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David Seymour
ACT Leader
The Government has given an impossibly complicated version of the Freedom Day that ACT, and later National, have advocated.
We hoped that the Government would admit its errors and give a clear way forward based on building resilience against endemic COVID. That has been half delivered with a very complicated version of what ACT calls Freedom Day.
The net result is that restrictions will end near to December 1, but when exactly will be decided by laggards. Freedom Day puts the responsibility on the person making the decision to get vaccinated. Labour’s plan means your freedom depends on the laziest person in your community.
The Government’s approach means it clings to power and keeps people guessing. Every DHB reaching 90 per cent is not a realistic target, so the Government will have to intervene. The most significant announcement is it will make another big announcement on November 29th.
The flip flop on vaccine mandates means that we have lost six months. If you like vaccination mandates you’ll be happy, if you don’t like vaccination mandates you’ll be furious. Either way, the Prime Minister’s flip flopping means we are in locking down and locking out months longer than needed.
What the Government should have said is that the whole country will transition to the new system on December 1, with any suburb reaching 90 per cent having restrictions lifted in the meantime.
One positive is that the Government has ditched Shaun Hendy’s fantasy COVID modelling. His model says that 1,557 people will die under this plan. The Government is effectively announcing that it never believed Hendy after all.
Follow-through will be critical on this plan. The Government has a track record of making announcements it can’t back up with the paperwork or the detail.
The legislation requiring vaccine mandates should be ready and produced. The orders for the new traffic light system should be ready. The software for vaccine passports should be ready and built into the COVID-19 tracer app. If the healthcare vaccine mandate saga tells us anything, the Government will have made the announcement before it was ready.
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