Was NZ’s shutdown legal?
Bloomfield’s Covid lockdown call faces judicial review
Ajudicial review into whether the Covid-19 lockdown was legal begins in Wellington today. The Criminal Bar Association and the Auckland District Law Society have joined with Wellington lawyer Andrew Borrowdale to determine whether director general of health Ashley Bloomfield had the legal authority under the Public Health Act to effectively shut down the country and order people to stay home unless they had good reason for being out.
The three-day hearing is in the High Court at Wellington before a panel of three judges, including Chief High Court Judge Susan Thomas.
Crown Law advice — leaked during the lockdown to Newstalk ZB — suggested Bloomfield did not have the required authority, which would throw into question all the arrests made during it.
The same advice was used by former Deputy Police Commissioner Mike Clement to warn his district commanders about the thin ice they were on when it came to making orders in the name of Covid-19.
Attorney-General David Parker has insisted the leaked Crown Law advice was a draft copy, though it had the same serial number as the advice used by Clement to warn his officers.
Borrowdale, a former legal draftsman at Parliament, is seeking a judicial review of the lockdown handling.
The New Zealand Law Society is also party to the action, but its role as intervenor is neutral and independent of the parties to the case.
Law professor Andrew Geddis said the case “is very much a serious one in terms of raising issues that the legal world think are both genuinely uncertain and important”.
He said if the judicial review found the lockdown rules were legally invalid it would have implications for anyone charged with breaching the rules.
Geddis said Borrowdale was raising concerns in a proper fashion, unlike another private case taken by two men which failed, after they appealed the High Court finding.
In that case, two men sued Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern over what they claimed was an unlawful detention during lockdown.
Dermot Gregory Nottingham and Robert Earle McKinney challenged the Government’s decision to confine people to their homes with habeas corpus claims, a 900-year-old legal procedure challenging detention without justification.
Their case, which brought claims against Ardern, Bloomfield and Civil Defence director Sarah Stuart-Black, was dismissed by the Court of Appeal in May.
Parker has dismissed any claims of illegality by the Government.
Meanwhile, there were no new cases of Covid-19 reported in New Zealand yesterday — the second day in a row and the fourth day out of five that there had been no new cases.
There were still 21 active cases in New Zealand’s managed isolation and quarantine facilities, while the total number of confirmed cases in the country remained at 1206.