A protester with her message on Parliament's front lawn during the anti-vax, anti-mandate and anti-Government protest and occupation in Wellington. Photo / Mark Mitchell
OPINION:
What shall I wear? How much should I pack? Who will meet me at the airport when I land? I'm coming to Britain this spring - but I might allow myself a quick nervous breakdown first.
I'm Kiwi-born, with British citizenship. But planning a trip to catch up with friends and family in the UK never used to be such a big deal. That was before the advent of "Fortress New Zealand", which has seen my country almost completely separated from the outside world for nearly two years now.
Except for a brief, ill-starred travel bubble with Australia, my archipelago in the South Seas has been in the gulag ever since the New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced a snap closure in the early weeks of the initial Covid wave.
It has left politicians - including former prime minister Sir John Key - despairing at how our country has been turned into a "hermit kingdom". But a hermit kingdom with newfound attitude, too, if the thousands of protesters who this week brought parts of Wellington, the political capital, to a standstill are anything to go by.
Inspired by the recent "siege of Ottawa", during which the Canadian capital was paralysed by truckers protesting against hardline lockdown measures, a "freedom convoy" of Covid protesters involving hundreds of cars, trucks and motorbikes converged in Wellington on Tuesday morning to demand the lifting of Ardern's pandemic measures.
Kiwis have had plenty of experience of lockdowns over the past 24 months, but widespread protest against the Government in general, its pandemic policies in particular (the last three-month shutdown of Auckland, our largest city, was a doozy) and Ardern especially, is a politically worrying development for a 41-year-old leader more used to uncritical approval both here and abroad.
Though the prime minister initially said at the start of the protests that she had no intention of engaging with protesters, she has clearly been in listening mode. She has now announced a phased reopening of the country's borders - to vaccinated New Zealanders from Australia, from the end of February, and then to expats coming in from anywhere else from March 13.
Tourists from Australia and other countries not requiring a visa (including the UK) will be permitted in by July; incomers from other countries must wait until October.
Though visitors will no longer be marshalled by the army into a requisitioned hotel for quarantine (as has happened with the relative few who made it into the country these past two years), 10 days of self-isolation will still be mandatory.
Even Australia - which also closed its borders, and endured some of the world's longest lockdowns under a similar "Zero Covid" policy - is easing up faster than us, allowing tourists in from later this month. And this is despite the fact that 77 per cent of Kiwis are fully vaccinated - more than most other countries, including the UK.
Ardern, who has spent much of the past 24 months in media conferences urging her self-designated "team of five million" forward, gambled everything on an isolationist stance.
Certainly, it has helped save lives. Just 53 people have died here from Covid, and our prime minister has been lavished with praise as a result. For much of the pandemic, the team of five million went about their lives pretty much as normal, working maskless, travelling domestically and attending large outdoor gatherings in sunny weather, going home in the evenings to wade through tear-soaked emails from contacts abroad marvelling at our apparent Covid success.
But there has always been another team milling in the shadows, the team of one million, the expatriate Kiwis stranded abroad who have paid a heavy price for their home country's Covid elimination strategy.
On a per-capita basis, New Zealand has one of the world's biggest diasporas. The nation makes much of its bona fides as a stickler for international law and protocols, but Fortress New Zealand has been one of the few places not to allow citizens to return home as a birthright. Instead, intending returnees have taken their chances with a lottery system that has seen most applicants unable to secure a ticket.
A group of more than 15,000 New Zealanders abroad are currently suing the Ardern Government, claiming the strict border controls are a breach of their human rights. The case goes to the High Court later this month.
In the meantime, the convoy of thousands protesting Ardern's political leadership remains parked in the capital. Ardern's measures have been quite ghastly, but shutting down the capital, as they effectively have, doesn't seem an ideal way to let freedom ring.
Thousands of hard-luck stories from abroad, many amplified on social media, have created much of the current momentum. Sinead Aldrich was one such case, a young occupational therapist who left New Zealand a few years ago for the great "Kiwi OE" (or overseas experience), the cultural rite-of-passage that typically consists of late nights drinking and dancing before one's temporary day job beckons. (Had Ardern not benefited from as much back in the early 2000s when her own OE briefly took her into Tony Blair's Cabinet office?)
In the event, Aldrich found herself drafted in to care for Britain's critically ill patients during the first Covid wave. Almost as terrifying, she said in a telephone call from London last week, was the reality of being effectively abandoned by her own Government.
"Knowing that home wasn't even on the horizon broke me," she says. "It was the first time I'd ever cried on the phone to Mum."
There have been severe economic and mental convulsions for those New Zealanders for whom interaction with the outside world is imperative. An industry survey of the all-important international tourism sector found ubiquitous reports of "stress, uncertainty, mental toll, fatigue, depression and financial concerns". One restaurant owner in Auckland, which was locked down for months last year, tells me of having had to counsel two staff members out of suicide; she has since shut up shop permanently.
But probably the biggest tipping point was the politically embarrassing case of New Zealander Charlotte Bellis, a pregnant reporter with Al Jazeera stranded in Afghanistan last summer, whose only offer of safe haven to have her baby came from the Taliban. Earlier this month, Bellis and her partner were granted leave to return to New Zealand - but the case has done lasting damage to Ardern's image and approach.
Now that the Omicron variant has breached the fortress - Ardern admitted this week the wave of infection is likely to peak in March, with up to 30,000 cases a day - many are asking if the lonely path she chose for this country in the hope of eliminating the now-inevitable Covid outbreak was worth it.
At a time when overseas Governments are removing lockdown measures, New Zealand is set to face new restrictions, notably lengthy home-isolation periods for households and contacts of known cases. Ardern has also refused to rule out the prospect of future lockdowns.
Four years after first leading her party to electoral victory, and 15 months since her second easy victory (New Zealand has a three-year parliamentary cycle), "Jacindamania" is not what it was. Neither is the once limitless reservoir of popular support she enjoyed. One of the first of the year's major political polls showed the lead her Government still holds over her conservative opposition survives - but has narrowed.
"We've got a lot of work to do over the coming year," Ardern admitted this week, even as many of her team has a lot of overseas travelling to organise. Now if you'll excuse me, I also have some packing to do.
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