Saying no looks like Jacinda Ardern, Grant Robertson, Chris Hipkins and Ayesha Verrall may not be so sure anymore that they did the right things. Or like they’re not sure they can defend themselves. Or like they’re afraid of having to be honest with the public.
Their arguments for why they shouldn’t front up, frankly, suck. They say they’re worried their comments will be tampered with for misinformation. And yet, Ardern was happy to spend over an hour talking on Oprah’s podcast. And Hipkins has offered all the interviews anyone could possibly want on the matter.
But if public comments can be tampered with, then surely so can the comments in a podcast. Or the comments about Covid in an interview.
They also say they don’t want to set a precedent for future ministers to be forced to appear publicly in Royal Commissions of Inquiry. The precedent has already been set. Former Defence Minister Wayne Mapp appeared before the Burnham inquiry. Also, Covid sets no precedent. Nothing in our lifetimes, or perhaps even in our children’s, may ever come close.
The powers those ministers exercised far exceeded anything any minister has ever had in the history of this country. No other ministers have ordered everyone in New Zealand to stay home, closed the borders and distributed money like that.
Those four ministers forced workers to take the vaccine or lose their jobs. They confiscated private property in the form of RAT kits. They shuttered entire industries. They forced my colleague and his siblings to watch their mother die through a glass window when they - the children that woman raised and loved - only wanted to hold her hand in her last hour.
People are hurt. They still hurt to this day. They simply want to open their laptops like they did every day at 1pm for weeks on end and watch the same people answer questions about the decisions they made.
Sure, a public interview will probably not elicit any new information that private interviews or written responses don’t. But there is immense value in watching someone answer those questions. That is why you are allowed to walk into New Zealand courts as they conduct their daily business. Because we know that open justice matters.
This inquiry is supposed to be a form of justice for people who feel wronged.
It is a pity the inquiry has been politicised to the point that it has. But Labour has only itself to blame. If it hadn’t messed around with the first stage of the inquiry to limit its damage to the party, the coalition Government parties wouldn’t have had the ability to mess around with the second stage to maximise its harm to them.
Ultimately, Ardern, Robertson, Hipkins and Verrall have been busted at every point trying to avoid accountability to us, the people whose lives they upended.
They have delayed accountability, but they won’t avoid it. Perhaps there will be a future inquiry done properly. Perhaps their reputations will simply be determined by us and by those who write our country’s history.
Appearing publicly gave them the chance to influence that. Instead, they’ve left a vacuum for us to fill with our own version of why they’re too guilty to appear.
