Ardern’s mission to restore confidence after blunders
Opposition leader says the fact Health Minister has not been fired is a disgrace
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has acknowledged that the public has lost confidence in the Government’s management of Covid-19 at the border.
Her major focus is to now “restore public confidence and, indeed, confidence in the Government and [its] ministers”.
Yesterday, Ardern outlined a plan on how this would be achieved — with a specific focus on the border.
“We need to ensure it is rigorous, we need to ensure there is discipline in this system and we need to restore public confidence.”
Her Government has come under significant fire after revelations New Zealand’s border was not as watertight as she had been led to believe.
Holes in the testing system led to two Covid-19 positive sisters being allowed to leave quarantine to travel from Auckland to Wellington.
Ardern said the blunder was “hugely disappointing” and the “whole team of five million” had been let down. “Our job, though, is to restore people’s confidence,” she told reporters yesterday. But National leader Todd Muller said the first thing Ardern needed to do to restore the public’s confidence was to sack Health Minister David Clark.
“True leadership is accountability — this has been a shambolic border response at a time of great expectation from New Zealanders.”
Muller said the fact that Clark has not been fired was a disgrace.
Yesterday, director general of health Ashley Bloomfield revealed New Zealand had a new case of Covid-19, taking the number of active cases to three.
The man is in his 60s and is now in a quarantine facility in Auckland’s Jet Park Hotel.
He flew from Pakistan to Doha and on to Melbourne on June 11, and then to Auckland on Flight NZ124 on June 13. He developed symptoms on June 15.
But the focus of much of Bloomfield’s press conference was on how the two Covid-19 positive sisters were allowed to travel to Wellington to visit their sick mother.
Bloomfield apologised for the blunder, but said he would not resign.
“I am not planning to quit. I have worked hard to keep New Zealanders safe,” he said. Meanwhile, Ardern and her deputy, Winston Peters, are on very different pages when it comes to what should be done to those responsible for the blunder.
Peters told Parliament that the Government would find those people “at the coalface who didn’t follow the protocols”.
“The only way we can eliminate this sort of irresponsible behaviour or failure to fulfil the protocol requirements is to identify those people and make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
But Ardern told reporters she does not want to see a “witch hunt”.
“This has been a failure of the system; I’m not interested in going down into individuals and finding out exactly who.”
Bloomfield acknowledged that New Zealanders were upset by the quarantine blunder.
Work is now under way to contact trace more than 350 close contacts of the women and Bloomfield said the “vast majority” had been tested.
He said he couldn’t say how many of the 200 people granted compassionate leave had been tested before they were allowed to leave quarantine facilities.
But the rules have been changed and now no one is allowed to leave a facility unless they have a confirmed negative test, even if it’s under compassionate leave.
The story of the Covid-19 positive sisters was made worse when National MP Michael Woodhouse told the House that the pair had got lost while in Auckland and were given directions by a family friend.
Woodhouse alleged they gave the helpers a “kiss and a cuddle” but Bloomfield said they put their “arm around them” and said that was the only contact they had.
This is despite the fact that Ardern and Bloomfield had claimed the pair had gone from Auckland to Wellington and made no stops.