NZ’s Covid-19 response: a black mark, or a mark of respect?

From the United States to Europe, stories of pregnant journalist Charlotte Bellis’ struggle to get home, and an MIQ hunger striker desperate to see his dying father brought uncomfortable headlines for New Zealand. Nadine Porter asks if the country’s tough border stance has damaged its global reputation.

On the last day of January 2022, an official European Union letter finds its way into the hands of its intended recipient, New Zealand entrepreneur Steve Andreassend, based in Brussels, where the EU is headquartered.

It’s from the European External Action Service (EEAS) – the diplomatic and combined foreign and defence ministry of the EU, and it’s about expatriate difficulties in returning home during the pandemic.

Andreassend has had a stellar career, most recently as a senior manager at Oracle, a multinational computer technology corporation.

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But he has been unhappy about New Zealand’s MIQ system and the difficulties facing Kiwis wanting to head home from abroad.

So on January 4 he had sent a letter to Valdis Dombrovskis, the Commissioner for Trade, that asked if there were any wider issues around the legality of the system, amid ongoing negotiations for an EU-New Zealand Free Trade Agreement (FTA).

Andreassend also highlighted a judicial review claim a Kiwi legal team had been preparing on behalf of Grounded Kiwis, a Facebook group of disenfranchised expats, opposed to the restrictive voucher system for accessing MIQ.

In the claim, adjourned until mid-February, the group will allege the Government acted unlawfully, unreasonably and in breach of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990, which states that every Kiwi citizen has the right to enter New Zealand.

Crucially, Andreassend had suggested to Dombrovskis that FTA negotiations with New Zealand should be suspended.

On the face of it he had a point.

Technically it could be argued that the system was in breach of a 2007 Joint Declaration on Relations and Cooperation with the EU, in which New Zealand pledged to uphold human rights, fundamental freedoms and the rule of law, and to respect the United Nations.

The declaration formed the basis of relations with the EU and went on to become the foundation that would underlie future trade agreement negotiations between the two parties, when the Partnership Agreement on Relations and Cooperation was agreed.

Andreassend says both agreements contain an explicit commitment to uphold the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, including the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state and the right for a person to leave and return to their country of citizenship.

But the chief FTA negotiator for the EU, Peter Berz, disagrees.

In his response to Andreassend’s call for a suspension of negotiations, Berz said the EU was “aware of the difficulties” some Kiwis faced in trying to return to New Zealand.

“Nevertheless, we believe that suspending the negotiation for an EU-New Zealand trade agreement would not be the most adequate reaction.”

However, Berz went on to say he trusted that affected citizens would have the right to challenge the measure before a New Zealand court.

It was a statement that Andreassend shared widely, because he believed Berz had just given independent confirmation, on behalf of the world’s third-largest economy, that the Grounded Kiwis court case had merit.

Just three days after Andreassend received the EEAS response to his earlier letter, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced a five-step process to reopen New Zealand’s borders, kicking off on February 28 for vaccinated Kiwis currently in Australia, who will be able to skip MIQ, though they will have to self-isolate on their return. Critical workers in Australia will also be able to travel in as part of phase one of the process.

Cause and effect

Covering his face with shaking hands, Kurt Lehndorf posed one question.

“Why?”

On a video call from his managed isolation hotel room, Lehndorf’s eyes ranged wildly. At times he struggled to be coherent.

Words hung in the air, disconnected. All colour had leached from his face.

After 64 hours with no water or food, Lehndorf looked broken.

It was hard to watch and even harder for his terminally ill father, Des, 72, to comprehend.

So sick with cancer that he was forced to sleep for large parts of each day, Des became inconsolable when he woke, and unable to stop sobbing at the thought of his son suffering so that he could see him in his final days.

After publicly declaring he would refuse food and water until he was released from MIQ, Lehndorf eventually got his wish, just in time.

Just thirty-three hours after his release, his father died.

And the entire saga was broadcast to the world via Lehndorf’s phone, casting a negative spotlight on New Zealand’s closed border and a pandemic that he and other expats believe has rewritten the rules of what it means to be a New Zealand citizen.

In the last gasps of the country’s MIQ system, the gulf between compassion and the need to protect public health had never seemed wider.

“A murderer would be treated better than I was,” Lehndorf said.

And while a middle-aged man was reduced to benching his dignity while he waited on a verdict that meant a choice between seeing his father in life or death, all bets were off as to whether these scenarios were denting New Zealand’s international standing.

Tough borders improve our standing

In April 2020, Prime Minister Boris Johnson was seriously ill, and the United Kingdom was facing a spiralling death rate, with 1000 people a day were dying from Covid-19.

A joint report from the House of Commons’ science and health committee would later find that Johnson’s government’s delay in announcing a nationwide lockdown in February and March led to thousands of unnecessary deaths.

Lawmakers concluded the actions of the government in handling the pandemic ranked as one of the most important public health failures the United Kingdom had ever experienced.

But Britain wasn’t alone.

Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro offered little in the way of a response and dismissed the virus as a “little flu”, while US President Donald Trump casually pondered aloud if there was a way to inject disinfectant, after he had boasted the country had Covid under control.

