Kate MacNamara: What's the real cost of staying safe from Covid-19?

Auckland's deserted Southern Motorway during April's lockdown. Photo / Dean Purcell

As we say goodbye to 2020 and welcome in 2021, it's a good time to catch up on the very best of the Herald columnists we enjoyed reading over the last 12 months. From politics to sport, from business to entertainment and lifestyle, these are the voices and views our audience loved the most. Today it's the top three from Kate MacNamara

Why the extra lockdown wasn't worth it

This is a pandemic that has told a thousand cautionary tales. But in our great attention to risk and to its mitigating, we must make room for tales about an abundance of caution. They too are cautionary.

This one opens with a 4pm press conference hosted by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. It was April 20 and New Zealand had endured close to four weeks in one of the world's most stringent lockdowns to contain the spread of Covid-19 (and ultimately eliminate it within the broader community).

Hard lockdown, Ardern told the country, would run into overtime. Cabinet had decided to add five additional days before moving to the looser rules of level 3.

Ardern couched the decision in terms of great benefit at little cost.

As Kate MacNamara writes though, that was not the finding of an actual cost-benefit analysis.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern holds up information on Covid-19 alert levels during a press conference in March. Photo / Getty Images

Thorny issues for NZ's new Trade Minister

There's a new face poring over New Zealand's portfolio of trade prospects, but in many ways Damien O'Connor is an old hand.

New Zealand's new Minister for Trade will need that experience to secure any of the new markets the country's exporters are eyeing.

Exporters retain somewhat dim hopes that under the presidency of Joe Biden, the US will join Pacific countries, including New Zealand, in the CPTPP free-trade agreement. The US helped negotiate its predecessor, the TPP, under President Barack Obama, when Biden was Vice-President, but President Donald Trump subsequently withdrew from the deal before ratification.

Securing greater access to the United States market is just one of many issues, writes Kate MacNamara.

New Trade Minister Damien O'Connor. Photo / Dean Purcell

Why the wage subsidy was so broad and who should give it back

There are many words to describe New Zealand's autumn Covid-19 lockdown and the Government wage subsidy that helped much of the country through it: "windfall" isn't one of them. But that hasn't stopped the calls for cash-rich companies to give the money back.

Perhaps the Government could claw back the funds in a special tax. Or maybe the companies themselves, those that are posting profits in year-end results and paying dividends to shareholders, could take the high road and return it.

Companies weren't worming through a loophole in hanging on to the subsidy cash. It was offered from March, midwifed by panic and accompanied by an eerily effective halt to economic activity.

The extraordinarily broad subsidy mirrored the Government's response to the virus itself, writes Kate MacNamara.

The normally busy footpath on Broadway in Newmarket was empty of shoppers during Covid-19 restrictions. Photo / Greg Bowker