Flushed with the success at the election the Government is now showing its true authoritarian credentials. Chris Hipkins is no longer using veiled threats, he’s actually very overt about it.
Apparently, the Government is considering making using the Covid App compulsory.
Speaking to The AM Show on Tuesday morning, Hipkins said the application was one of the best tools we have in the fight against COVID-19 and avoiding further lockdowns.
“Rates have been very low, they have gone up a bit in the last couple of days. That’s a good thing. But we really need to see those rates coming up,” he said.
“If we need to contact trace someone, we know where they have been. But we can also push out notifications to alert people very quickly if they are at more risk. This is something that we should all be doing.”
The minister said keeping a record of our movements could be essential to ensuring we have a summer out at the beach.
“We all love the freedom we have got. We all want to go to the beach over summer. We all want to have our family Christmas. One of the simple things that you can do to make sure that happens is make sure you are keeping good records so that if something happens we can contact trace quickly and we don’t have to escalate the alert levels.”
Asked what he thought of a ‘no scan, no entry’ policy for stores, Hipkins said businesses do have a role to play.
“We have to think about enforcement… If you are in a restaurant, where you ask people to wait at the door and you show them to the table, you can be enforcing QR codes, you can be saying to someone ‘scan your code then we will show you to your table’. If you are a bouncer at the door of a nightclub, make sure people are scanning in,” he said.
“Those are the things that business can do, to help us ensure that we can keep them open. Everybody wants to see business continuing as normal and a big part of that is making sure we don’t have to escalate alert levels.”
Note the overt threat. Behave, or no summer holidays for you. Also note the expansion of the snitch culture, with businesses being asked to enforce their draconian tracking plans.
Remember when people like Martyn Bradbury complained about the GCSB and SIS being able to monitor you? I do, and this is much worse.
We are now in a situation where the only Chinese Pox in New Zealand is coming through our rather porous border and quarantine facilities.
Why the need for compulsory masks?
Why the hints that mandated tracing will be coming?
This is what they do to soften you up. Watch out for various Government spokespeople starting to mouth the same stuff.
Then whammo, compulsory movement tracing.
Well, good luck getting compliance. I for one have never installed their snitch app on my phone. I won’t do it even if it is compulsory, and I will simply refuse to shop at any shop where the Karen staff insist on it.
And good luck to the Government trying to grinch up our Christmas holidays.
They can just get stuffed.
You can see how easy it is to enter an authoritarian state when people meekly comply with Government directives.
“It’s ok, it’s just a yellow star, how bad can it be” …and you keep saying that for every other imposition against your rights until you realise that no water is ever going to come out of those shower heads…and then it is too late.
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