What traffic lights?

It is a pretty feeble-sounding excuse to offer to the police officer who has pulled you over: "I didn’t see any traffic lights."

Similarly, in the current Covid-19 context, anyone could be forgiven for stopping and saying, "what traffic lights?".

For there is little getting round the fact that the Government’s much-vaunted Covid protection framework is a total waste of time.

The snazzy, with-it sounding, traffic-light alert scheme was meant to keep as many Kiwis as possible safe from Covid and was predicated on looking after the state of the country’s health system.

But, even while hospitals in Dunedin, Invercargill and Christchurch are or have been beyond peak capacity and struggling to cope with the numbers of patients, and Omicron case numbers remain stubbornly high across the South Island, the Government’s traffic light has steadfastly stayed at Orange.

Any pedantic excuse from the bureaucrats and politicians that no change has been needed as those wards are overflowing partly due to influenza, not just Covid-19, doesn’t wash.

The bulb in the red traffic light has obviously blown and clearly supply chain disruptions mean no new ones can be sourced.

It is easy to be overly sensitive about the South Island-North Island divide.

But from our side of Cook Strait, it really looks like the Government’s traffic lights are actually predicated on the needs of Auckland, and hospitality businesses there, rather than on what might be best for the rest of the country.

Once again, the Government has shown scant regard for the South Island and is letting southerners down.

If you consider the whole pandemic response since the first New Zealand cases in February 2020, the Government could probably still fairly deserve an A- or B+ mark.

But in terms of managing Omicron, and especially caring about the South Island, it would be lucky to even get a pass.

There have been several occasions on which the Government, and its advisers, have either failed to properly contemplate the repercussions of their alert-level decisions on South Islanders or failed to show convincingly they have taken them into account.

For lengthy spells of time last year, under the old alert-level model, South Islanders had to put up with being lumped into Level 3 along with the North Island, and living with its restrictions, when for months there were no cases over this side of the strait.

At Labour Weekend, when a few cases of the Delta variant started showing up in Christchurch and it might have been a good time for the Government to raise alert levels there, there was no action, and in fact there appeared to be no interest at all.

And in recent weeks, with southern hospitals struggling, there again has been no apparent rush to do anything in terms of moving to a more appropriate Red setting.

While the pressure on some Dunedin Hospital nurses has been enough to make them cry, Health Minister Andrew Little blithely says he is not surprised at the impact of what are "just short-term" difficulties that "we just have to manage as best we can".

He also says there are no indications the traffic lights should change from Orange to Red.

So what on earth does it take for a move to Red? If you can’t change alert level, what is the point of the whole system? It simply doesn’t work.

Mr Little’s insouciance may have been intended to put people at ease rather than come across as bumptious arrogance. But a reminder, minister — according to your own website on alert levels, "at Red, we need to take action to protect our vulnerable communities and our health system from Covid-19".

With a hard winter ahead, the traffic lights need to be scrapped, or taken more seriously by the Government.

Rusted in place at Orange, Mr Little and his colleagues need to get out there with their oil cans and free them up to better protect us all.