Free Press
ACT Party
There’s something blowing in the wind, and it’s not friendly to the Government. Two weeks ago they were in trouble over Australian travel. There’s just no way to explain why quarantine-free travel has been one-way for so long. Why are we so far behind at our end?
Panicking, what did the Government do? It rushed out a housing announcement best described as bat-excrement crazy. Even the leftie commentators were reporting, ‘renters thrown under the bus.’ A policy and PR disaster, by the end of the week nobody believed the Government’s policy would make a jot of difference to housing affordability, for all the damage it’s doing.
A quick word from our sponsor, ACT’s Brooke van Velden has been very effective at prosecuting the Government on this mess. See her popular petition here and widely read Stuff column here.
Back to our programme. This week the Government will try to get back on the bubble. Today they’ll announce details of the travel bubble with Australia. That is, if their trouble with vaccination doesn’t overwhelm them. It’s got so bad Kiwi Indians would have more chance of a vaccination back in the old country.
Free Press hears they are being mocked by their families in India for having moved to a third-world country. We hesitated to believe this, given India is a world leader in the number of people in absolute poverty. Well, it turns out they are leading us in COVID vaccination. Five per cent of Indians are vaccinated, versus barely one-in-a-hundred Kiwis.
We predict the Prime Minister is going to have to cock her head to one side and look thoughtful quite a lot more this week, because the bubble is more harrumph than triumph.
The simple fact is that there is no need for a bubble. The bubble illusion is not just the ongoing mirage of travel to Australia being tomorrow, next week, but wait, next month. The whole concept is an illusion.
The Government does not need a bubble. It does not need an overarching agreement with the Australian Government. It does not need to worry about what the Australians do with their borders, because the Government of New Zealand does not control their borders, it controls ours.
Our Government needs to do its job and provide what the Prime Minister promised on April 16 last year, “the world’s smartest borders.” It needs to start saying that quarantine requirements at the border will reflect the risk that people coming actually have COVID-19.
Here is a principle so simple even the current Government can apply it: No COVID, no quarantine. Start with the countries that have no COVID-19 and allow people who’ve been in them for at least two weeks to come without quarantine.
That would open up RSE workers from the likes of Samoa and the Solomon Islands for the poor horticulturists. Not to mention, they need the money. As an added bonus, it would strengthen New Zealand’s geopolitical position by being their best friend in troubled times, before you-know-who replaces us in the role.
The fact we couldn’t get people into the country from COVID-free Pacific Islands shows why we had no hope with Australia. The bubble illusion has been happily trotted out by the Government (and usefully bought into by the National Party) as the reason Aussies can’t come here, when really we just needed to run our borders better.
Australian States opened to New Zealand on October 16. That’s the day that they actually introduced smart borders, six months after our Prime Minister announced them. They simply apply quarantine to people who are a risk, and let those who are not go through. It depends on whether you’ve come from a COVID-free place or a hotspot.
If you are identified as a hotspot, you can’t enter other states. Pretty simple. Earlier this year, they identified Auckland as a hotspot for a while. They even called it a ‘Commonwealth hotspot.’ They’re treating New Zealand like the seventh state, but thanks to our Government we’re acting like a lump of wood.
This week the Government will announce that people will be able to come from COVID-free Australian states without quarantine. If we really hope, it might happen from April 16, one year after the Prime Minister promised the world’s smartest borders, and half a year after the Aussies did what we’ve just done.
The Government must explain why this late arrival of the obvious is a triumph, not harrumph. Free Press predicts they will demand gratitude for the feat. We should tell them to get off the podium and back to work.
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