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SocietyMay 14, 2020

Emily Writes: The industries set to go off post-lockdown

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In celebration of both level two day and budget day, Emily Writes puts on her business reporting hat to take a look at the winners (and one potential loser) of the post-lockdown economy.

As New Zealand begins to reopen from today, a number of industries and businesses will rise. In the past seven weeks many of us have faced some realisations about what our needs are. And just as so many of us forgot McDonalds only tastes nice when it’s 2am and you’re shitfaced from Ivy big pours, what we invest our time and money into is going to change.

Here are my predictions for what industries are going to really win big from lockdown and why.

Rachel Hunter in her TV show Tour of Beauty

The Beauty Industry

Every day I’ve had to do at least one Zoom call. And every day I look at myself in a screen and I realise that I am very ugly. How many of us are only just realising that our faces are just a bit fucked? The beauty industry is in for a bonanza. After weeks of staring at my face I’ve come to accept that getting my eyebrows tinted and plucked is not optional. I am approaching “would scare small children on the street” territory. Getting regular haircuts is crucial if I want to not look like Mick Foley. When I asked a friend about this, to ensure it wasn’t just me, she said: “Yeah, it’s savage. I had no idea I was this ugly.”

Compound that with “Just Woke Up Like This” selfies from beautiful people on Instagram who can somehow bake bread as well as be hot, and the nation’s self esteem is at an all time low.

According to health and beauty booking platform Timely, New Zealanders have pre-booked over 60,000 beauty appointments already for this week. Those beauty therapists are going to have a lot to deal with. A friend tried home microdermabrasion and her face is now breaking out in ingrown hairs. She looks like a shaved wookie.

The receptionist at Spring Spa Wellington said she had hundreds of calls to work through. I tried to call her back but couldn’t get through and I’m not going to try all day because I’m not that dedicated to journalism.

Photo: Getty

The Dog Walking industry

Our dogs are now used to being walked 16 times a day. Do you think they’re just going to give that up when you go to work? They’re dogs man. This is going to be devastating for them. Nobody will be around to tell them they’ve done a good stretch. Or to ensure they know they’re the goodest dog in the world. How will they cope? If you think about it, this is their lockdown. This is their sudden isolation. Now they’re just home alone with the cat. And you know the cat is an asshole. Stop trying to pretend it isn’t. Dog walkers will need to step in or else the nation’s dogs will be really suffering. I spoke to one dog on the condition of anonymity, here’s what he told me. “I’m worried. I am. I have grown used to being told every day that I’m the goodest. And you know, I was starting to believe it. My therapist says I’ve been making great progress and I don’t want to be OH SHIT SHIT SHIT A BALL FUCK I LOVE BALLS.”

The Chiropractic Industry

Honestly, the chiropractic industry is going to go off. Half the country has RSI from having daily sad wanks, others have had children climbing all over them, others still are working at the kitchen table and now they have serious hunches. If the extent of your lockdown exercise has been crying and reaching for the TV remote you’re going to need someone to fix your back. Just don’t moan with pleasure the first time they touch you.

The Vasectomy Industry

Look, I’m not saying that there are probably parents out there who looked up on Youtube “how to do a vasectomy at home” but I’m just saying there probably are. The other day I almost cried with joy in the supermarket. I explained to the lady staring at me crying in the cereal aisle that I was finally having a moment where I didn’t have a child who smells like piss hanging off me and asking for Bubble Guppies, and Natasha Bedingfield singing ‘These Words’ was a thousand times better than hearing my oldest talk incessantly about Minecraft. She told me I should count my blessings. God rest her soul.

The only people who think having children at home with you while you work full time for eight weeks is a blessing are people who don’t have children at home while they work full time for eight weeks. Baby boom? Please. I am quite positive there are people thinking about whether they can drop their kids off to school on Sunday.

