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Covid-19 update: Parliament dissolution deferred until at least Monday; Aged care facilities put in lockdown; Covid-19 cases travelled to Rotorua

Covid-19 update: Parliament dissolution deferred until at least Monday; Aged care facilities put in lockdown; Covid-19 cases travelled to Rotorua
Jacinda Ardern. Getty Images.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has announced the dissolution of Parliament will be deferred until at least Monday.

Parliament was due to dissolve this morning. This would have brought the parliamentary term to an end, but wouldn’t have prevented the Government from making decisions.

Ardern said the Electoral Commission was providing her with options around the September 19 election.  

She said it had plans in place enabling it to run an election at Level 2. Otherwise the latest date the election can be deferred to, before the situation gets more complicated legally, is November 21.

Ardern said she didn’t want to be standing on a podium addressing the country under the current circumstances.

Both National and ACT had called for the parliamentary term to be extended.

ACT Leader David Seymour said: “If political parties can’t get out and campaign, Parliament needs to be able to continue to function, ask questions, and hold the Government to account,” he said.

"Everyone is facing great uncertainty, and it's important that we keep Parliament open as a means for transparency and accountability."

National MP Simon Bridges tweeted:

Aged care facilities in lockdown

Ardern said all aged care facilities in New Zealand will go into lockdown from midday Wednesday.

This means aged care facilities will need to close their doors to everyone other than staff and essential deliveries.

Ardern said work was underway to ensure staff don’t work across multiple sites.

On Tuesday night she announced Auckland will go into Level 3, and the rest of the country Level 2, from midday Wednesday until midnight Friday. 

Movements of Covid-19 cases being traced

Director General of Health Ashley Bloomfield said two of the four people who have contracted Covid-19 from an unknown source travelled from Auckland to Rotorua on Saturday.

Ardern said it was unnecessary for Rotorua to go into Level 3 lockdown like Auckland, where the infected family lives.

Bloomfield said the workplace of one of the Covid-19 patients - a finance company - has been closed. All 130 staff are being tested. Three people are symptomatic.

The Mt Wellington premise where another Covid-19 patient works, as well as the company's other three Auckland premises, have been closed and 160 employees are being tested.

A child who lives with the four people infected with Covid-19 is a Mt Albert Primary School student. 

The Ministry of Health is looking at moving the four patients to managed isolation/quarantine facilities.  

Public health response scaling up

Bloomfield said contact tracing and testing are scaling up. 

He said genome testing was also underway to see whether the strand of Covid-19 in the four new cases can be matched to cases caught at the border. This could help trace the source. 

Ardern urged people not to get tested if they weren’t sick and hadn't had contact with people coming across the border. 

People are also being asked to wear masks.

Police Commissioner Andrew Coster said nine checkpoints are being set up around Auckland - five in the north and four in the south. 

He said police officeres, who are soon expected to be assisted by Defence Force staff, will be stopping vehicles to check whether travel is essential. 

Here's a copy of Ministry of Health advice:

Auckland

Under Alert Level 3, you are encouraged work from home if you can.

Travel and self-isolation

If you are currently in Auckland and do not live in Auckland, we suggest that you go home. Practise good hygiene and be conscious of your health. We recommend that you keep your bubble small.

Businesses

Businesses are able to open, but should not physically interact with customers.

Essential services including healthcare, justice services and businesses providing necessities are able to open.

Bars and restaurants should close, but takeaways are allowed.

Education

Schools in Auckland can safely open but will have limited capacity. Where possible we encourage students to learn from home.

When you're out and about

Maintain physical distancing of 2 metres outside your home, including on public transport.

It is highly recommended that you wear a mask if you are out and about.

Public transport can continue to operate with strict health and safety requirements. You should maintain physical distancing and wearing a mask.

Public venues should close. This includes libraries, museums, cinemas, food courts, gyms, pools, playgrounds and markets.

Gatherings

Gatherings of up to 10 people can continue, but only for wedding services, funerals and tangihanga. Physical distancing and public health measures should be maintained.

At-risk people

People at high risk of severe illness such as older people and those with existing medical conditions are encouraged to stay at home where possible, and take additional precautions when leaving home.

Further detail

Alert System overview

Rest of New Zealand

The rest of New Zealand will move to Alert Level 2 at 12 noon on Wednesday 12 August.

You can still continue to go to work and school, with physical distancing.

Wear masks if you can in public.

No more than 100 people at gatherings, including weddings, birthdays, funerals and tangihanga.

