Jacinda has called in the military…
Coronavirus: Jacinda Ardern sends military in after border bungle
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has sent in a military leader to review and oversee border quarantining following the bungle which saw two women granted compassionate leave without taking Covid-19 tests.
The two women later both tested positive for Covid-19, but not before driving from Auckland to Wellington.
Ardern said the bungle was completely unacceptable and the “rigour” of the military was needed to sort out what was going at the border.
…Jacinda knows that if a leak occurs and the voting population who have been so grateful towards her for saving them from a full blown pandemic feel it gets back into NZ through public service incompetence, she and the Government she leads are toast come September.
The caution Jacinda has used in opening up the country has been partly driven by knowledge of how threadbare our public health system is and this lack of strict procedures during quarantine that have been recently exposed is the last straw, hence Jacinda sending in the no nonsense Military to have oversight of quarantines at the border.
On any other day of the week, a Political leader announcing the military taking over the border would be a universal signal for every conspiracy theorist with Information Wars membership to conflate this into a 5G inspired coup, but fortunately the news arrives exactly at a time when the country has been in foaming hatred at the two infected plague carriers from the UK romping around NZ giving kisses and cuddles to their friends so the masses will applaud Jacinda for bringing in the military.
Couple of things here.
1 – When the fuck are we going to have a far better publicly funded health system with real capacity, and no I don’t think H2’s neoliberal yawn fest is much of a solution.
2 – We wouldn’t need to send the military in to do domestic tasks if we had faith in the creaking Health Ministry.
3 – It’s a tad on the nose to have put up with a medically induced police state with an army of ‘Ok Karen’ narcs only to have the military take over border quarantines. That’s all a bit martial for my liking.
Look, we all get the need for a public health system that is functioning to keep the rest of us safe during a pandemic, but calling in the military because competent capacity has been reached is only acceptable if there is a clear undertaking to rapidly build that capacity within the civilian Ministries because constantly relying on the military and the police isn’t really something any democracy wants to get into the habit of eh?
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I keep saying taxes have to go up on the wealthy. We can talk about eloquent solutions till the cows come home but the rich got to pay there damned way for good reason, they’re the ones getting rich out of the suffering from corona induced economic syndromes and y’all at me about some bullshit link/evidence of my assertion BS, if you want. No fucks was given.
LOL Sam.
I’m guessing the military because the police said we don’t have the capacity twice in a year to divert staff from other areas.
The underfunded public service runs deep, very deep.Bill English’s small government theory that he made real is now showing just how useless they are when we need them, and we always do.
But what is going to severely test the public’s patience in the powers that be, including this government is whanau from Australia granted compassionate leave to go to the tangi of a Mongrel Mob member. I can just imagine how difficult it would have been for authorities to resist that application in the current climate. And yet with strict rules we now all know they just pissed all over the moment they left the hotel, they had to be rounded up, with one still missing. Who would have thought???
It would not surprise me if the sting in the tail of this fuck up is Aussie to declare these idiots 501’s and deport them forthwith.
This economy cannot afford such uber liberal compassion and kindness so it will be far easier to say, you come here and are held in captivity with a regime of tests until you are confirmed negative or don’t bother coming here!
There are some themes coming through loud and clear:
*Most people rich poor multicolored all did the right thing and self sacrificed to varying degrees for a common cause.
*some people we too good for the rules- some Maori with their racial road blocks, in particular gangs and the woke left who’s BLM protest made them immune to corona and legal comeback
*Government and it’s agencies are hopeless.
We have attained virus free status through the sacrifice of the people not because of government but in spite of it.
With this action you are saying your health ministry and the police have an inability to perform a core role. On that basis Blomfield needs to go. The Police head gets a qualifies pass given he has only been in the role less than 6 months. The breakdowns are not due to money – they are due to incompetence, laziness and lack of hindsight. Exactly the same type of systemic failure that lead to the sub prime meltdown of the GFC.
