Political vivisection

An inquiry into the government’s response to the pandemic would be instructive, but it’s a matter of timing.

- JANE CLIFTON

The trouble with political post-mor-tems is that they’re never done on corpses. Those being dissected are very much alive.

The real purpose of any politician who advocates a formal review of how important issues and crises have been handled is to inflict on those who did the handling as slow and painful a public torturing as possible.

Still, it’s hard to contradict National’s call for inquiries into both the government’s pandemic stewardship and the Reserve Bank’s fielding of the downstream monetary challenges. The pandemic was not only an unprecedented experience in modern times, but one which, epidemiologists assure us, we’d better get used to having more of. As for inflation, it’s such a destructive global affliction, the more expert analysis of what’s working to conquer it and what isn’t, the better.

Trouble is, we can no longer trust ourselves to treat such inquiries as important learning tools. Rather, they’ve become shrill blamefests. We can’t just blame combative politicians for this. The media rewards conflict with more airtime and column space than it does iterations of common sense and best practice. Social media provides a ceaseless clamour from members of the public for heads to roll, in all conflicting directions.

The government has accepted the need for a formal public inquiry into the pandemic response, but remains understandably evasive about when it should happen. It fairly argues that with new Covid variants raging and other winter ailments made extra severe as a result of lockdown-depressed immunity levels, this isn’t the time. Most experts are still too busy with the crisis to review and reflect.