Immediately after we published our story about the leaked Police emails, which revealed that the initial two weeks of the lockdown were probably illegal, Jacinda Ardern appeared on Mike Hosking’s show to discuss this and other matters.
Mike Hosking did not let her off the hook lightly:
The government has been acting and ruling by fiat. Jacinda Ardern was caught on the back foot and gave the game away by first refusing to release the Crown Law advice, and then by saying that the public complied, mainly out of fear, and therefore it is perfectly alright to assault our civil liberties.
Earlier Barry Soper expanded on some of the details that the leak contained:
It still appears that Crown Law advised the Police that they had no legal basis to enforce the lockdown.
That means all those arrested or forced to comply with the lockdown, at least in the first two weeks, were detained or impeded from their lawful activities, including operating businesses, illegally by the Police.
We slipped into a virtual police state where the government ruled by fiat and made up and changed the law as they went along.
Hiding behind the fact that they supposedly did it for our own benefit does not make acting illegally okay.
David Seymour was right when he told me that in times of emergency we should be more vigilant to abuses of our civil liberties and not excuse them away.
There should be hell to pay for this, and it might very well require a legal challenge or a judicial review. It is not good enough for the Prime Minister to say it was okay when Crown Law advice seems to say otherwise.
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