The Giant Chasm

Unprofessional

It has long been hinted that New Zealand's Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern was a sandwich short of a picnic.  She talks a big game.  She has talked up all the wonderful things her administration was doing when it came to controlling the border.  Sadly, neither she nor her colleagues could hide forever the failures.  

Here is an excerpt from Stuff.

The Revelations About the Border Botch-ups

Given the importance of the borders, and making sure that those coming into the country don’t cause community transmission, the Government has been making promises for the last two months that every worker employed in relation to the border would be routinely tested. The Prime Minister, the Minister of Health, and the Director-General of Health have continued to reassure the public that such testing was being carried out.

The media have pressured the Government over these promises, with many journalists attempting to verify that routine testing was in fact taking place. Newshub’s Michael Morrah then broke the news ten days ago, that the system wasn’t working at all.  (Emphasis, ours.)

This news has been met with exasperation. The Herald’s Derek Cheng, who had been asking the government for details of the testing for three weeks without reply, said the revelation went against what the Government had been saying was necessary and being done. He pointed out that “A quick glance at Melbourne is all you need to see what’s at stake here.”

Elaborating further, Cheng explained that the lack of testing is an ongoing problem that the Government should have learnt from already. He points to controversies in June when “people staying in managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) facilities were meant to be tested on day three and on day 12 of their stay. It wasn’t happening, we later learned, because the ministry was still putting it in place. Daily health checks were also not done properly on two Covid-infected sisters, one of whom had symptoms”. He asks: “why is there – still – a giant chasm between what the Government says is happening and what the ministry is doing?”
A woman given exemptions from mandatory isolation without being tested for Covid-19, despite new border requirements, was contacted for a test after completing isolation - then left confused when told police may get involved.

Both the Government and the Ministry of Health have struggled to respond to Morrah’s revelations. While confirming that routine testing was indeed not happening, it’s unclear why not, with no real explanation nor apology.  Further investigation suggested the Ministry of Health were not implementing the Government’s orders, but the Government also weren’t telling the public this, and it’s unclear why not. For more on this, see Thomas Manch’s The Covid-19 border testing saga that’s going septic amid ministers’ muddled accounts.

After analysing the official information relating to Government orders for testing to occur, Manch explains: “Cabinet ministers were – for weeks – either blind to the problem or labouring under the belief their orders were being followed.” He reports Act leader David Seymour saying that the Government either “didn’t know what was in its national testing strategy, or it lied to New Zealanders about the extent of border testing”.

Chris Hipkins is reported as blaming his officials for the botch-up. Then, later this week, he admitted to not having read the strategy that came from his ministry, which detailed that there would be problems with what the Government had ordered – see Jenna Lynch’s Health Minister Chris Hipkins admits he hasn’t read Ministry of Health’s COVID-19 testing strategy

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has been both blaming the workers themselves for not being tested (“We have picked up on reluctance among staff”) as well as saying that the Government hadn’t been kept informed of the problem. According to Tim Watkin, “Both can’t be true. If the Prime Minister was being briefed about reluctant staff, she knew that not everyone on the border was being tested and that the statements she and her ministers were making about all frontline workers being tested were false. For a politician whose reputation is based on trust and who has said she would never lie, it’s been a damaging week”.