Oh, Dear…”Prove It”

Hon JUDITH COLLINS (National—Papakura): I don’t believe for a moment that this country went hard and fast. It is a typical communications phrase that is being seeded into just about every speech, every conversation from a Government MP.

Hon Member: Prove it.

Hon JUDITH COLLINS: I can prove it, prove it easily—prove it easily. On 13 March this year, we were still going ahead with the commemoration of the 15 March massacre from last year—13 March, it was still on. Pasifika was still on; international media were no doubt expected. What we ended up with is a day before, suddenly, it’s all over, Rover, and we’re going to go hard and fast. We went so hard and fast as a country, did we, that we let in all these cases of COVID-19? We are a marvellous little country, because we have borders, which are not just borders, but we’re surrounded by sea. So this is not a home-grown issue; it was allowed into the country. We closed the borders as a country weeks after Samoa closed its borders and stopped all COVID-19. They tested people coming into Samoa. They did not let them in if they showed any symptoms of COVID-19. How come little Samoa with 200,000 people could react far better around border security than New Zealand with five million people—how come? We didn’t go hard and fast, we went slow. And then we went hard as soon as it became apparent that the borders had been well and truly breached and that the Government had allowed this to happen.

Ms Collins seems to be suggesting we did not go hard, nor early, while Ms Ardern insists we did. They can’t both be right: one of them is guilty of a blatant untruth. Who could it be? How can we ‘prove it’?

To help you decide, consider the screenshot below of a tiny sample of movements across the border of our “marvellous little country” the very day (March 14) Ms Ardern invented her now-famous ‘we went hard and we went early’ slogan and fully eight days after our top infectious disease experts had urged Ardern to impose stronger restrictions on visitor arrivals. (Column ‘E’ is New Zealand citizenship status. Column ‘F’ denotes ‘direction of travel’ – ‘A’ for Arrival, Column ‘J’ is port of departure):

Far be it for me to determine who’s telling the lies here. You be the judge.

If you enjoyed this BFD article please consider sharing it with your friends.