In the aftermath of the GFC most financial organisations had a mantra of “trust but verify”. This is good advice from the Prime Minister down. Sadly I won’t hold my breath.
Yes frank Bloomfield was just a cardboard cutout that said what he was told to say by Ministry of Health executive bureaucrats much higher than him, so he was badly advised simple as that.
Agree, Bloomfield needs to go.
You’r not going to get an improvement.
D J S
Considering senior management at a large DHB were ignoring social distancing rules during level 4 what do we expect? While we have an over paid class of management in senior position who outsource freely on the public dime, are unconcerned with their own department doing the job they are there to do and rewarding staff with knowledge & experience in said jobs by frustrating their ability to do that job and/or sacking. And for f**ks sake – sack bloody David Clarke!!!
Let’s hope old mate knows what he’s doing.
The military is quite capable of stratospheric levels of managerial incompetence.
” The military is quite capable of stratospheric levels of managerial incompetence ”
Yes a recent contributor in another post had first hand experience of the NZDF and competency was not in abundance in with the hierarchical structure of the department.
But, isn’t the admin of our military now outsourced?
https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/nz-defence-force-turning-private-contractors-rebuild-barracks-cook-meals
October 2016. NACT
But has Labour / COL reversed this.
Yes Draco you are on to it.
Everyone who enters NZ has to be subjected to a suitable period of supervised isolation (read ‘prison-like’) coupled with compulsory and regular testing which I had assumed would have been already been the case (because not to is just too stupid to contemplate being an actual option)?
If this is in fact not the case then maybe the military should be entrusted with more than just protecting the border because politicians (read National too) / bureaucrats are just too incompetent to handle anything this serious.
The best person to be in charge of this is a Bond Villain-
Should’ve been fired already Health Dept twat: Can I give this person an exemption to attend a funeral/ tangi/ wedding/ baby shower/ bbq?
Dr No: What the fuck do you think I’m going to say?
The military has gone in because Ron Mark is the one “get it done” Minister that Jacinda has in her cabinet !
He is the one competent and capable Minister who has a record of actually getting things done, unlike virtually every other minister Jacinda has
Hopefully we can now sleep safe
The military has gone in because Ron Mark is the one “get it done” Minister that Jacinda has in her cabinet !
He is the one competent and capable Minister who has a record of actually getting things done, unlike virtually every other minister Jacinda has
Hopefully we can now sleep safe
It seems to me that the role of government is to engage the various departments to perform their function in various roles.
The health department ‘s role would be to advise the government what should be put in place . The govt then has a role to appoint facilities to accomodate people in quarantine etc. The police then have a role to see that what has been arranged is carried out.
The government must be ultimately responsible for all the right people to be in the positions to make it all happen, but they can’t micro manage every individual among the multitude that finish up all having to administer the plan. So they will carry the can whoever fails.
But I think the health department has made the right plans, The police have not seen to it that they were carried out. This might have been hard especially as the police are mostly involved in punishing people once they have transgressed rather than in prevention. But bringing in the military when the police have failed is Jacinda’s only option. She can’t inspect every facility every day personally to ensure that all the tasts are done at the right time etc. she has to trust the people in place.
I can imagine that hotel staff and esp. management, like Air NZ staff and management are primarily concerned with ensuring their guests have a pleasant stay , and come back next time, and recommend the facility to their friends. Imposing restrictions, distancing, social isolation and ordering their guests around would be the antithesis of their habit or their instinct for the best interests of their business or job.
Also I suspect that they don’t have the legal power to require anyone to comply with anything.
Listening to the interview with the Air NZ boss this morning it was abundantly clear even before David Skeg was interviewed straight afterward that Air NZ staff will bring in some cases sooner or later themselves. Their arrangements are hopelessly inadequate to keep the virus out. I don’t know what input the health department has had in their arrangements. But as human error or intransigence is always going to cause the best laid plans of mice and men to “gang aft agley “the only way Jacinda can be sure of keeping it out is to close the borders completely.
D J S
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