The rigid, unfeeling official attitudes to MIQ go against New Zealanders' sense of fairness and decency and should be changed urgently, writes Peter Dunne
Opinion: In a book of political photographs with humorous captions which appeared some years ago there was a photograph of early 1990s Social Welfare Minister Jenny Shipley, looking especially imperious and serious. The accompanying caption was “… And we’re introducing a part charge on the milk of human kindness”.
This was written in the context of the benefit cuts and government service charges that Shipley and then Finance Minister Ruth Richardson had become infamous for. It implied callousness, a lack of empathy with those who were suffering, and general government disregard of those in difficulty.
Deeper than that, it also implied that the National government of the day was going too far with its changes. A basic New Zealand sense of dignity and fairness had been transgressed and the satirical caption highlighted the perceived absurdity of the situation. In a few words, the caption summed up a prevailing mood of the time.
Today, the same sentiments are at the core of much of the antagonism about the Managed Isolation and Quarantine system. Most people accept that, given the need to protect our borders from people not vaccinated or at high risk of carrying Covid-19, some form of MIQ system has been necessary. Further, most people probably accept that, at least up until now, such a system should probably have been run by the government and its agencies.
Beyond that basic, albeit grudging acknowledgment, there has been a persistent and growing level of disenchantment about the way in which the MIQ system has been run. Some of the criticisms have been trivial, others have been more substantive. The overarching point of them all, however, has been of a monolithic system that makes no distinctions between those who have been vaccinated and those who have not, nor takes any account of individual circumstances, and effectively imprisons people for the two-week period of their detention, and treats them accordingly.
Last week’s example of the fully vaccinated woman who lived alone seeking to return to her empty home in New Zealand to self-isolate being denied the opportunity to do so because she had to go into MIQ, and there run the risk of coming in contact with people with Covid-19, highlighted the inflexibility (and absurdity) of the current rules. Other, more harrowing cases have been the number of family members returning to New Zealand to be with dying parents, siblings or other relatives but being refused the opportunity to do so, because of MIQ rules. The steady stream of distraught families approaching the media about their experiences makes it clear that these are far more than just a few isolated cases.
Indeed, figures released last week by the Ministry of Health show that of several hundred applications received for compassionate release from MIQ only a handful have been approved. This all contributes to a growing picture of a system that is inflexible, intolerant, and increasingly out-of-touch with public sentiment.
It would be interesting to know what the official procedure is for considering such applications. From the public reactions of those who have been through this, it appears the process is no more than perfunctory – an application is lodged, and sometime later a decision is conveyed to the applicant. There appears to be little, if any, interaction with those applying, let alone any opportunity for them to meet officials to make their case directly. Rather, given the overwhelming level of rejections, the applications seem to be processed in the most arbitrary and mechanical of ways.
There has been no official explanation of how such applications are considered, nor of the level of seniority of staff dealing with them, let alone what invigilation system, if any, follows the original decision. As many of the cases involve literal life and death situations, it would not be unreasonable to expect a measure of sensitivity and individual consideration to be applied, not just the near-automatic transfer of an application from someone’s in-box to their out-box as soon as possible.
The mechanistic and repetitive tone of the responses from those running the MIQ system every time there is a criticism of their inflexibility confirms that they do not understand, let alone care very much about, the delicate nature of their role. They are looking after New Zealanders in the main, people who have voluntarily returned to their country, and who are being quarantined for their own good and the country’s good. These people are not criminals, and do not deserve to be treated as such during their quarantine. Instead, they deserve and have every right to expect to be treated throughout with the utmost dignity and respect by officials. The level of disgruntlement being reported regularly suggests that is far from the case in practice, which is unacceptable.
Alongside this insensitivity, the oversight of the MIQ system is cumbersome. For practical reasons, it involves a number of government agencies, not normally used to working together, let alone interacting with the public in a sensitive manner, to cooperate as never before. From Defence to Police, Aviation Security to Health and Immigration, the bureaucratic chain is extensive and inevitably creates its own tensions and problems. Atop all this sits the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment that has become, with varying levels of effectiveness, the government’s “go to” department on all matters relating to Covid-19.
This messy cocktail means that many of the mistakes and failures of recent months were inevitable. While that is to be expected to some extent, it is surprising that nothing seems to have been learnt from the problems that have occurred. The same old insensitivities keep being repeated, with the attempted justification always being the eerily chilling bureaucratic and still unacceptable response, “we are just doing our job.”
Beneath all this is the apparently legally ambivalent question of whether the right to deprive New Zealand citizens and residents of being able to return freely to their country even exists. Some argue that the apparent right conveyed in the Bill of Rights Act is not unconditional and that governments do have the authority to limit that in extraordinary times such as we have now, while others insist that the right to freely enter your country of residence is inalienable. The courts are unlikely to determine the case until after the MIQ system has had its day, so the situation remains unclear.
Although the bureaucratic failings of the MIQ system have been many and intolerable and raise their own issues about the prevailing ethos within the government agencies charged with managing the Covid-19 response, the more fundamental issue is of government and ministerial accountability. After all, it was the Government and ministers, not the bureaucrats, that decided there should be a state-run MIQ system, to whom it should apply, and the general conditions under which it should operate. Therefore, the buck stops with the Government and those ministers who oversaw the establishment of the system, not the officials charged with running it.
However, the Government’s public indifference to the concerns raised about family members in MIQ wishing to spend time with dying loved ones has been breathtaking. Neither the Prime Minister, nor the Covid-19 Response Minister, nor any other minister has any at any stage offered a justification – empathetic, compassionate or otherwise – for the current inflexibility, let alone shown any inclination to address the concerns being raised.
Yet as Government they have the overall authority, if they have the will, to ensure officials show more flexibility and humanity than is currently the case when considering such cases. Ministers can change the protocols or override officials’ decisions if they want to, but so far none of them has shown any interest in doing so. The resolute silence of both Jacinda Ardern and Chris Hipkins at the weekend, when there were a couple cases in the media of people unable to get to see dying loved ones in time because of MIQ’s inflexibility, was not only shameful but also spoke volumes about the sincerity of the Government’s self-proclaimed kindness and empathy.
In Jenny Shipley’s day, the comparatively gentle ribbing about a “part charge on the milk of human kindness” was a humorous reminder of how the purity of public policy can become detached from reality. The personal cruelties being imposed on grieving New Zealand families by the rigidity of the MIQ system, accompanied by the cowering silence of an allegedly caring government is a far starker and more brutal reminder of that same point today.
