Covid-19: Economic, social and business pressure outweighed Māori health risks, Chris Hipkins admits in affidavit
Wednesday, 8 December 2021
The Government felt pressure to move New Zealand into the traffic light system due to economic, social, and business impacts, Covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins explains in an affidavit to the Waitangi Tribunal this week.
The Waitangi Tribunal is holding an urgent inquiry into whether the Government breached Te Tiriti o Waitangi in its handling of the Covid-19 response.
In his affidavit, Hipkins said the Government knew unvaccinated Māori would be put at greater risk by entering the traffic light system early, but steps were taken to minimise the risk.
Those steps included tightening restrictions for gatherings and hospitality venues where vaccine certificates would not be used, boosting vaccination efforts, and keeping Auckland’s boundary in place for two extra weeks after the Covid protection framework went into effect.
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By October 4, “we identified quite quickly that we were unlikely to be able to eliminate the Delta outbreak completely”, he said.
One reason for that was the increasing public frustration with lockdowns which led to a decrease in restriction compliance.
Keeping Auckland in lockdown over the Christmas and New Year period also sparked concerns there would be more breaches and a “further loss of social licence”, Hipkins said.
“If it continued for too much longer, it would begin to have serious economic, social and business consequences. These include, for example, businesses closing and loss of jobs.
“We were conscious that these impacts would also likely have a disproportionate impact on Māori.”
In his affidavit, Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield said that the public health advice the Government received was to lift Auckland’s border when the nation went into the traffic light system, but not on December 3.
“Our advice was that the ‘hard’ or ‘enforced’ boundary around Auckland should be removed when Auckland and the rest of the country move to the [Covid protection framework], likely in mid-December 2021,” Bloomfield said.
“This is because there will be no public health justification to maintain a boundary around Auckland under the CPF.”
Meanwhile, at Wednesday’s session, Crown lawyer Jason Gough’s opening statement urged the tribunal to hold off on its judgment.
“We would say that the Tribunal should defer its consideration of the Treaty compliance of the overall Crown’s response to a later point in time, when all the evidence can be assessed, and appropriate voices heard.”
He said Māori and Māori organisations that had been involved in the pandemic had not had a chance to present evidence due to the fast-tracked inquiry.
Gough urged the tribunal not to find any breaches now, but said any guidance or recommendations on ways to improve the Government's response was welcome.
Gough also said Māori health was always factored into the Government’s decision-making.
He said the claim would be supported on Thursday with evidence from witnesses such as the Ministry of Health’s national director of the Covid-19 vaccination programme Joanne Gibbs, and Te Arawhiti’s chief executive Lilian Anderson.
“The Crown has been highly aware of the increased risk that Covid-19 poses to vulnerable Māori and that this has been factored into decision-making from the beginning of the pandemic right through to now,” Gough said.
“Protecting vulnerable Māori from Covid-19 was a key factor in the planning and implementation of the Covid-19 vaccination roll-out and the new framework.”
Prior to Gough's opening statement, indigenous data researcher Associate Professor Andrew Sporle said the Government must have known of the significant risks Covid-19 posed to Māori, because it was presented with15 official reports, two of which were co-authored by at least one associate minister.
But that wasn’t enough to sway decision-making towards an equitable response, Sporle said.
“[The Government] knew well in advance,” Sporle told the Tribunal.
“If an organisation [the Ministry of Health] and the Crown cannot change its approach when some of the work was produced by an associate minister, what does that point to?
“What does it take to get a response that’s based on equity? They’re not even listening to work done by an associate minister.”
Sporle said the Health Service User Index that the Government uses to measure population vaccination rates was not transparent enough in its undercount of Māori populations.
He estimated 74,000 Māori were not counted on the index based on projections from the Statistics New Zealand 2020 population estimation, which has led to an over-representation of Māori vaccination rates, and an underestimation of the resourcing needed to boost them to 90 per cent.
Crown lawyer Sean Kinsler asked Sporle if it were possible Māori were being counted in other areas of the HSU rather than in the Māori category. Sporle agreed, noting that would have also been a failing of the Government’s ability to curate accurate data.
“They’re not people who have fallen perhaps completely off the data pool, they might just be buried in there somewhere else,” Kinsler suggested.
“Yeah,” Sporle responded, “and 18 months into an epidemic is a bit late to start finding them, huh?”
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Judge Damian Stone is presiding, supported by Tribunal members Associate Professor Tom Roa, Professor Linda Tuhiwai Smith and Tania Simpson.
The hearing continues.