Ummmm, I hate to admit it, but Simon Bridges & David Seymour are right about this…
Covid 19 coronavirus: Solicitor-General summonsed to reveal legal basis for lockdown
The Solicitor-General has been summonsed by Parliament and asked to reveal the advice on the legality of the lockdown.
Director general of health, Ashley Bloomfield, and police chief Andrew Coster have also been summonsed by the Epidemic Response Committee.
Chairman of the committee and Opposition leader Simon Bridges said the move was unprecedented and Parliament had never summonsed the Solicitor-General before.
“The people of New Zealand have given up their freedoms for this lockdown. We all deserve to know what the legal basis was for that,” Bridges said.
“New Zealanders should be proud of the efforts they’ve made during this lockdown but they also deserve to know whether the lockdown was legal.”
Bridges said National had been asking for the legal advice for the past five weeks after “serious concerns” were raised by academics, lawyers and the Law Society.
All legal advice on the legality of lockdown and ongoing restrictions has been sought.
ACT leader David Seymour said there was “overwhelming” public interest in releasing the advice.
“The people deserve to know on what basis they have had their civil liberties restricted. The advice is particularly relevant for business owners who have been shut down by the Police and citizens who have been turned away at checkpoints or arrested.”
…folks, this isn’t geek boy political point scoring, this actually matters.
We kinda do need on the record the legal basis for this vast amputation of our civil liberties, now don’t get me wrong – I agreed with the need for a Police State during this lockdown, I didn’t like it, and I resented it, B-U-T we all get that we had to go into quarantine to protect ourselves from an out of control novel virus. When I say ‘we all get’ I’m talking about anyone with half a brain, conspiracy theorists who believe this is all a UN funded one world government plot to take over the planet using 5G can all play unimmunized in a new age kindergarten that doesn’t do vaccinations for all I care.
So we do need the legal basis for this to officially be on the record, it matters, it’s important…
The legal basis of the lockdown has been a point of contention at the committee.
Attorney-General David Parker, a Labour MP who acts as chief law officer of the Crown, appeared before the committee on April 16 and said he was confident the Government followed the law.
Parker said the law was “abundantly clear” that governments “can for reasons of public health restrict people’s liberties”.
But the advice wouldn’t be released because of legal privilege, he said.
…I have an enormous amount of respect for David Parker, he is one of the brains of Labour and if he says it’s all sweet, then it is!
B-U-T you know, just for the record, again, we should probably have the advice released so we all know eh.
ESPECIALLY because, well, because of this…
Leaked emails from Deputy Commissioner Mike Clement to district commanders three days after lockdown revealed Crown Law opinion warned police had little or no power to enforce the lockdown.
…wait, what?
The cops didn’t believe they had the powers Parliament were claiming???
Someone tell me that we aren’t not handing the advice over because someone has screwed up the paper work right?
Remind me what happened next…
Two weeks later, Bloomfield used the outdated Health Act to issue specific regulations.
…oh shit.
So we fell back on the ancient pandemic rules from the bygone era to get this across the line?
Doesn’t that make anyone else nervous?
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Wasn’t a state of emergency declared, so I would have thought the Civil Defence Emergency Act 2002 would have been used as part of the process? Could be wrong
Chapter 43 Emergency powers and Epidemic Preparedness Act 2006.
And while we are at it lets reveal the legalities should any NZ govt decide to declare or support any foreign war. Or defend the country by way of declaration of war any attack by a foreign power on our borders.
The law of common sense?? Just saying..
It needed to be done, Level 4 Lockdown. Early and total shutdown. Legal? Don’t care. Local Iwi Checkpoints needed to be done. Legal? Again, don’t care. We should be thanking our Govt. and Checkpoint volunteers for saving our butts. Nobody else would have lifted a finger for all us numbskulls. Is this the National party’s way of saying thanks? Scum.
Agreed.
I concur with Bruce Moose and with GreenBus.
It would not be surprising if legislation to cover this exact situation was not in place. Though as Bruce points out I would imagine the state of emergency would cover it. If not the state of emergency legislation obviously needs to be changed so that it does cover such a threat.
That’s not to say it is wrong to check that the laws are adequate and only by examining the legislation used will it be possible to know. But it might have been reasonable to leave that to a retrospective analysis than to make a big deal of it in the middle of the crisis when it could inspire widespread violations of the programme which could sabotage it and render all the sacrifices everyone has been making .
D J S
Hear hear.
And the timing re: Bridge’s LACK of support figures, makes this look utterly political. i.e. trying to save his and Natz a#$es and to heck with any consequences to NZ. How sad but sadly or so predictable.
I’d have thought Bridges would have learnt from his last failed attempt at the above.
As for Seymour, he’s so irrelevant (only there due to political fiddle by TraitorKey and idiot Goldsmith) and no big push by the prostitute media to make him so, will change that. Most of his increase in ‘support’ will be at the expense of Natz, so its probably a good thing.
Plus as Martyn says the ‘talent pool’ is basically non-existent and the citizens of NZ will thus get a ‘look behind the curtain’ to see NACT are nothing but ‘for hire’ prostitutes for wealthy interest and to heck with the effects it has on the majority of Kiwis.
I’d be nervous if Bridges was running the show.
Yes and your not alone. Radio NZ published that Law expert Progessor Claudia Geiringer stated ” I personally think it’s quite improper of the Epidemic response committee to try to require that legal advice given to the government be disclosed. Its also very short sighted of Simon Bridges because he seems to have momentarily forgotten that he might find himself in government one day.”
The issue again is about Bridges short sightedness. His one goal is power and it appears at any cost. Disclosure of information and in particular personal information runs rife in his caucus.
…’ Disclosure of information and in particular personal information runs rife in his caucus’…
Nailed it.
You forget one thing Andrew. Even if there was no lawful authority for the lock-down it certainly seems to have worked. Look at what’s resulted in both Britain and the USA where the lock-downs in those countries came in very late – lots of infections and deaths, whereas here in NZ while the virus has not been eliminated and there have been 21 deaths, which is dreadfully sad, the numbers of infections have reduced to a point where we were able to reduce down into Level 3 after only four weeks (Britain is still in lock-down after 7 weeks) and we can probably move into Level 2 sooner rather than later too. That’s got to be good news doesn’t it, although I guess the scary thing is the parallels which have now been drawn with the Spanish flu epidemic where the relaxing of the social contact rules back then brought about a second wave attack of the flu which caused the tens of millions of deaths around the world – not the first wave. With COVID-19 the relaxing of the rules in Europe has generated the fear that close contacts between people may trigger a second wave attack of the corona virus resulting in a larger number of infections and deaths than is already the case.
Back to the legal challenge over the authority for the lock-down, even if the legal challenge is successful what is the remedy?
The lock down was illegal, but New Zealand wanted it, and the government consented to us and we agreed. . We shut the border not Madam J! But now, what was to materialize in reality has not come to fruition, thank God. We need to consider the legality going forward. And we need to question the validity of the testing. Do asymptomatic tests generate false positive results? And if the answer is yes, it is legal to quratine a person based on that test and compel that person to be separated from their own family?
“Recent speculation that the Government’s legal advice had thrown doubt on the police enforcement powers under Level 4 is wrong. That speculation is based on draft views provided to agencies for feedback. That was not the considered advice of Crown Law, which was that there was no gap in enforcement powers.” (Scoop. Covid-19 Response: New Legal Framework As Move To Alert Level 2 Considered)
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