Four years on from the Covid-19 lockdown that isolated Auckland for more than 100 days, local MP Andrew Bayly believes those outside the city during that time don’t appreciate the significant psychological impacts it had – and still has - on some residents.
The MP for Port Waikato, the electorate through which the southern lockdown border ran, says not everything central Government did as part of the Covid-19 response was wrong, but there are parts that could be improved in the future if local knowledge is given more weight.
Bayly wrote to the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Covid-19 outlining some of the lessons he believes need to be learnt from the lockdown to prepare New Zealand for future emergencies, which he believes climate change will lead to more of.
The extended lockdown in Auckland in the second half of 2021 is one of the focuses of the current second phase of the Royal Commission of Inquiry.
It began in August 2021 when a case of the Delta variant in Auckland forced New Zealand into the most severe alert level, allowing only “essential” movement, cancelling gatherings, and closing public facilities.
While other parts of the country moved to lower levels of the Covid-19 response, Auckland stayed at level 3 or 4 for months. Small gatherings and non-essential activities were eventually allowed, but a regional border stayed in place until December 15, keeping Aucklanders inside.
The key justification for the lengthy lockdown was to give New Zealanders across the country time to be vaccinated, therefore slowing the spread of the virus once the border opened up.
“Aucklanders have faced restrictions for an extended period of time to keep the rest of New Zealand safe. But with increased rates of vaccination it’s time to open up the ability to travel again,” then-Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said when announcing the reopening.
Bayly is the MP for Port Waikato, the electorate which covers the southwest Auckland region, down into northern Waikato. It includes townships like Pukekohe, Meremere, and Te Kauwhata, as well as a sizeable area of rural and bush land spreading to the west coast.
He shared some of the difficult situations he dealt with as the local representative to illustrate the pressures Aucklanders faced. They also highlight the breadth of responsibilities of an electorate MP during a time of crisis.
Those identified in Bayly’s submission range from getting people approved as essential workers, to helping families deal with deaths, including suspected suicides “involving people separated from their families and loved ones without support and unable to return to them”.
In one case, Bayly said a family was concerned about whether they could travel within the border to check in on their child, who the MP said had known mental health issues. After they contacted him, he “effectively ordered” the family to go to their child’s place, but he said it was too late.
The burial had to be arranged “during the most trying of circumstances”, the MP said.
“It was only with the assistance of the police that I was able to arrange for his burial with some of the immediate family first carrying the body to the burial site and then different members of the family attending his commitment.”
In another situation, Bayly said that due to the volume of calls and emails his team was receiving, he was “too slow” to help a family. He believes this resulted in another similar tragedy, an “oversight” which he says “still haunts me personally - even now”.
Speaking to the Herald about this, Bayly got teary. He said it’s a “privilege, first of all” to be an electorate MP and be taken into families’ sensitive situations. But it’s also “hard” and you can only “do what you can at the time”.
“Those are things you look upon when you’re an MP and you look back and you go, I wish I’d done that quicker, but that was part of the process.”
In his letter, Bayly said the “most profound impact” of the lockdown was “the forced separation of families” across the border. There was also an “extreme” strain on people’s mental health.
“The prolonged isolation, uncertainty and disruption to daily life continued to increase stressed, anxiety and mental health challenges for many of my constituents.”
Bayly said there was a “disconnect” between those who experienced the Auckland lockdown and those who didn’t.
He said he worked at Parliament in Wellington for months during the lockdown, dealing with local issues from afar, with his wife at home alone.
“My wife is still traumatised by it. She spent so much time on her own, and we lived in a remote area and she couldn’t have visitors. She’s just one of many who lived through that period,” he said.
“A lot of New Zealanders did, but for Aucklanders, the border was such a psychological block and such an impact on their lives.”
Another impact he mentioned was on those with court-enforced child custody arrangements where one parent lived inside the boundary and another outside. He said the handover of children “was extremely traumatic, with no ‘neutral ground’ where one parent could safely hand children over to the other”.
“It was tough on children. It’s particularly tough on the two parents trying to do their best in a really difficult situation,” he told the Herald. “Those are the types of personal stuff that just a lot of people just didn’t really understand with these borders going on.
“That was the biting bit, and that’s why when you talk to people, particularly in Auckland, they are so angry, so angry about it.”
The MP said there had been a huge amount of information for people to take in. While officials in Wellington may think people “spend all their day searching a Government website” for information, Bayly said in reality they rely on their local networks and community social media pages.
“We were probably taking 300 to 400 calls a day. Literally people ringing and just so many emails. The issue was how to get back to people, how to disseminate that information,” he told the Herald.
“That was the difficulty of being an electorate MP, responding quickly and urgently to those, trying to prioritise who needed the help and who was seeking more information. That was a really hard bit and it was relentless every day.”
One of the recommendations he made to the Royal Commission of Inquiry is that “much more discretion be given to local MPs and the police to make localised decisions under set parameters”.
“This would speed up processes and settle much of the frustration and anxieties that we witnessed on the border,” Bayly said.
Bayly said many people were initially denied “essential worker” status but were “in fact essential to a business’ operation”.
An example he gave was that of a woman who lived outside of the Auckland border but worked in quality assurance for a meat processing company within the region.
“This factory was an exporter and they could not operate under the export licence without her being on site. That meant that the entire company, with about 50, 60 employees, could not export product.
“They’re going to go bust. It took several days to be able to get her across the border, and then we had to make sure that she had the ability to cross the border every day. Otherwise, that business would have fallen over, and we had lots of businesses that fell over.”
He told the Royal Commission that what is considered an “essential worker” often depends on the specific business. Understanding what the business needs to continue operating “is only possible at a local level”.
“It would be my recommendation that MPs who are well connected with their communities and local businesses be recognised as capable of approving ‘essential work’ or ‘essential worker’ status.”
That local knowledge would also help with advising where any boundaries should be, Bayly said.
Bayly said partaking in the Royal Commission process and making his recommendation was “crucial” to ensuring processes were improved for future emergencies. He thanked the inquiry for allowing him to make his submission, despite it coming after the official closure date.
He said global warming and climate change would lead to more events like Covid. Hot environments are conducive to the spread of disease.
“New Zealand should be planning for another one of these events, unfortunately,” Bayly said.
“The opportunity is that, because we’re an island state, we can close borders, we can look after ourselves and we manage that well. If we do that well, we can actually help stop a lot of those nasty things about having borders cutting across Auckland or wherever it might be.”
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Jamie Ensor is a senior political reporter in the NZ Herald press gallery team based at Parliament. He was previously a TV reporter and digital producer in the Newshub press gallery office. He was a finalist this year for Political Journalist of the Year at the Voyager Media Awards.