Authoritarianism in New Zealand’s Covid-19 Response
The lecture and tutorial discussion yesterday about how traditionally democratic governments often take on more authoritarian traits during national emergencies in order to effectively manage the situation (from their perspective, that is). The example discussed was Covid-19 in New Zealand and how the government took highly controversial authoritarian measures to control no only the speak of covid, but the information the public was receiving on the topic.
An example of information repression in these circumstances was the Labour Governments ‘worst case scenario plan’, which for the purposes of this blog post have been unable to find online further proving the point that the New Zealand Government not only suppressed mis-information and legitimate minority views during the Covid-19 pandemic, but also repressed the most controversial of their policy documents, which vested extensive powers unilaterally in the office of the Prime Minister, granted the executive powers to seize private businesses for the purposes of producing adequate PPE, and placing the wider populous under a system of food distribution. The authoritarian, long term implications of the implementation of a policy like this last-ditch effort plan are significant, with concern around how and if the government would have returned to a pre-covid democratic framework post-pandemic. The quick repression of this document, and other similar information once the pandemic started to become lower-risk is Interesting as it points to an understanding of the negative implications for the Labour party politically for keeping this information in the public sphere.
The repression of information both during and after the primary waves of the Covid-19 pandemic in New Zealand also aided in the efficacy of other authoritarian factors. Authoritarian submission and conventionalism are both named as factors relevant to the New Zealand context. Catchy phrases like ‘go hard, go early’, and ‘the team of 5 million’ played on repeat encouraged the perception of New Zealand citizens as a homogenised group where everyone was working towards the realisation of an ideological goal, a covid free country. This plays into the idea that when something is seen as conventional, and everyone is doing it, it is more difficult to establish who is and is not genuine, therefore opposition is less likely. Rather it has only been on the tail-end of the pandemic that we saw greater opposition to the governments decisions and greater criticism through mechanisms like judicial review.
Resources:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9295988/
https://www.minterellison.co.nz/insights/judicial-review-in-the-spotlight
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