The BFD transcript NewstalkZB at 10:45 am on Monday 20 September between Kerre Woodham and caller Nicola 3:20 minutes into the recording.
Nicola:
So, I’ve been trying to get my daughter, who left at the beginning of last year to go to dance school in Melbourne, back from Australia.
She broke her foot just as the government said that people needed to come home this time in July, just after Melbourne had gone into their fifth lockdown. They had a week in between when she managed to go back into the studio and break her foot badly.
I’ve been trying to get her back…basically she’s been in lockdown I think they’ve had 15 weeks in the studio, it was her dream to go.
When they first said at the beginning of last year, you know, come home, we had just signed leases and contracts and…you know, thousands and thousands of dollars that you couldn’t just throw away on the chance that this is going to end up taking two years – but it has.
She desperately wants to come home. She’s miserable, and we looked in this morning and got 10,222.
We’ve tried every…you know, she wasn’t…we tried emergency allocations because her foot is badly broken, she won’t be able to jump or move from three months yet. She’s had her foot in a moon boot for eight weeks since she did it.
She can’t drive, she can’t work, she can’t do anything and there’s just no sympathy in the world.
Everybody just says she should have come home, but she didn’t.
Kerre:
I know.
Nicola:
We have a son in England too, who’s with the Royal NZ Navy. They sent him over in Covid – he’s happy. It doesn’t worry me that he’s there but it’s so unreasonable.
Kerre:
I’d be beside myself now. Absolutely beside myself.
Nicola:
Crying. So unreasonable! People just don’t understand.
She’s a citizen. I was born here, my parents were born here, my parent’s parents were born here – and she just can’t come back. And can’t do anything. She will be homeless in the next month.
What do you do?
Kerre:
Oh, Nicola! Gosh.
Nicola:
Crying.
Kerre:
I know, I know.
Nicola:
And people are just so cruel. They just say “she should have come back”.
Kerre:
Sighs …there’s a lot of people…
Nicola:
This is just so hard. Did anybody really know that this was going to go on this long? That making the choice to go away to live your dream was going to mean you could never come home? Or that you had to be homeless?
All these people – the Bangladeshi cricket team are coming twice!
Kerre:
I know.
Nicola:
It’s so unreasonable. People just don’t get it. Crying.
Kerre:
They don’t.
Sorry.
Kerre:
Look, I’m totally with you Nicola. If my family hadn’t got home, I think I’d probably be over there by now, over in the UK. I…
Nicola:
If I could go over there now…if I could get in…but I don’t have a lease over there, it’s in her name – if I had’ve known, I would have put the lease in my name cause then I could get to Australia.
But you can’t…I can’t get there, so you can’t do anything.
People just do not understand – you can’t do anything.
Kerre:
How old is she, Nicola?
Nicola:
Well, she was 18 when she left, she’s just turned 20. So, yeah…. but the person she went over with came back to NZ because she didn’t like dance school after a month so she’s been in a flat by herself in Melbourne for two years with basically being in lockdown the whole time.
Now she has a broken foot. I mean she’s not spent any time really in the studio because there’s been a lockdown so she hasn’t made the friendships, she hasn’t made the connections she…because they’ve been in lockdown so much.
Kerre:
Oh, I can’t…I can’t even imagine as a mum what that’s doing to you. I really can’t.
Nicola:
And you don’t want to think, okay well, she has a chance. We will go on this morning and you get in a queue and then it pops up, you know? I was there at one minute past eight and I was 10,222.
Kerre:
Yeah.
Nicola:
And it’s just…I just want people to have a little bit of care and understand that people didn’t go and not come back because it was just a whim to have fun, they…this was their dream and for generations of us, we’ve gone overseas, we’ve lived our dream and when we’ve wanted to come home and when we’ve been miserable, we’ve been able to come home.
But this government is saying no, you can’t come home. We’d rather have the Bangladeshi cricket team or the…you know?
I don’t want to be angry; I don’t want to be mad at the government but it’s like…we’re taxpayers, we’ve paid tax our whole lives.
I just want…my son is in the defence force…I mean I just want a little bit of care and for people to understand that we are not all just wanting to go for a holiday and have a party. These people are real people and have real emotions and so I had to ring my daughter this morning and tell her that I didn’t get a spot and she just burst into tears.
Kerre:
Of course.
Nicola:
And she would take…if I could get a spot tomorrow, she would pack everything up and come. She doesn’t need a certain date, she could get…she’d take anything.
Kerre:
I know. Some people…the only thing I can think of is some people have suggested your local MP but I…yeah. Good luck.
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