An open letter from a stranded Kiwi
Samantha Matheson writes:
An open letter to Jacinda Ardern, Chris Hipkins MP and the New Zealand Labour Government;
I am a kiwi citizen currently stuck in Queensland, Australia. My partner (also a kiwi citizen) and I moved over here for work just as the pandemic was hitting, when we never thought for a moment that we wouldn’t be able to have family and friends come to visit, and visa versa.
We have been here just about 2 years now, and we had made the choice last June (just before the borders were closed again) that we needed to move home to be closer to our friends, whanau and turangawaewae. We cannot sustain living life without our support systems. We have both been struggling with depression since late 2020 after 9 months without seeing family or friends as we tried to settle in a new country.
Even with Queensland closed off to Covid, we got ourselves fully vaccinated ASAP to future proof ourselves to the inevitable covid threat. We thought surely you will open the Trans-Tasman bubble even just briefly for us fully vaccinated Kiwi Citizens in areas with no covid to come home!
No such luck.
Hearing your announcement at the end of last year that NZ was opening to Kiwis stuck in Auz in mid January, we did not bother to try to book a ticket ASAP, and didn’t bother to get an MIQ spot as we thought it wasn’t necessary. We would be home soon enough!
I quit my job at a local high school as I was sure that I would be moving home before the beginning of the 2022 school year. Your government had said ‘lock it in’ and NZ was close to being 90% double vaccinated, which was the milestone in which you said you would open up again.
When you pushed the date back due to Omicron, we brushed off our tears, got ourselves organised and registered for the MIQ lobby on the 6th of January… And then you didn’t even let us join the lobby. Over this time, while being kicked in the teeth as we watched international DJ’s and sports people openly enter our own country as ‘critical workers’ (some for the third time in a year), we went and did the dutiful thing and got our booster shots.
We are now at the stage where we are triple vax’d, living in limbo and hanging out every day for an announcement from you to let us know what our fate is.
As the Australian local and federal governments consistently speak to their citizens through the media almost every day to give their latest updates, my heart flickers every time I see a NZ media notification, will it be YOU giving us an update??
I personally, have had to up my anti-depressant/anxiety medication due to the stress of all of the unknown you have created, and wake up everyday the same way. With an empty sensation in my chest, and the burning question ‘is today going to be the day?’.A week ago, my partner admitted for the first time that he has been struggling with anxiety due to the uncertainty too, which for a southern kiwi man, is no small thing. Your silence is deafening.
Yesterday, to make ourselves feel a little bit better and feel like we had SOME control over our own lives, we booked one way tickets from Brisbane to Christchurch for the start of March for both of us, and booked our pets in with a travel agency.We have been assured that our pets will get home, even if we cannot.
Trying to rent out our house, sell all of our stuff, organise a pallet of belongings to be sent home… Impossible.People need a date to know when they can rent our house, have our stuff, and the shipping company need to know when to collect and send our pallet…
Although we already have our place in Cromwell set up for our own self isolation (thanks for family who organised it), we are prepared to pay for the crappiest MIQ in a random place far from Cromwell (even though there are SO many hotels and AirBnbs in Queenstown going unused and are in desperate need of guests to keep their businesses running). We don’t care. We just want to come home and start living our lives again.
We are not one of the many stories that are categorised by most as an ’emergency situation’. We are not physically ill, we have not had immediate family pass away, we are not homeless or in immediate financial ruin.
We are the average story of most Kiwi’s currently stuck in Australia that have been overlooked time and time again.
There are many Kiwis like this. They have done everything right, yet the Government continues to treat them as second class citizens with no right to return home. Queensland had effectively no Covid-19 cases for 18 months!