While the Prime Minister is determined to convince voters that she is as invested in the economic response as the health response, there is one thing threatening that message on a near-daily basis: the border.
The stories of the double-standards and the frustrations at the border are now a constant reminder of the lack of bureaucratic and governmental speed and imagination. The Transmission Gully engineer denied entry while 10 family members of film crew are allowed in. The Nelson marine engineering company begging for permission to bring in a vessel to repair but told to send it to Hawaii. The countless cases of Kiwi employers holding jobs for workers who ducked overseas for a holiday before the lockdown and now can't get back three months on.
Late this week, it seemed to dawn on the Government just how much of a problem the border is to their economic recovery message. Hence, Immigration Minister Iain Lees-Galloway's Friday announcement of new border exemption categories. But that was largely window-dressing. It might change the order of priority for who gets in, but it hardly changes the numbers of who gets in. And that's the most important thing: getting more people in is crucial to our economic recovery.
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We have 13,700-odd applications for border exemptions and possibly 10,000 citizens and residents wanting to come home. We have 3200 rooms available for their quarantine and isolation. That means we can take 250 new arrivals a day. It'll take New Zealand nearly two years to clear that backlog.