket yesterday and the majority of shoppers were not in masks. And no one told them to put one on either. Schools are over it, both the teachers and the kids. The students are sick of wearing them, the teachers are sick of enforcing the wearing of them. I’m glad we’ve finally reached this point where losing the masks has gained momentum. I think it’s a lot to do with the borders opening and so many Kiwis getting out to travel and seeing for themselves that the rest of the world has moved on from Covid. 

Travelling around without a mask and then coming back to New Zealand and suddenly everyone has them on, feels weird, and more people are now realising that. That’s before we get to the tourists who arrive and go – what the heck's happening here. It makes us look backward and what we now know is that it is a factor in putting international visitors off. In fact our whole orange light is. I argued a couple of weeks ago that we needed to go to a green light and someone texted me and rightly said – why a green light? There should be no light system at all. And that’s true. It’s no longer relevant. And it feels like the Government’s finally getting to that point too. 

That coupled with the fact that all their polling will be telling them how over it people are. I think we, like Australia, will ditch the masks apart from places like maybe hospitals or rest homes and other high risk areas. But the decision won’t be because of health reasons or because Michael Baker said so, it’ll be because it’s politically advantageous to the Government to do so. 

When you’ve had a few weeks like this government's having, and momentum is slipping away from you at the pace it currently is, ditching masks and traffic lights suddenly becomes very politically attractive. The country needs some much needed positivity.. and a boost in our freedoms may be just the tonic needed for the Government to claw back a wee bit of support.

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