This latest breach by the MOH at one of our country's largest and busiest ports is inexcusable. And the PM suggesting to newspapers via her trademark spin-doctoring that "hesitancy and mis-information" are responsible for Tauranga's situation is the ultimate disrespect to a whole region of people.
Statements like this by the PM herself are tantamount to public bullying. I am left wondering if the people of Tauranga are being used as a target by this Labour government simply because they have the outspoken Simon Bridges as their MP.
This is not a kind PM.
- Oscar R.
Complete incompetence by the health authorities and the government for not ensuring compulsory Vaccination of all frontline workers. Spin from the government is completely unacceptable to the team of 5 million.
- Helen T.
This is an epic fail. It's up there in the gold standard of fails.
Ships are supposed to be at sea for 17 continuous days before berthing in NZ. This ship stopped in infected Queensland and Port Botany Sydney in July, then sailed for NZ.
NZ was notified of a positive contact with the ship. It was still cleared to berth in NZ, then a mix up then occurred between departments. Health failed to take control.
Then the debacle of the unvaccinated port workers came out. Unions are blaming everyone except their own people. Government Ministers and senior bureaucrats have again been exposed as incompetent. The people who are supposed to protect us, have again exposed the country to Covid infection. How many more lame excuses do we have to tolerate?
Ardern, Hipkins and Bloomfield, just resign.
- Walter H
Government blames power companies' 'commercial decisions' for outages
When the Govt owns Transpower and 51 per cent of power companies it is a wee bit tricky to apportion blame and come up smelling like a rose. The Govt is the major shareholder of the entire network. This one will not go away in a hurry.
-Steve T
We've seen the silly games that the privatised electricity groups get up to; spilling water in summer to create peak demand in winter. Same reason I think privatising our prison system is not the best idea; they want more customers or else they're out of a job.
-Clark M
Wow. Judith Collins has a cheek criticising this. Her government privatised power. Max Bradford stood up in parliament as said "Read my lips, we will pay less for power". I think it has been going up ever since. And the commercial models meant they spent as little as possible on infrastructure. This outage will come down to these companies making money.
National sent us down that path. We need to buy at least one of the power companies back entirely. Keep these guys honest. Anyone who thinks this is about the current government are dreaming. This has been coming for years. The private model for utilities doesn't work. They just try to make money. Look what happened with Enron.
-Ross W
What we need is to increase our solar power uptake in our homes with interest free loans/subsidies then use that solar energy for our baseline power need and then we can use our hydro energy at peak times instead of burning all that coal at Huntly.
-Deb W
- Republished comments may be edited at the editor's discretion.
