Crown Law said lockdown was illegal

Newstalk ZB reported:

Crown Law documents leaked to Newstalk ZB say the Government’s lockdown was unenforceable.

Attorney-General David Parker, however, says the document was a draft – and “not the considered advice of Crown Law”.

If the Government really is trying to claim the leaked document was just a draft, and the final advice was radically different – well then surely they’d release the final advice.

Cam Slater has an extensive post with the leaked advice. It makes it very clear that when the Prime Minister and Police Commissioner said you must do this or be arrested, this was not what Crown Law had told the Police.

The Government had the option of asking Parliament to pass a law to allow the lockdown. They chose not to do that. Why?

Some people might say, who cares. It was the right decision. Well it does matter. Imagine the hysteria if John Key had got up and closed down hundreds of thousands of businesses and it turned out he had no legal basis to do so.

Do you want a future Government to be able to close down businesses and force people to stay home, purely on the basis of press conferences rather than actual laws?