A few months back I gave the government 7 out of 10 for its handling of Covid. That assessment has plummeted over the last week, as revelations about its management of at-risk border workers has shown astonishing gaps. There has been a breakdown in the MoH-Ministerial relationship in respect of expectations and communication, and now the panicked dictate to the port sector.
It is clear that a majority of staff working to protect us all from high-risk arrivals to New Zealand have not been given the tests that Minister Hipkins had assured the public were happening. Rather than being grumpy about this failure of the Ministry/DHBs to perform as expected, he, and the public, should be outraged. We are all entitled to know exactly how the Minister's expectations were communicated to officials, and see their explanation for what actually happened.
It is quite likely this failure to meet ministerial and public expectations will result in thousands of people losing their jobs and businesses failing, as Auckland endures at least two weeks at level 3. This is not a simple oversight - it's a major public policy failure. It fits a pattern of sloppiness, which started when then-Police Commissioner Mike Bush told Simon Bridges' Select Committee that the police were not following up on all people in self-isolation, as had been stated to be government policy.
It reinforces the importance of a quality, efficient inquiry into how we have handled Covid from the beginning.
Having failed in the last 100-plus days to protect at-risk workers, the public and the economy from arrivals, last Friday the MoH issues an order to seaports: "We now require everyone who works at the maritime border to get a test for Covid-19 over the next three days." This was presumably driven by the remote possibility that the Aucklander, who worked at a cool store, may have picked up Covid-19 from an imported product that could have come via a seaport.
