Comments by "Laurence Fraser" (@laurencefraser) on "Ardern Says New Zealand Will Begin Exiting Lockdown This Week" video.

  1. ... you realise that, legally speaking, there's an argument being made that the (non elected! He's normally answerable to a minister) director of public health was supposed to take over pretty much Entirely (or at least, that's the way it's presented) once a national (pandemic type) emergency was declared, not leave cabinet (which one can't be a member of without being elected to parliament) making most of the decisions, and that the (center right) opposition party is using the fact that he Didn't as a reason to attack the government's handling of this? Because apparently giving an un-elected specialist (even one whose very good at his job and Probably wouldn't abuse it) more power than the Prime Minister usually has, much of it over things with large effects on things well outside his area of expertise, is clearly a great idea that can only end well. Also, by law (as written, and I won't argue it's written well, as it is quite clear that a situation which warrented a response that covered the whole country at once wasn't considered as a possibility by the people who wrote it), he had the power to do Exactly this... Or even enact stricter measures. (Actually, as written, there's a case to be made that almost any random beurocrat in his department could technically have ordered the same, once the emergency and pandemic were officially declared. Difference is, no one would have gone along with it outside the local area without sending it up the chain first (and they might get replaced, too) if they tried. I did say that particular bit of law had problems.) You may notice, for example, that we were never under martial law. Regardless, all signs indicate that it worked/is working so far, and that every effort is being made to mitigate the downsides. (Remember, New Zealand has Extensive (and strict) privacy laws. It's most of the reason there's no such thing as an equivalent of a social security number or national ID.)
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  2.  @marvelfancyrus2847  Army? Yes. A very good one, actually. The Navy's pretty good too, though simply due to matters of scale it's never going to be a war winning asset against an enemy that's actually capable of deploying their own warships. It mostly does various flavours of 'law enforcement with big guns', and army transport/support work as a result. Also emergency response stuff (transport ships and landing craft/helicopters are pretty useful in an island nation when an earthquake knocks out the road and rail connections to a town, for example). The Air Force is basically a joke as a combat element though. In practice it's a (very effective) logistics unit.
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