Is ‘temporary’ India travel Ban a big over-reaction?

Make no mistake, the step to temporarily ban Kiwi citizens from India travelling to New Zealand is probably the single biggest infringement on Kiwis’ rights in the name of health since the lockdown.

On the face of it there seems to be little cause for it. Yes, the daily numbers we are now seeing are the highest level since last October, as Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was at pains to point out yesterday. But managed isolation facilities were operating well back then – or at least so we were told – so the question now has to be: what has changed?

Is there is a greater risk we don’t know about, or is the Government not confident in its isolation facilities?

Or, with the trans-Tasman bubble looming, has the political risk calculation changed?

Whatever it is, it is understood that on this occasion the PM got personally involved, concerned about the serious and sustained uptick in the flow of positive cases. That was coupled with the perception of a sluggish Ministry of Health response to what the Government views as a new and serious risk to its Covid strategy.

On the numbers, the reason for the country-specific ban is clear: since February there have been almost 120 people from India arrive with Covid compared to 19 from the next highest country, the United States, 15 from the UK and single digits from every other country.

Ardern has always erred on the side of health. Lockdown, restrictions, border quarantines then subsequent lockdowns were all in the name of health.

During the March 2020 lockdown the Ministry of Health had advised that the Government should consider completely closing the borders. The

Government rightly rejected that advice as out of step with the state’s obligations to its citizens.

Ardern was at pains to point out that this wasn’t aimed at India and that if there were more than a handful of travellers from other countries were showing the same risk profile the Government would consider its options as well.

Yet Indian New Zealanders would be justified in feeling miffed that the country of their birth has been targeted. But there can be little doubt she would have done the same to any country based on the numbers. And India is in the early stages of a fullblown second Covid-19 outbreak.

Like all the more draconian restrictions enacted during Covid, this will probably be mostly popular. Lots of people are happy sitting protected at the bottom of the world and bugger the expats.

It’s almost as if, with the sluggish vaccine rollout not due to hit full tilt until July, that the attitude is that ‘we are so close, why risk anything’.

It also points to a level of incompetence. The newest border worker that tested positive yesterday had somehow not been vaccinated. About 95 per cent of border workers have been but the Government machine has not yet managed to redeploy those border workers who have not or will not get a vaccine.

Travellers from high and low risk countries have also not been separated in different hotels up to this point – the two weeks of restriction from the 11th could well see that change. These sorts of crimping of human rights are generally legally justified on the basis that they are proportionate, and time limited.

The Government may say that it is ‘‘temporarily suspending’’ travellers from India, but it does not alter the fact that some New Zealanders will be denied a basic right and not be allowed to return home.

The proportionality is arguable, but the ban had better be temporary.