New Zealand’s most elite military force was required to “look after” 501 deportees from Australia in a managed isolation quarantine facility (MIQ) during the height of Covid-19.
The New Zealand Special Air Service (NZSAS) is considered the “premier combat unit” of the New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) and was set up in the 1950s to engage in “unconventional warfare”, now including counterterrorism, reconnaissance missions and operations in harsh environments like Afghanistan.
But for a period during the Covid pandemic, members were deployed to a quarantine facility where New Zealand-born criminals deported from Australia under Section 501 of its migration legislation stayed upon their arrival in Aotearoa.
The NZDF’s role between mid-2020 and mid-2022 in the MIQ system has been well covered. Personnel carried out security, management, and logistical duties at the facilities, where people coming into New Zealand would isolate before re-entering the general population.
The contribution of more than 6200 personnel as part of “Operation Protect” was the single largest deployment in more than 50 years.
However, the use of the NZSAS as part of this has not been widely reported.
During a select committee session in December, Defence Minister Judith Collins was speaking about the value of deploying NZDF personnel overseas when she briefly mentioned the NZSAS’ involvement with 501 deportees.
“Being deployed keeps them excited and interested and doing what they joined for. They did not join to do MIQ, but they did it,” she said.
“They did not join the SAS to go and look after 501s coming back from Australia as they had to do during the Covid times. But they do actually join to do what they are trained to do. That is what they need. It is one of the reasons we have got the attrition rates right down.”
The Herald at the time asked the NZDF for more information on the role of the NZSAS with 501s, but the agency decided to treat that inquiry as a request under the Official Information Act, leading to a delay in the information being provided.
The NZDF responded to the information request this week, past its due date, saying its contribution to the all-of-government response to Covid “required involvement of all available personnel from all three services and from various units”.
“Given the restrictions at the time on movement around New Zealand, personnel were deployed within their respective regions,” the response said.
“Being located in the Auckland region, NZSAS personnel were deployed to two MIQF, Jet Park and the Ramada Auckland. The Ramada Auckland was the designated facility for 501 deportees. All NZDF personnel at MIQF undertook management and security duties to protect New Zealanders from the spread of Covid-19.”
It was known that 501 deportees were quarantined at the Ramada on Federal St, but the NZSAS’ presence was not reported.
The hotel initially operated as an MIQ facility between mid-2020 and April 2021, before closing when quarantine-free travel with Australia began. It reopened as an MIQ facility when that was suspended months later.
How long the NZSAS spent with the 501s is unclear. The Herald requested the period the force was involved, but the response provided only the timespan the NZDF in general was deployed to MIQ facilities, that being between August 2020 and May 2022.
The Herald made several attempts to clarify the exact timing of the NZSAS involvement but the NZDF has not confirmed that.
Collins wouldn’t do an interview, but in a statement said NZDF personnel join to serve New Zealand “at the direction of the Government of the day”.
“All NZDF personnel who were able to be deployed to MIQ facilities did so – at the direction of the Government of the day. You will need to ask the Defence Minister at the time for further details around decisions made on the role of NZDF personnel during Covid.
“But I can say the way our people were used for a prolonged period of time to patrol MIQs led to many personnel, including some with 10-15 years’ experience, leaving for other career options.
“That has left the NZDF with a hollowed-out middle and this Government has been working hard to address that; already attrition has fallen from 15.8% in December 2022 to 7.6% in December 2024.”
Labour’s Peeni Henare was the Defence Minister during much of the pandemic and couldn’t recall ministers being involved in deciding which personnel from the NZDF were deployed and where they went.
“My recollection was there was no signoff procedure by ministers. But the NZDF, around the deployment of their people, the decision sat with them,” he told the Herald.
He wasn’t surprised the NZDF decided the “highly trained” NZSAS was needed due to the “risk of the 501 deportees”.
“A lot of those people who were sent here, 501 deportees, have some serious criminal history and, of course, public safety and security had to be at the forefront of our mind.”
Henare praised the NZDF personnel’s “public service” but acknowledged the wider point about the effect on attrition rates.
He said it’s clear the MIQ role contributed to some personnel leaving, especially when there was a “white-hot” labour market making the private sector attractive.
“It didn’t matter whether you were a sailor, soldier, an aviator, or an SAS member. We know that had a huge impact on the attrition rate.”
Dr Rhys Ball, a senior lecturer at Massey University with expertise in New Zealand’s special forces, said that like other members of the NZDF, the NZSAS would have had “little or no option” but to take part in Operation Protect regardless of how they felt about it.
“I’m sure that none of the soldiers there would have been particularly happy about taking on that role. We also see that the end result of that is the issues that we see now coming out of Covid, the attrition rates ramped up across the board.”
Ball said the 501 population in MIQ would have presented a “challenge” that required a group with specific training to monitor them.
“You’ve got everything from blue-collar sort of villains to violent criminals the Australians flacked off and sent back. They’re problematic,” he said.
“You look for who might be able to help out, people that have the sufficient training and discipline to handle that sort of problem. So the Government turned to the SAS.”
Ball said the NZSAS had training to “neutralise” threats, from the extreme end of the spectrum of having to kill someone, to “disarming someone without actually hurting them”.
“They’re trained in all sorts of unarmed combat tactics and able to hold people down, all of those skills perhaps police have, like restraining techniques.”
He said the NZSAS had the “discipline” to use the “minimum amount of force” needed to stop an incident spiralling out of control.
There are previous examples of the NZSAS being called on to assist in situations here in New Zealand, Ball said.
He mentioned the 1965 Mt Eden Prison riots, which occurred when two prisoners tried to escape custody, releasing inmates and taking prison officers hostage in the process. The NZSAS was asked to support police during the 33-hour standoff.
Jamie Ensor is a 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.
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