Covid 19 coronavirus: Iwi-run checkpoints to return from Friday - Harawira

A member of Tai Tokerau Border Control talks to a motorist at the Waiomio checkpoint during the March lockdown. Photo / John Stone

Former Tai Tokerau MP Hone Harawira says iwi-run checkpoints will return to the Far North boundary on State Highway 1 starting on Friday.

The ex-MP set up the self-styled ''Tai Tokerau Border Control'' during the last lockdown, with volunteers erecting roadblocks around the district in a bid to discourage illegal travel and stop the spread of Covid-19.

Roadblocks were set up at Waiomio, Kaeo, Waitangi, Cable Bay, Mangamuka, Hokianga and Panguru, with Ngāti Kuri also operating checkpoints at Ngataki, Te Hapua and just south of Cape Reinga.

Yesterday Harawira said he had spoken to Ngāti Hine, informed police, and asked Tai Tokerau Border Control coordinator Reuben Taipari to prepare the Waiomio checkpoint, south of Kawakawa, this Friday and make sure the rest of the North was ready to act.

He said he had been prompted to act by official statistics showing 50,000 vehicles were stopped in the first three days of this lockdown with only 700 turned back at Auckland's northern and southern checkpoints.

Those figures had since improved but deploying hundreds of police and military personnel to contain a virus then allowing 95 per cent of vehicles through was ''an exercise in government overkill, public frustration, medical unease and justifiable iwi alarm,'' he said.

''Thousands of people are still getting into Tai Tokerau every day, and we know from whānau and friends that many of them should have been turned back.''

As of 4pm on Wednesday police said they had processed 86,685 vehicles at 13 checkpoints with 4781 motorists sent back where they came from.

Harawira said Tai Tokerau's Māori population was highly vulnerable to infectious diseases such as Covid-19, due to existing health conditions, deprivation, discrimination in health care and other factors.

''Waiting for an outbreak in the north is not the Tai Tokerau style, neither is waiting for somebody else to protect our territory,'' he said.

Any move to bring back iwi-run checkpoints is, however, likely to prove controversial.

Northland MP Matt King was especially critical of what he described as illegal roadblocks during the last lockdown.