Labour owes NZ an apology for its Covid vaccine mandates. They ruined people’s lives - Heather du Plessis-Allan

The Government-enforced Covid vaccine mandates conrtibuted to protesters occupying Parliament's front lawn. Photo / Mark Mitchell

THREE KEY FACTS

• Vaccine mandates caused huge pain to a “substantial minority” during the Covid pandemic and Government should consider whether their benefits outweighed their harms, a new report says.
• The first phase of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Covid-19 response was presented to the Government this week.
• The damage mandates caused to social cohesion needed to be considered when planning for future outbreaks, report author Professor Tony Blakely says.

We have a “threenager” in the house. So, I’ve been listening to an audiobook, recommended by my sister-in-law, on disciplining three-years-olds.

The book says it’s important for parents to admit when they make mistakes and apologise to their children. It’s about setting examples etc, etc.

I thought about that this week when the Covid royal commission landed and the man who ran our Covid response refused to apologise for the things he got wrong.

There’s a lot that former Health Minister Chris Hipkins will feel he got right. And he may feel it’s important not to deviate from the message, but keep reminding us how right he got it, for his legacy of course.

But none of that matters to the people who are fixated on the things he got wrong and until he says he’s sorry, he can keep repeating himself till he’s blue in the face. The same goes for Jacinda Ardern and Sir Ashley Bloomfield.

Back to the report. It never really takes the gloves off. Any rebukes are gentle. But among the toughest rebukes is over the use of the Covid mandates. They were used in too many workplaces and for “too long”.

The last health mandates were only dropped in September 2022.

But Cabinet already knew in January of that year that they weren’t really effective. Because even if the Government managed to have every single unvaccinated person fired from every mandated job, Covid would still spread. The vaccine didn’t stop the transmission of the Omicron variant.

This means that Chippy and Jacinda knew they were allowing people to continue being fired from their jobs for eight months when they knew those people didn’t need to be.

If you’re being generous — which this gentle report is in a mood to be — you can give those two some slack through to March 2022 to allow for a bit of feet-dragging and getting their heads around facts. But by March, we had passed the peak and the case for mandates was “less clear”.

'Jacinda Ardern shows no interest in New Zealand any more so I wouldn’t hold my breath for an apology from her. But Chippy’s still here and still in charge of Labour.'

Thousands were stood down because of those mandates.

For some, losing their jobs would’ve also meant losing their homes, losing contact with family, marriage break-ups, mental breakdowns.

For six months, maybe eight, they were losing jobs they didn’t need to lose.

Don’t say they should’ve taken the jab. That’s their choice. No adult should be forced to take a jab they don’t want to.

I say this as a mum who just took the threenager in for two horrible jabs this week and is pregnancy-jabbed up to the eyeballs currently. I don’t have a problem with jabs. I have a problem with compelling adults to take them at the risk of losing their livelihoods. We live in a liberal democracy, not China.

The guy who wrote the report — Professor Tony Blakely — went further in his interviews than he did on paper. He said it was “undeniable” the mandates eroded trust and that they were “hugely painful” for a “substantial minority”.

If for nothing else, Labour should apologise for ruining people’s lives with the mandates.

They have all the proof they need that what they did was wrong. That awful protest outside Parliament (which was actually about mandates), the court cases that ruled the mandates were unlawful or ordered compensation, and now this report.

A lot of people were hurt by the mandates. More people are angry about them. And even more people possibly are angry about that last Auckland lockdown, which the report also said could’ve ended sooner.

The Labour Party should expect many of those voters to remain angry at them for a few years yet. Auckland may be a challenge in elections to come because of that.

Ardern shows no interest in New Zealand any more, so I wouldn’t hold my breath for an apology from her. But Chippy’s still here and still in charge of Labour and he may want to consider whether an apology will help angry voters forgive his party.

He can say he’s sorry while still maintaining the story that Labour did a great job and the best it could at the time.

Most us would understand that kind of partial concession. My threenager does. It’s what my parenting book recommends, after all.