Claire Trevett: Covid 19 Omicron outbreak - can PM Jacinda Ardern put out the fires as she moves on borders, Charlotte Bellis, boosters and rapid antigen tests?
Millions of rapid antigen tests secured, how the OECD plan to cool the property market and Ukraine boosts its armed forces in the latest New Zealand Herald headlines. Video / NZ Herald
Opinion by Claire Trevett
Claire Trevett is the New Zealand Herald’s Political Editor, based at Parliament in Wellington.
It has been a fraught fortnight for the Government, but the Prime Minister emerges from her isolation period now apparently hell bent on extinguishing the flames that are around her.
Top of that list has been the plight of Charlotte Bellis and MIQ, the borders and rapid antigen tests.
On Tuesday, after worldwide coverage about her difficulties getting back to New Zealand to give birth, the Afghanistan-based journalist Charlotte Bellis was granted a slot in MIQ for March.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. Photo / Mark Mitchell
It came just in time - just before a Government minister had to front in person to the media for the first time since her open letter was published in the Weekend Herald.
On Wednesday, an announcement on boosters is expected. That will almost certainly be a decision to move the gap from four months to three months.
On Thursday comes the announcement of when the borders will now reopen and returning vaccinated New Zealanders can isolate at home rather than in MIQ.
The boosters announcement indicates the border reopening dates may not be far away.
Speeding up the boosters would ensure more people were protected by the time that happened - and follows similar moves overseas.
The appetite within Cabinet for delaying the reopening for much longer is very low.
The Bellis case was hugely embarrassing for it and was a bit of a catalyst on an issue on which the Government has come under increasing pressure.
Deputy Prime Minister Grant Robertson fronts for the Prime Minister while she is in isolation. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Added to that, the bigger the community outbreak gets the more futile MIQ becomes. It becomes much harder to justify using MIQ rather than home isolation to try to slow Omicron's relentless progress. It would be little more than an illusory safety net.
The general view in Cabinet is also that with the boosters, and efforts to prepare people, the Government will have done all it can to keep people safe. It is time to move. Labour's hit in the polls will have helped them reach that conclusion.
Tuesday delivered the news on another area of trouble for the Government: a last-minute scramble had secured it a further 36 million rapid antigen tests, reducing the need to pilfer the stores of private businesses.
That is enough to cover the critical workplaces that the Government needs to keep up and running – but not the wider population.
The border reopening dates will ease the inevitable questions about what happens to others in a similar situation as Bellis.
The Government was under increasing pressure on the inherent unfairness and increasing redundancy of MIQ. Yes, it has done its job and it did its job very well - in the past tense.
It may still be needed for future variants, to help delay local outbreaks. But two years on, with high vaccination levels and Omicron already in the community, the cost of it on people's lives was outweighing the benefits.
That won't be enough to stop all the criticism.
The Government will also remain under scrutiny over its handling of the Omicron outbreak.
On Tuesday, Grant Robertson called for people to put a bit of faith in what it was asking people to do, noting that the Government had twice before managed to get the country through outbreaks much better off than most countries.
But the Prime Minister's own brush with Covid-19 last week was a stark lesson in how difficult it will be to slow the spread of Omicron without the use of lockdowns, and just how disruptive the isolation regime will be.
By the time the flight attendant on Ardern's flight was tested and got the positive result, almost a week had passed. Anyone that attendant might have infected in that time had been going about their own lives. So the circle of close contacts ripples out.
It highlighted the chilling effect the prospect of isolation will be having on people – the red light setting has its freedoms, but before enjoying them people will be weighing up the risk they will have to isolate if they are in the wrong place at the wrong time.
That is why a wider availability of RATs will become critical before too long – to allow people to make those decisions on whether to visit a grandparent, and to allow all businesses to keep running.
The Prime Minister will need a few more fire extinguishers before this is over.
