Insight into a CRISIS

Thousands of pages of NZ’s secret Covid-19 documents made public

One-third of Kiwis felt the lockdown didn’t go far enough, meaning that tougher measures could have been rolled out under level 4 if necessary.

This was according to the first weekly monitoring report into the lockdown that was used to inform Cabinet about decisions to move between alert levels.

It was one of almost 400 previously secret documents made public late yesterday afternoon.

The trove of reports, advice, aide memoirs and Cabinet decisions paint a picture of the Government’s Covid19 response.

The material shows the initial “wait-and-see” advice from the early days of the epidemic to the more urgent recommendations aimed at mitigating the pandemic’s health and economic costs.

It also reveals New Zealanders’ initial feelings about the level 4 lockdown.

Documents from April 15 show how the all-Government team found that a third of Kiwis felt the lockdown could have been tougher.

And the newly released documents also outline some of the serious risks New Zealanders faced as a result of the level 4 lockdown.

For example, Justice officials were concerned that children and teenagers would be increasingly subjected to internet predators during lockdown, as a result of spending more time online.

Officials were worried about children being particularly vulnerable to under-reported abuse, and to witnessing violence at home, as abusive behaviours escalated in isolation.

Another report shows the Government rejected advice to deem liquor shops an essential service. Officials warned closing liquor outlets may lead to people doing “booze runs” beyond their communities to get alcohol. This would affect the Government’s ability to contain transmission, advice to Cabinet on March

24 said.

But Cabinet rejected this advice and deemed liquor stores nonessential and allowed booze shops to remain open only in the four areas where licensing trusts held a monopoly.

The documents were broken down into different categories, including alert levels and restrictions, border, education, health response, housing, income support measures, offshore issues, supporting the economy and wage subsidy and leave schemes.

Each category contains dozens of documents, dating from early February to late April.

They reveal a plethora of new information including:

● The initial wage subsidy didn’t count 56 per cent of the workforce.

● Tertiary students dropping out of university and going on to the unemployment benefit because of the higher payments.

● The hit on the economy could be similar to the Great Depression, with up to 300,000 people unemployed.

● A massive spike in porn website Pornhub’s online traffic on the day New Zealand went into lockdown.

But the Weekend Herald has learned that before the documents were released yesterday afternoon, Government departments were sent an email advising them to “dismiss” media inquiries.

“The public have confidence in what has been achieved and what the Government is doing,” said the email, obtained by the Weekend Herald.

“Instead, we can dismiss [media questions].”

This comes as the number of new Covid-19 cases in New Zealand remains low. There were just two new cases yesterday and no further deaths were reported.

In fact, there have been just 13 new Covid-19 cases in the country during the past seven days.

Director of Public Health Caroline McElnay yesterday said that the low case numbers were “a very good sign”.

But McElnay wouldn’t be drawn on whether the numbers were a reflection of how Kiwis had handled the easier restrictions of level 3.

On Monday, Cabinet will decide whether New Zealand is ready to move into alert level 2.

But much of the focus yesterday was on the hundreds of newly released documents.

One piece of advice showed the Government’s ability to contact trace was questioned early on in its Covid19 response.

In a weekly briefing to the ministerial group on April 15, the crisis centre said there was undetected community transmission about three weeks earlier, but they didn’t know how widespread.

It told the Government there were gaps in the data, making it harder to prepare the report.

It said a significant number of cases had missing information and others had been under investigation for a long time, reducing its confidence in the data on cases of community transmission.

Another document revealed that New Zealand’s contact-tracing

capacity was for about 10 active cases at a time when the country already had 13 cases of Covid-19.

And, because of information released in another document, it is now known that within days of Covid-19 becoming a notifiable disease on January 31, 16 suspected cases were under investigation by health officials.

At the time, there were no confirmed or probable cases in the country, as the disease was confined to China.

As well as outlining high-level health concerns, the economic impact of Covid-19 was the subject of many briefings and reports.

When the extent of the economic cost of the virus was unknown, officials at the IRD shot down an idea to remove Covid-19-hit businesses’ requirement to pay GST.

Treasury advice showed that the Government removed the need for companies to prove they had suffered a drop in revenue to obtain the wage subsidy.

This was despite warnings that it would lead companies that could survive without it to take it anyway.

Officials advised that the “30 per cent income loss eligibility test” be removed to ensure broad take-up, even though they acknowledged that this would mean companies which could afford not to take the subsidy would do so.

Another Treasury paper, provided to ministers in mid-April, reported that the economic hit to New Zealand could be similar to the Great Depression.

The paper went on to state that unemployment could peak as high as 300,000 during the September quarter. The unemployment number stood at 111,000 in the December 2019 quarter.

Advice to Education Minister Chris Hipkins on April 2 reveals that after the first week of the nationwide lockdown, officials warned that some tertiary students were already dropping out of university and going on to the unemployment benefit because of the higher payments.

The officials said that because of Covid-19, many students had lost the part-time jobs they had that were supplementing their student loans or allowances and were struggling financially.

They warned that some of those students might never return to tertiary education.

As well as this, Hipkins lobbied his Cabinet colleagues for an extra $14 million in school emergency payments to thousands of casual and part-time staff, such as relief teachers, who had no income during the lockdown.