Several times now I’ve described Jacinda Ardern and Daniel Andrews as “the Idiot Twins of the Antipodes”. They’re both socialists with no real-life experience outside university and politics. Both are recklessly enamoured of China and its BRI.
But, even “Dictator Dan” seems to have learned – or had forced on him – the lessons of his disastrously failed hotel quarantine scheme.
Not so, Jacinda Ardern.
Nearly three months after the Prime Minister announced the Government would start directly employing security guards at managed isolation facilities, not a single guard has been employed.
In August Jacinda Ardern said that private security contractors would be phased out and replaced by guards employed directly by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment.
Using private security guards was perhaps the most disastrous of the many perplexingly stupid decisions made by the Andrews government in responding to the Wuhan plague. Every other state used its own police force, augmented as necessary with assistance from Federal Police or the Australian Defence Force. Victoria flatly rejected offers of federal assistance.
Here’s hoping Ardern’s contractors didn’t hire their guards over TradeMe, at least.
When asked about the number of guards employed, MBIE said in a statement it “has contracts with six security companies, with 266 personnel across 32 managed isolation and quarantine facilities.”
Instead of directly employing guards, the Ministry is choosing to focus on increasing technology security solutions like CCTV and alarms on doors, saying in a later statement that “direct employment of security guards will be a key area of focus as these solutions come online”.
The New Zealand Security Association says that the scaling back of private contractors has not happened and there are now in fact additional staff contracted.
Ardern is also straddling the same barbed wire as Andrews: either she is completely in the dark about the most vital front of New Zealand’s COVID response, or she is lying through her teeth about what she knows. Neither is a particularly good look.
And it seems no one has told the Prime Minister.
Jacinda Ardern said today that “we are moving towards making sure we are centrally contracting those who are providing services for us.”
National’s leader Judith Collins said “nothing’s been done and that smacks of complacency”.
But a union spokesman gets at least one thing right:
Isolation facilities are the front line if Covid-19 is going to get back into our community it will be through these facilities and the role all of the workers play is crucial to preventing that.”
The continued dribble of cases emerging in New Zealand suggests that the virus is indeed leaking through the facilities. New Zealand is merely living on the same lucky circumstances of geography and demography which meant that the Chinese virus was never going to be a significant threat anyway.
But if the government continues coasting along on a hug and prayer, that luck might not last.
If you enjoyed this BFD article please consider sharing it with your friends.
