March 23, 2020: The day that changed our lives. Video / Mark Mitchell / Chris Tarpey / AP
"Unprecedented economic and social disruption."
That was the inevitable consequence of level 4, as outlined by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern in her lockdown announcement from the Beehive Theatrette a year ago today.
Kiwis were told to stay home in order to starve Covid-19 of anyone to infect. The alternative, Ardernsaid, was a possible loss of thousands of lives.
Since then, the number of overseas arrivals has all but dried up.
Before the borders closed to non-Kiwis, more than half a million people flew to New Zealand in February 2020, while almost three-quarters of a million people arrived from overseas during the month before that.
This year, no more than 13,000 people arrived in NZ in either month.
Since March 20, 2020, when the borders closed, until March 9 this year, only 35,612 non-Kiwis have entered New Zealand.
Over that same period, 123,934 NZ citizens or permanent residents came home from overseas, according to Immigration NZ.
The empty Wellington Airport departures entrance during the level 4 lockdown. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Border restrictions have left many in the tourism industry struggling, and last week Tourism Minister Stuart Nash flagged more Government assistance, while calling for the industry to become more sustainable and resilient.
Meanwhile, unemployment was predicted by some economists to rise above 10 per cent, and while it is currently low at 4.9 per cent (for the December quarter 2020), GDP has gone south, falling 2.9 per cent for the year to December.
Predictions of falling house prices from the Reserve Bank, government officials and a number of economists failed to materialise.
The median house price rose by 21.5 per cent in the year to February 2021, a 50 per cent increase compared with the 14.3 per cent rise in the year to February 2020.
The past year has seen predictions of falling house prices fall flat. They have instead soared. Photo / Michael Craig
That has happened on the back of plummeting interest rates and the Reserve Bank's promise to inject more than $100 billion of liquidity into the market, which also contributed to a 36 per cent increase for the NZX-50 in the past year.
The Government is releasing details of how to address the housing crisis this morning.
The most telling statistic is the number of Covid-19 cases, which shows the success of the lockdown. On March 22 last year, a day before the move to lockdown was announced, there were 44 new confirmed or probable cases and a total of 132 cases in New Zealand.
The case curve continued to move upwards and then flatten until the first week of April, which Ardern had pinpointed as when the impact of the lockdown might come through in the case data.