Free smallpox vaccination, as illustrated in a 1905 edition of Petit Journal, France. Photo by DeAgostini/Getty Image

The Anti-Vaxx Industry

Covid-19 really forced anti-vaxxers to regroup and come up with a new approach. They’d always believed that the majority of people would be like them and not mind if other people get a preventable disease, as long as their families were safe. Not so – as the country shut down so New Zealanders could protect each other, the anti-vaxxers were hit with a shocking truth. It turns out people in this country do want to keep the most vulnerable people safe, even if it isn’t their own grandmother or their own newborn that’s at risk.

So the anti-vaxxers stayed very quiet as we watched other countries suffer through devastating loss and mourned our dead and theirs. Then one of them said OK, so Covid-19 is bad and it shows what a world without vaccines is like which isn’t good for us. Why don’t we say the flu vaccine has Covid-19 in it? And let’s say that people who have died from Covid-19 and all of the people who are fighting it – doctors, nurses, epidemiologist – let’s say they’re all crisis actors. And astonishingly, people believed this. Because people will believe anything.

Because believing that selfish nonsense is easier than believing that we all owe a debt to each other and our lives from cradle to grave are inextricably linked to others’ in ways we cannot imagine. It’s easier to believe simple rubbish than it is to truly understand that just as the measure of a civilisation is how it treats its weakest members, the same is true for a community. It’s easier to hide from the truth than to recognise the devastating reality that life is ever so fragile and that we are born with the desire to keep each other safe.

That innate care for others, the one that grows so strong in those who become carers and nurses and doctors, is within all of us. Some reject it because they’re poisoned by the disappointments in life. And some nurture it in the hope that they can encourage it in their children.

The truth isn’t that exciting. It’s just that when most people dig deep, they find within themselves the capacity to care for people outside of their bubble.

No matter how hard many of us found lockdown, most of us found it a privilege to be able to do something to help others. It is rare you are handed the opportunity to save lives by sitting at home in front of the television. But that doesn’t end today. And that’s what we need to remember. Most industries will need our support. The anti-vaxx industry and the self-absorbed mobs? I’m not buying what they’re selling. And you don’t have to either.

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Getty Images

OPINIONSocietyMay 14, 2020

While the powerful steer the recovery conversation, others deserve to be heard

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Getty Images

Budget 2020: From supermarket workers to machine operators to cleaners, the people at the bottom of the socioeconomic pile deserve to be be part of the post-pandemic conversation – and to be allowed to speak for themselves, writes Stacey Shortall.

While there is an audible sigh of relief in New Zealand that we are now in alert level two, everyone knows economic times are tough and the pain is about to get worse. We have all read the sobering reports and forecasts.

In the wake of Covid-19, thousands of New Zealanders have gone on benefits. With the wage subsidy paid to around 1.7 million workers set to come to an end, our unemployment rate could also skyrocket. Economists predict it could reach 10% by the end of the year.

The government’s debt levels are fast reaching an all-time high, and widespread changes are occurring across all sectors. The Salvation Army’s recently released social impact report shows the demand for food parcels is at an unprecedented level and the uptake of other assistance packages has been massive.

Today’s budget looms particularly large in this new light. No one can predict what the full extent of this economic crisis will be, or what is the right thing to do to combat it. The only certainty we have is that we need to balance short-term economic recovery with long-term sustainable economic growth. This is no easy balance to strike. It is also fraught with significant controversy, and some of those battle lines are already being drawn.

Food parcels at Auckland City Mission in 2017 (Photo: Getty Images)

There are big expectations that somehow Budget 2020 will help ensure we emerge from Covid-19 with a fairer economy, stronger businesses and a cleaner environment. But as some advocate for the government to prioritise certain sectors of the economy for support, others argue that it would be inappropriate to pick winners now. There is similar disagreement about how the budget should weigh the viability of certain industries against the type of post-pandemic economy New Zealand should aspire to achieve. While some are calling for a climate-friendly recovery, others want jobs protected at all costs. Grumblings about a perceived lack of future planning and ambition are likewise being countered by calls for caution. Expecting a budget to respond to all these competing tensions is a big ask.

