Lady Chambers is right

Lady Deborah Chambers writes:

The emergency legislation in response to Covid-19 giving our Government the right to control our freedom of movement is no longer demonstrably justified in removing the fundamental rights to which New Zealanders are entitled.

It was once, but it isn’t anymore – I agree.

The announcement on January 26 required anyone known to be infected to lock themselves in their homes for 14 days. Anyone else in the house automatically becomes classified as a close contact and must also isolate for the same period and then for an additional 10 days as well. If in those last 10 days any of the previously uninfected close contacts in your house test positive, then the whole process starts again.

On February 14, phase 2 was announced reducing the length of self-isolation slightly to 10 days and seven days for close contacts, regardless of testing negative for “non-critical workers”.

If Omicron spreads as quickly here as it has in other countries, it seems possible that at some point nearly every household will be forced into isolation. The new rules incentivise New Zealanders to simply not get tested and not use the Covid tracer App.

This can be seen in the data for the number of people using the Covid app. On 21 January it was used by 1.16 million people and on 21 February that had dropped a massive 37% to 0.73 million people.

The closed borders continue, at least until the end of this month. The mandatory managed isolation system restricting New Zealanders’ rights to enter New Zealand including those triple-jabbed and testing negative when people in our community with Covid can isolate at home cannot be demonstrably justified as reasonable.

It once was, but now for every case at the border there are 100 times as many in the community.