On February 15 this year, as a result of one positive case of the ‘Rona that had snuck through our gold standard border controls, the “Princess of Pestilence” threw Auckland into its third lockdown, complete with Police and Armed Forces manning checkpoints on the outskirts of Auckland’s regional boundaries.
Workers were told to work from home, schools were closed, events were cancelled and businesses closed rather than try to make a dollar while having to deal with all the ridiculous rules that come with a Level 3 incarceration.
The edicts from the “Podium of Truth” told us that Auckland would, for three days, be required to keep its plague to itself. The border checkpoints, we were told, would be at the same places as in Lockdown 2.0. Previous exemptions would be deemed to be still current and although thoroughly peeved, at least the workers and others who needed to cross the imaginary line to enter the City of Pox knew they could rock up to the nice policeman at their local checkpoint, lie about why they needed to urgently head into the danger zone and carry on with their daily doings.
So you can imagine my shock the next day when after checking up on the official “Website of Truth” to confirm that the Mangawhai border was supposed to be south of the town, I was unceremoniously turned around from a border checkpoint that had been placed at the northern edge of town. Since when was Mangawhai part of Auckland!
Needing to head to Whangarei to uplift some heavy building materials, it was reasonably urgent that I travelled and, for some reason, expecting such lunacy from our Controllers, I had even armed myself with a photograph of the relevant page from the Covid19.govt.nz website.
Although the photo above is rather poor quality, the designation for the northern boundary is plainly shown as “Continuing along the Auckland Regional boundary north” and the pretty picture shows the same thing.
So this glaring anomaly was brought to the attention of the long-suffering Police Senior Constable who stopped my lawful passage, but unfortunately, he was not to be swayed. He had his instructions and he had his job to do. The “website of truth” was wrong apparently. My beef was not with him however, and I discussed the situation with him. He advised that he had asked for urgent clarification from his superiors due to the clear confusion, and I might add anger, that he was bearing the brunt of, but he was still waiting for a reply.
So I gave up. But before I turned my waka around I happened to mention, with a smile on my face, that Jacinda may wish to go forth and attempt to procreate with herself (or words to that effect). With a sad look on his face, the nice policeman replied, “You can say that, but we can’t.” I bid him adieu, kicked the Coonwagon in the guts and headed for home, a cup of tea and a lie down.
Then it struck me, if I couldn’t go to Whangarei because I had been temporarily deemed to be an Aucklander, then I should just go to Auckland. And here is the silliness of the whole thing, I was now legally allowed to travel 130 kilometres into the heart of the danger zone to get my building materials, go to as many of the KFC’s and gyms as possible, gather up as much of the ‘Rona as I could lay my hands on, then bring it all back up to poor old Mangawhai, to theoretically start my very own outbreak up there, a two-hour drive away from South Auckland.
I don’t know, maybe one day I will be suprised by the lunacy and utter ineptness of this government but I’m not there yet.
One thing the Senior Constable had mentioned was that the decision to place the checkpoints in that different, illogical place, had come from the District Commander and after some eloquent spleen venting that evening on Backchat, I thought ‘what the hell, I think an OIA request is in order’.
Fortunately, Police make it easy for anyone to make an Official Information Request, providing a page on their own website for exactly that purpose. Couldn’t hurt, I thought, so I promptly sent one away, not really expecting any response, but never the less asked the who and why questions. I received no acknowledgement that my request had ever been received and I was just getting ready to follow up on it when an email from Police National Headquarters flooded in. It seems no-one in that office has surnames as it was signed simply “Nga mihi, Sarah, Ministerial Services, PNHQ, but I was still pleased to see it arrive. Kia ora Sarah, kia ora.
The upshot was that the NZ Police, in trying to be kind, ‘worked with other agencies to consider where checkpoint locations could be located in order to reduce the impact on local communities, facilitate the movement of exempt persons and last of all (because I presume it is the least important) to restrict the transmission of Covid-19‘.
Shame they never asked said local community what they wanted though.
The final paragraph is interesting however.
Due to the urgency required to implement Auckland’s regional boundaries, the COVID-19 Public Health Response (Alert Level Requirements) Order 2021 (the Order) imposed boundaries that were the same as the Auckland 2020 regional lockdown boundaries.
NZ Police OIA response to ExPFC, signed Superintendent Barry Taylor, Director – Major Events. Dated 12/03/2021.
Following the commencement of the Order, the amended northern Police checkpoint locations were found to be inconsistent with the Order, resulting in the checkpoint locations being relocated back to the same locations from the August 2020 regional lockdown.
So what I take from that was that our hopeless government were behind the eight ball again. It sounds to me like the ‘order‘ was late in coming, certainly after the stated kick-off time, they had forgotten that they had been ‘working with other agencies’ to change the boundaries, and the Police, once realising that the checkpoints were not in the lawful position, promptly changed their locations back to their lawful locations.
Good on the NZ Police for moving quickly to fix the mistake. The 12 hour turnaround is probably the quickest someone from ‘Bullshit Castle’ (PNHQ) has ever made a decision. And I would like to give a word of thanks to the boys, girls and others in Blue who stood out in the torrential rain that day up north, dutifully manning a checkpoint that the Spaghetti Heads had told them to put in the wrong place. They clearly didn’t want to be there but were doggedly doing their job. Nice one fellas, we still appreciate you, most of the time.
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