As we look to revitalise the economy, major public infrastructure projects, new housing developments, more employment programmes and increased public assistance will almost certainly be part of Budget 2020. Packages have already been announced to support workers, businesses, sectors such as health and aviation, enable the re-deployment of some workers, house some homeless, help victims of violence and pay some teachers more.

Plainly much more assistance is coming. We can only hope that it goes to the places where assistance is really needed the most.

To state the obvious, the ability to cope with the Covid-19 economic crisis will vary across our communities. For some of us, the economic fallout will be new, and we may be more resilient. For others, it will just be the latest hardship in a long series of financial struggles.

With sectors like hospitality and tourism in turmoil there is no doubt that poorer families and lower earners will be hit the hardest by the economic shock brought on by Covid-19. Even before the pandemic, our traditional middle class had been eroded as many New Zealanders were being pushed into the ranks of the working poor, where lives are lived pay cheque to pay cheque, and housing security is precarious. In November 2019, a Human Rights Commission study found that 50,000 working households in New Zealand lived in poverty. Images of poverty have long haunted New Zealand and as our economy has largely been shut down by Covid-19, it is not difficult to imagine that these numbers, and images, will now be far worse.

As Budget 2020 is revealed and New Zealand looks to recalibrate our economy, it will simply not be enough for us to say what we think we already know about people living in poverty. It will not be enough to cover off core issues around income, housing, food, education, jobs, physical and mental health, and community safety. We need to hear from those people who are actually living in poverty and are under the threat of ongoing Covid-19-related turmoil.

A supermarket cashier in Rome during the Covid-19 outbreak (Photo: ANDREAS SOLARO / AFP / Getty Images)

Particularly over recent weeks, we have all depended on our essential workers who serve us from behind face-masks and plexi-glass. It is those people we now need to hear from. We need their input on how our economy could operate better for them. We need to hear about the barriers that prevent them from working towards better financial security: fairer wages, affordable and healthy housing, accessible public transportation and readily available childcare.

Economic recovery should not just be something that happens to people. Rather it should be something that happens with them. For that to be a reality, as part of the budget discussion, we need the voices of more supermarket workers, hospitality staff, household and commercial cleaners, tradespeople, machine operators and retail salespeople, to give just a few examples.

We also need to hear from the people who interact with the families of those New Zealanders. Teachers are an obvious starting point. So, too, are the youth and social workers in communities and the frontline providers of food and other support to vulnerable families.

All these voices belong in every single commentary and opinion piece being circulated about the kind of post-pandemic economy New Zealand needs, and they should be in this very piece.

I fear that my voice could never do justice to the issues that need to be addressed in Budget 2020. I worry that because I have represented abused women, worked in disadvantaged communities and advocated for social, and criminal, justice reform, I am somehow seen as a voice for something I am not. I despair that my voice might be listened to when there are others far better qualified to speak the words that matter.

I worry whether I can properly speak to how the budget might address issues of disadvantage and vulnerability when I am not in those circumstances myself, when my only experiences of those challenges is as a lawyer or volunteer. I anguish over whether and what to say, not because I fear criticism (and I know there will be some), but because I might silence those who are more deserving to be heard.

All this is as much about who gets to speak as it is what gets said. I have certainly been on calls and online meetings over the past weeks where people at the frontline of the poverty and despair caused by Covid-19 have talked about what would matter for them: The higher wage that might have enabled them to scrape together some savings to buffer their family when their job was lost. The warmer home that might have been more inviting when they could go nowhere else. The access to a stable and reliable source of food that might have caused them not to worry over what would be put on empty dinner plates that evening. The availability of learning activities and toys that might have better occupied their children. The underlying good physical and mental health that could have meant they less feared fatal sickness. I know first-hand that these matters are all far more compelling coming from the people at the frontline than filtered and interpreted through me.

This pandemic has laid plain just how much health, job stability, safe housing, quality education and resilient communities really matter. The recession it will cause will make these things only matter more. They are the cornerstone issues that must feature in Budget 2020. But you do not need me to tell you that.

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