Within a global climate of governments acting slowly, New Zealand’s decision to lock down the entire nation on March 26, 2020 with just over 200 cases, undoubtedly increased our international capital, according to Otago University International Relations Professor Robert Patman.

The combination of empathy while taking decisive action by the Government was noticed, and admired, he believed.

“One of the key things was that we avoided separating the health of the people from the health of the economy. We saw them as inextricably interlinked.”

The approach separated us from other nations, which displayed a sense of national exceptionalism and the idea no virus would be big enough to defeat their national character.

“As a result they were playing catch-up.”

Patman believes the closed border and the flurry of negative media reports about Kiwis being shut out has made no impact on the international stage because there was no national solution that would eradicate a global virus.

The Government had a choice between the “intolerable” and the “disagreeable”, and New Zealand’s low mortality rate of just 53 since the pandemic began, when close to 6 million had died worldwide, was evidence it had chosen the right options, he said.

“There is no painless option here.”

Although the closed border might have created a longer-term perception that New Zealand was difficult to migrate to, it could also prove to be a positive, which would lead to people wanting to relocate here in a post-pandemic world.

“Some people may see New Zealand as a very responsible government that looks after its citizens.”

Overall, Patman said world leaders and people offshore had been impressed with how the New Zealand Government had dealt with three major events within two years, with the mosque attacks in March 2019, followed by the White Island eruption and the pandemic.

“Cumulatively our reputation has gone up.”

Not all plain sailing

But not everyone is so sure New Zealand will emerge intact, from a global perspective, from the shadow of Covid-19.

Former NZ High Commissioner to the United Kingdom, and the only non-British advisor on the UK’s interim trade and agriculture commission, Sir Lockwood Smith, is well-placed to understand how the country’s absence from the world stage could impact our medium-term aspirations.

Smith understands the power of meeting face to face, citing recent FTA negotiations between Australia, New Zealand and the UK. Australia had accelerated its progress towards a FTA because it had sent trade minister Dan Tehan to the UK, despite the difficulties presented by the pandemic.

“It just drove home to me the importance of personal relationships. The fact that our prime minister hasn’t been able to spend much time with overseas colleagues isn’t helpful in terms of moving processes forward.”

Smith recalled visiting all APEC trade ministers the year before New Zealand hosted the forum in 1999. Building excellent working relationships, and working through what might be achievable prior to the event, could make a substantial difference to the outcome, he said.

Smith believes New Zealand’s economy faces some serious risks in the medium-term, especially in the tradeable sector.

Staffing shortages, coupled with the interaction between immigration and MIQ policies, had left the dairy, meat and horticulture sectors with significant challenges.

While government support packages had “rightly” helped the economy through the pandemic, it was not sustainable, Smith said.

“I think the tradeable sector will face some real crises, and when it comes to a sustainable economy that sector is crucial.”

Smith believes the MIQ system has caused reputational damage to New Zealand, saying he knows of many people offshore who can’t believe the Government could be “uncaring and unresponsive” to Kiwis who need to get home.

That damage could affect valuable trade work if it affected our international standing, he said.

“The cost to the economy and cost in wider perception is yet to be seen.”

This generation’s nuclear-free moment

Back in Brussels, Andreassend is conflicted.

“I would describe New Zealand’s approach as ambitious, effective, inconsistent, incomplete, unimaginative, divisive, cruel and discompassionate,” he said.

Having managed and counselled employees around the world through the worst of the pandemic, he has seen tragedy in its various guises.

Still, he calls 2020 a vintage year for New Zealand if the death rate was the only measure, saying our low mortality rate was an excellent outcome.

“For many it is the singular criterion for success, social and economic impacts are not considerations.”

But while MIQ has contributed to some of the country’s success, Andreassend argues the lack of international passenger arrivals was perhaps of greater weight than slowing down returning Kiwis.

Low-density housing, the limited availability of mass transit public transportation networks in cities, the Auckland lockdown, working from home and homeschooling were among a number of factors that meant it was a false choice to think we could choose between MIQ and higher mortality rates.

“Instead the question that needs to be addressed is how it can be ensured that there is sufficient MIQ capacity to meet demand to permit New Zealanders at home and abroad to travel internationally.”

More could have been done to help the situation, he says, including using the private sector to provide facilities.

“Leadership does not entail taking a six-week vacation during a supposed state of emergency, whilst halting MIQ bookings but letting in dance troupes, DJs, and domestic and foreign sports teams at the expense of stranded citizens.”

Within Andreassend’s network of European and American friends there has been “utter condemnation” of what they term “extreme measures” to protect New Zealand citizens, especially when they learn the mortality rate.

But there is also admiration, with the two responses not necessarily mutually exclusive when it comes to New Zealand’s pandemic response.

“It is possible to admire and condemn New Zealand at the same time if you are not directly affected by the measures.”

For Andreassend it comes down to whether or not one accepts that in a global pandemic many people will die.

“Maybe this is New Zealand’s nuclear-free moment for this generation?” he says.