Week one of the Government‘s lockdown has been a grim one for business. Air New Zealand is a shadow of its former koru, Bauer Media shut its doors, and the forestry industry is in dire straits.

Most businesses are feeling the pain, with no end in sight. Even while the Government focuses on the health aspects of the global pandemic that is Covid-19, part of its enormous resources needs to be looking at economic recovery.

In a democracy, you can‘t lock up a population and keep them terrified with mind-blowing numbers of fatalities for too long, without some serious questions being asked. Words like ‘unprecedented‘, ‘we‘re all in this together‘ and ‘the new normal‘ are carefully crafted to maintain control. But in the lounge rooms around New Zealand, people are losing their livelihoods and there won‘t be enough money to maintain that for too long.

The solution that has been mooted of a Depression-era road building gang under yet another government department‘s control cannot be the only way out of this.

While we desperately need better roads, there have to be viable businesses using them and people who have jobs to go to. And this project is being headed by Transport Minister Phil Twyford who previously said, “there has been an over-investment in roads and motorways for decades in this country”.

Everyone is scrutinising the behaviour of our leaders, so when the Health Minister flouts the lockdown rules and the Transport Minister has a 360-degree change of heart, it feels like the recovery strategy might be a bit shaky.

Talk of an ‘institute‘ to train workers for the road building smacks of creating an even more bloated public service – there are already training programmes for this and what about the Reform of Vocational Education? The only people assured of jobs through this are public servants.

Trucking essential goods is an essential industry, but trucking companies are doing this at a loss because they cannot operate their businesses efficiently.

Supply chain links vital to getting essential supplies where they need to go must be allowed to work if trucking companies are to survive long enough to meet the demands of the Covid-19 response.

The Government needs to listen to business people and understand how business works. It is the private sector that will rebuild the economy, not the public sector. The public sector spending on infrastructure won‘t dig us out of a hole. New Zealand needs to generate wealth, as the Government will need someone to tax. They have to keep people in business and that‘s not just big business either. Small and medium businesses are the backbone of our country. The Government can‘t afford to forget that.

The decision to classify freight into two arbitrary groups – essential and non-essential – shows a lack of understanding of what is an integrated global system.

You take one link out, and the whole chain starts grinding to a halt.

As an importing and exporting nation, goods have to be able to come in and go out.

But at the moment, goods deemed ‘non-essential‘, such as logs and processed wood products, are not allowed to go out. That means other countries that don‘t have these restrictions are taking our market share and we may never get it back. The longer this goes on the more people in the New Zealand provinces where forestry is a key employer will be out of work and the more businesses will fold.

The imperative to plant one billion trees is out the window and down the road.

We can‘t export without importing. We must be able to move goods. Workers are already working in the ‘new normal‘ conditions of social distancing and strict hygiene, so this is doable under alert level 4.

We know that it is vital that items deemed essential move quickly through the supply chain, and priority should be given to them. However, for the supply chain to actually function now, and during our nation‘s economic recovery, the classification to control its movement should be scrapped.

By Road Transport Forum CEO Nick Leggett