Passionate, divided response to assessment of PM's legacy unexpected

Otago Daily Times

24-07-2025

Sir Ian Taylor reflects on his recent open letters.
If I had any doubts of the power of the brand that has been built around Dame Jacinda Ardern, they were well and truly put to rest following my open letter that featured in a number of publications recently.
This was not a letter I had written lightly. Since Dame Jacinda had made the call to leave New Zealand to take up residency in the United States, I hadn't written a single article about her, or the choices she had made. My focus remained here, in the country she left behind.
But then Dame Jacinda returned to the country on part of a world tour promoting her memoir. Her visit coincided with the Covid Royal Commission I had presented to a couple of weeks earlier.
I had an opinion on the timing of that promotional tour and took the opportunity to share it.
Of course, I expected feedback. What I had not expected was that the open letter would become one of the most read and commented I have ever written. The responses were passionate, divided and many were simply angry that I had questioned a legacy that I believed was built off the back of the sacrifices that had been made by an entire nation, rather than a single person. A person who had the undeniable skills to define the message of who we were as a nation, but it was our message none the less.
The response on social media was also extraordinary, the second-largest I've ever received.
Fittingly, the most viewed post remains one from the pandemic, acknowledging the selfless decision of three of our team members made five hours prior to the second lockdown. When government officials ruled their work in our Dunedin-based studio as "non-essential", barring them from travelling from their place of residence to our deserted office, they made a call. They shifted their place of residence — from their flat to our office.
That act, technically compliant, entirely safe, and essential to our ongoing business, exposed the flaws in what we were being told daily from "the single source of truth". To save lives we had to put people's livelihoods on hold.
And then, something special happened. Dunedin residents heard what they were doing and began dropping meals at the door. Others took their laundry. He waka eke noa, we truly were all in this together and kindness flowed naturally from ordinary people.
But what struck me most was that more than a year had passed since the first lockdown and this second "short, sharp" version that eventually extended to more than 100 days in Auckland, costing the country more than $8billion and upending countless lives.
This was when I started my open letters to the prime minister. They weren't aggressive, they weren't "whingy," they were a genuine offer of help.
While the response from government was almost non-existent, an organisation called The Cross Sector Border Group contacted me. This group was made up of business leaders, health specialists, scientists, hotel operators, logistical experts, tourism organisations and health technology companies.
It was this group that backed my "151 Off The Bench Self-isolation Trial". A trial designed to explore how we might get people in and out of New Zealand safely, using technologies that had been overlooked by the government.
The Royal Commission has all the information and evidence from that trial, and it will be up to them to decide what, if anything, can be learned from it.
As an island nation, at the bottom of the world, we had the advantage of closing our borders early in the pandemic, a move that drew global praise and made our prime minister a celebrated figure of calm kindness. What's overlooked is that other Pacific Island nations did even better. Samoa kept Covid out for 21 months after New Zealand's first case, Tonga for 20, and the Cook Islands for almost two years.
Some may argue we can't compare New Zealand to smaller Pacific nations, but we're a small nation too. Just 5million people, no land borders. We had everything working in our favour: geography, control and time.
Those advantages remain, and they are our greatest assets in any future crisis. We should be looking at how we use them to do what New Zealanders do the best. Think outside the box.
After the first lockdown we sat on our laurels. Let's not do that again.
Empathy should never be a substitute for strategy. While Dame Jacinda earned praise abroad, at home we were left waiting. Waiting between lockdowns, between waves, between decisions.
There was no real plan, so when Covid returned, it found a country exhausted, divided and unprepared. That division wasn't caused by the virus; it was caused by a vacuum. It's a division that clearly remains today, long after Dame Jacinda has left the building.
If we are going to come together as a country with a strategy for a potential new pandemic, then we must be willing to talk honestly about what went wrong, why it went wrong and how we ensure that next time there is more than a "single source of truth" at the table.
If the past few years taught us anything, it's that pandemic planning is too important to be left to politics. This isn't about left or right. It's about the right way of doing things.
We need a plan shaped by expertise, not headlines. Science, health, logistics and business all working together. The Cross Sector Border Group showed what's possible when politics steps back and people step up.
Maybe that's where we start. All rowing the waka in the same direction.
Let's do this. Now.
■Sir Ian Taylor is founder and managing director of Animation Research Ltd.