Dear Jacinda

Thank you for navigating us through this huge experience

you ask how can we jump start the economy - well right off the bat you could start building state houses - this would help get things started and fill a real gap a real need - these can also be state homes and rent to buy options so that the housing crisis can begin to get sorted - especially because we may have more unemployed and more homeless - the model is there its been used before - State advances to help people into their own homes - so much could be done now

What i am hearing and seeing is a real need by the people for some real change as we begin as a nation to remerge into the world from our confinement

Its really interesting to me that after decades of no welfare reform or increase despite the welfare working group and untold voices asking - this virus has enabled a $25 increase that no government has ever had the will to do till now - even though its a tiny amount in the bigger scheme of things it shows a will that wasn't there before - thank you

while i know many are stressing about their jobs - what i am hearing from quite a few is they want longer lock downs not because they actually do but because they have had time to re think all their rushing around going from here to there - they have enjoyed the time out from their busy lives - they needed the rest the time out

Many are also saying we can't go back to normal because well normal wasn't really working for any of us - the health of our own planet is being compromised - with species extinction environmental degradation at the highest levels ever and children deciding that school wasn't important if they couldn't have a healthy planet which is essential to their future

Climate change has been a huge subject - is it possible to flatten that curve to - these new words can fit many of our old normal - can we flatten the curve of capitalism can we really begin to implement a policy of kindness ?

it seems that this virus has been a powerful teacher - the homeless are now being housed in motels or wherever for their own safety - giving them a step up for time and a sense of safety they might never have had before - for many it has enabled them to realise the need to get healthy to work through their addictions

and even though the police and womens refuge have been rather busy for the most part people are handling this confinement and wanting to come out of it into a different world - the potential is present now

A world that is kinder - a world that we glimpsed within our confinement - a world where more people work from home - where meetings can be done via zoom or whatever - where children are playing out side like they used to generations ago - where the possibility of home schooling is more accepted

Our world our planet has been given an amazing opportunity to breath since this virus - and despite the loss of those who have returned home back to source - its been a huge teacher in positive ways - its to easy to focus on just the negative that have come from this - this unprecedented moment has been a huge awakener for so many

i would also like to say thank you to the police who could never ever have managed this confinement were we all not willing to stay in peacefully - we may have grumbled and like your health minister some might have just decided it didn't really apply to them ...but for the most part everyone else willingly if not begrudgingly accepted it and worked together - the police could never have coped if it had been different so thank you to them for their restraint and realness in many instances

It does show me how we really are, all in this together, so part of coming out into the world again i would love to see the compassion and kindness which has arisen continue ....

I would love to see those with vision and innovative ideas get funding for them to help kick start the economy

tourism which has been a huge income earner for the country has also been detrimental on many levels to the environment and to communities so its important to engage communities and help fund ideas that people come up with that are not so much the normal but alternative innovative green and novel

I am old enough to remember a time when there was little air traffic and hardly anyone came here i remember a time when we grew our own food - when people had home gardens - what about enabling paid initiatives for communities to make more community gardens - one of the big things that i missed was going to the garden centre to get veges for winter planting

I remember a time when we didn't have these big barn stores importing from china - we had our own manufacturing base - we can do that again and make our own stuff ...it will of course give us less of an income as a nation and as individuals, maybe, but then the country would be more self sufficient and more productive in real ways

MADE IN NZ remember

and i thank you for doubling the winter energy payment

but i also feel that we wouldn't need this if the govts of the day had not sold them off to private corporations which then made power very unaffordable
perhaps the country can buy them back and begin to be really self sufficent and self sustaining ....

Many of us don't want to go back to normal we really don't it wasn't working for the majority of us and now in this unprecedented moment you have an opportunity to change things - will you listen to the needs of the community, to innovative and inventive ideas, will you allocate some $ towards them?

no one hás asked the question what sort of virus can cause an unprecedented global lock down and economic free fall - I think we both know what caused this and its time for some real laws to prevent it in the future - privatisation with deregulation and ministers and officials who omit the truth to promote agendas the public have said loud and clear they do not want - this needs to be acknowledged - and heard - and their concerns looked into

great corruption and failings have been found by the people in many of the govt agencies - the people are becoming more aware more intelligent and more co-ordinated will you start hearing them - there are things out there that have more potential to harm our health than this virus - these things need discussing with the community - will you listen

we are mature people and are capable of organising and living our lives we need more autonomy to do that and less bureaucracy do you see that - this month has been an eye opener

change is needed and people want it now the old ways are just that - old ways - this new millennium requires new ways

you are well placed to implement these or help us implement them after all these are our communities our lives and our families future

This moment is an unprecedented moment for change to help us all create something different will you stand with us to make this possible ?

thank you for reading this far - i would like to leave you with the words of Charles Eisenstien who is speaking the words billions of us are thinking and feeling

....."......For years, normality has been stretched nearly to its breaking point, a rope pulled tighter and tighter, waiting for a nip of the black swan’s beak to snap it in two. Now that the rope has snapped, do we tie its ends back together, or shall we undo its dangling braids still further, to see what we might weave from them?

Covid-19 is showing us that when humanity is united in common cause, phenomenally rapid change is possible. None of the world’s problems are technically difficult to solve; they originate in human disagreement. In coherency, humanity’s creative powers are boundless. A few months ago, a proposal to halt commercial air travel would have seemed preposterous. Likewise for the radical changes we are making in our social behavior, economy, and the role of government in our lives. Covid demonstrates the power of our collective will when we agree on what is important. What else might we achieve, in coherency? What do we want to achieve, and what world shall we create? That is always the next question when anyone awakens to their power.

Covid-19 is like a rehab intervention that breaks the addictive hold of normality. To interrupt a habit is to make it visible; it is to turn it from a compulsion to a choice. When the crisis subsides, we might have occasion to ask whether we want to return to normal, or whether there might be something we’ve seen during this break in the routines that we want to bring into the future. We might ask, after so many have lost their jobs, whether all of them are the jobs the world most needs, and whether our labor and creativity would be better applied elsewhere. We might ask, having done without it for a while, whether we really need so much air travel, Disneyworld vacations, or trade shows. What parts of the economy will we want to restore, and what parts might we choose to let go of? And on a darker note, what among the things that are being taken away right now – civil liberties, freedom of assembly, sovereignty over our bodies, in-person gatherings, hugs, handshakes, and public life – might we need to exert intentional political and personal will to restore?

For most of my life, I have had the feeling that humanity was nearing a crossroads. Always, the crisis, the collapse, the break was imminent, just around the bend, but it didn’t come and it didn’t come. Imagine walking a road, and up ahead you see it, you see the crossroads. It’s just over the hill, around the bend, past the woods. Cresting the hill, you see you were mistaken, it was a mirage, it was farther away than you thought. You keep walking. Sometimes it comes into view, sometimes it disappears from sight and it seems like this road goes on forever. Maybe there isn’t a crossroads. No, there it is again! Always it is almost here. Never is it here.

Now, all of a sudden, we go around a bend and here it is. We stop, hardly able to believe that now it is happening, hardly able to believe, after years of confinement to the road of our predecessors, that now we finally have a choice. We are right to stop, stunned at the newness of our situation. Because of the hundred paths that radiate out in front of us, some lead in the same direction we’ve already been headed. Some lead to hell on earth. And some lead to a world more healed and more beautiful than we ever dared believe to be possible.

I write these words with the aim of standing here with you – bewildered, scared maybe, yet also with a sense of new possibility – at this point of diverging paths. Let us gaze down some of them and see where they lead....."......
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