The BFD | I Have a Confession to Make

D. Zaman

For quite a number of months now I have been struggling with the question of when it is time to take a stand. Without getting bogged down in the detail, I love freedom and I believe we have God-given freedoms as image-bearers of God which, to some degree, are covered by our Bill of Rights. But I also know that God is the ultimate authority that installs governments and does so for our good. There are sometimes circumstances that require the government to use extreme measures and I do want to think well of the intention of my government, even where I disagree. There is a balance with these things, but with a balance, there is also a tipping point, or as Scott put it in his article, a “line in the sand”, where you no longer can sit back hoping for the best but have to start putting yourself into uncomfortable positions.

While thinking and struggling with this I was often reminded of the well-known quote by German Pastor Martin Niemoller:

“First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”

My confession is that I think I left it too late.

Not too late as in “we’re all doomed”. But too late as in, with hindsight, I should have stood up earlier.

I had said nothing when the border and port workers were given vaccine mandates; I mean, this kind of made sense? Then the military; I guess that makes sense too, doesn’t it? Then came the vaccine mandates for the health and education workers, and this started hitting closer to home. While I knew some border and port workers, I knew more teachers. I have kids in school, so this was more visible to me. Hang on, is this right? But what was most surprising, was when it very quickly came to confront me personally.

I run a small business, which has been trading for 30 or so years. Part of our work over this time has been contracting to tertiary education providers. And what I wasn’t expecting late one afternoon was a communication from one of these institutes asking if, as a contractor to them, we would enforce a vaccine mandate. While it’s not even law yet for ECE, primary and secondary education, their understanding is that it will also be applied to the tertiary education sector, and therefore, somewhat understandably, are wanting to get ahead of the game.

Do I ignore them and hope it blows over? Do I say yes and take on some legal risk and force my staff to do something that could well be against their will? Do I say no and risk having no further work from this client?

Given that there is no actual law at this stage, it is reasonably easy to say no, for the moment, and play for time. But there is a distinct possibility, that in the very near future, I will be forced by this government to make a decision. And whatever I choose, it will hurt me and my staff and likely end up with me having to close down my business.

Our businesses have already been turned into the Covid police. We can be fined for allowing people on our premises without a mask, or not recording who has been on our premises. While these are not hard things to do (99% of adults are quite capable of recording their own whereabouts and looking after their own mask) it’s lazy governance to make businesses collect information that would otherwise be against the Privacy Act. Next, we are being told to police if our staff and contractors are vaccinated.

Most employment contracts wouldn’t have any provision to force vaccines or to force testing except for your fitness to work. Regular testing for a disease, that there’s no evidence you have, wouldn’t apply. The Bill of Rights Act protects people from unwanted medical procedures (Section 11). We are also protected from medical and scientific experiment (Section 10), given that all approved vaccines in New Zealand are “Section 23” provisionally approved. Asking an employee their vaccine status, when it has no relevance to a function or activity of my company, would be in breach of the Privacy Act.

All these legal documents are in force to protect people. Yet for the last 18 months, the government has been content to ignore many of these laws. The longer it drags on the more you realise they should never have been allowed to override them in the first place.

For anyone who read my Niemoller quote and thought, “You can’t compare what’s happening now in New Zealand with what happened in Nazi Germany,” may I suggest you have completely missed the point. The point is that they always start out this way. If you keep removing people’s freedoms, make them unnecessarily fearful of something, and then demonise small groups in the population, it doesn’t take much to get people doing incredibly cruel things, thinking they are doing it for the greater good.

I’m sorry, I should have stood up much earlier in this scenario. But it’s not ever too late to make the right choice.