April 29, 2020
Self reliance lesson from COVID crisis
New Zealand First leader Winston Peters says the COVID-19 pandemic has woken the world up to the limits of globalisation and the need for greater self-reliance by countries.
He says as the country moves out of full lockdown, the talk is shifting from tests to jobs.
He hopes as business resumes, people will be wiser and smarter about how they go about it, and the dangers of being so reliant on other nations’ economies.
"It’s being more autonomous. It's self-determination in a national sense, the kind of self-determination you see in Scandinavian countries, you see in Singapore, you see in Taiwan. We need to get that lesson right. We used to have it when we were a much younger nation when we were number two or three in the world, but we lost the plot. We need to get the lessons back again and it took COVID-19 to teach us that but we can and should be much wiser going forward," Mr Peters says.
He says attention is now turning to the Budget, which will have to focus on what is needed in the here and now to get the economy turned around after its massive shock.
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