The Government that slanders and won’t apologise.

I’ve put together a timeline about the Northland lockdown, so people can see how terrible the misinformation and disinformation from the Government has been, as it scapegoated two women for what was a Government blunder.

• 1 Oct 2021 – woman applies for permission to enter Northland and is granted
• 2 Oct 2021 – enters Northland
• 5 Oct 2021 – following suspicions and complaints from locals, MSD reviews permit application. Find it was granted in error, and revokes it.
• 8 Oct 2021 – Hipkins announced lockdown of Northland and says “the person obtained a document by providing false information in order to get the document to travel across the border. By the time the falsity of that information had been identified and the document had been revoked, they were already in Northland at that point.” Women leaves Northland
• 13 Oct 2021 – Ministers are formally briefed in writing that the application was approved in error
• March 2022 – Hipkins says he stands by his previous statements on the women
• September 2022 – Public find out there was no false information. Hipkins refuses to apologise

The Northland lockdown was a major event. Not only did it impact everyone living in Northland, but it cost $23 million to their economy. And the Police investigation into the “trip” involved a massive 75 police staff.

This would have all been avoided if a Government agency hadn’t made a mistake. All the costs are because of that mistake.

But that is not the worst part. The Government knew on the 5th of October that the application had been approved in error. The suspicion there was false information supplied was not confirmed (and turned out to be wrong). Regardless of whether the information was correct or not, MSD were wrong to approve the application. This was known three days before the lockdown.

Rather than tell the truth, Hipkins got up and unleashed the entire country on the women. He said they had lied and falsified information to gain the permit. They had not. He never told us that even if the info was correct, the permit was granted in error.

The women were despised from one end of New Zealand to another. The Minister himself said they had falsified information so they were criminals. The rumours about being gang affiliates and sex workers were treated more credibly because the Minister had told us they lied on their application forms.

Ministers were beyond doubt verbally briefed before the 5th of October. And they were briefed in writing on 13 October. They knew the reason the women were in Northland was because of a blunder by MSD. And they said nothing. Because they did not want to be blamed – so they blamed the women.

And even worse in March of this year Hipkins still stood by what he said. That makes it disinformation, not misinformation.

And now 11 months later, Hipkins won’t apologise for what is one of the worst character defamations by a Minister in modern history.

They claimed it was the podium of truth, and in fact it was the opposite.