Businesses can open to the public if they are following public health guidance, which include physical distancing and record keeping.

People at higher risk of severe illness from COVID-19, for example those with underlying medical conditions and old people are encouraged to take additional precautions when leaving home.

Practice good hygiene - stay home if sick.

Alert System overview

We welcome your comments below. If you are not already registered, please register to comment.

Remember we welcome robust, respectful and insightful debate. We don't welcome abusive or defamatory comments and will de-register those repeatedly making such comments. Our current comment policy is here.

123 Comments

My daughter studying in south Auckland private school. She told me one of student has negative test but his sister has been tested positive. I believe this was going from last one week. My problem is what government was doing before? Why that boy was allowed in school? Is it because of election that government was hiding the facts? Don't know.

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Sounds like unsubstantiated rumour to me.

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Can you just be straight up say what you do for a job? Do you work for the labour party? Prefer to know if i am reading someone who is paid to post.

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You go first.

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i have no affiliations with any political party's whatsoever. Easy!

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On the basis of your answer, I can say the same. Easy!

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You are lying. You have done work for Labor - specifically on Chinese sounding names count.

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"Chinese sounding names" on that basis I knew few people with surname Tong. They don't look Chinese at all..

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Lol, this garbage again.

I'm not lying, I'm not Rob Salmond, I'm not and never have been a member of any political party nor done any work for them. I did donate a three-figure sum to Labour over a decade ago, but other than that I have no affiliation with them whatsoever. I've never attended any political party meetings either, apart from watching a couple of national-level events livestreamed (Kim Dotcom's Moment of Truth, and Labour's recent campaign launch, for example).

I am genuinely flattered that you seem to think I am Rob Salmond though, he's a very smart guy. The problem with Labour "Chinese-sounding names" debacle was entirely in the way that Labour MPs - such as Phil Twyford - chose to present it to the media. The better description of the findings from the research is actually "surnames of the buyers of houses in Auckland are statistically skewed towards surnames of a Chinese ethnic origin, to a degree that outstrips the proportion of Chinese that make up the population of Auckland itself, which suggests that these buyers are largely of foreign origin, which because of a lack of record keeping by this government we have no way of proving". That doesn't fit into a sound bite, though.

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lol .. do you get paid per post or per line ?

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No, I don't get paid to post at all, I choose to use my time generally to inform people and debate against people who seem like they're worth debating.

You seem to be quite happy to spread lies about me though, so I figured I'd give a thorough response. People can make up their own minds whether I'm lying or not based on what I've written.

For the record, the reason paashaas thinks I'm Rob Salmond is because the first time I registered on Interest.co.nz was about 3-4 years ago, around the time the Chinese sounding name crap was going through the media. I came onto this site and defended the underlying statistical research that was done by Rob Salmond, while attacking Phil Twyford, much as I have just done so above. I recently came back commenting on interest.co.nz a few months ago, I believe around the time lockdown here started. Evidently I said enough pro-Labour (and just generally factually informed) things, and I think I might have called paashaas out on some crap he was spouting, that paashass decided to go digging about when I registered on interest.co.nz and what else I've said here, discovered my comments from years ago and put 2 and 7 together to get 4 and magically decided that I was Rob Salmond. It's kind of creepy and obsessive behaviour, to be honest.

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"creepy and obsessive" ? no need to get upset ; be kind etc. etc.

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I see you didn't deny any of that. Thanks for confirming my suspicion.

I don't get upset when talking to people on the internet, although evidently you did get upset about whatever it was I told you that caused you to spend time digging up my old comments.

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paashaas,

I don't know Lanthanide, but I believe what he is saying. Either come up with proof of your assertions, or p...off. You come across as an unpleasant troll.

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Yikes! Seems pretty defensive. My original comment was directed at your obsessive partisanship.

My guess is not paid per line, but is a government employee who rely s on Labour (the taxpayer) for a crust?

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Nope, not employed by government. Happy to tell you what sector / role I work in (if you'd even believe me?), but you need to go first.

Also not being defensive, just replying to someone who seems to be weirdly obsessed with me in plain and clear terms.

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Thats a long piece of string - Fergus...seemed like a sensible comment to me?

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It *does* sound like unsubstantiated rumour, though. Do you honestly disagree? Regardless of what Lanthanide does for a job.

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Lathanida, with all due respect it is not necessary to post/reply to every commentator ,or hog a thread, when sometimes, no matter how difficult, less is best. As you suggested/ advised or indeed rumoured during the weekend,that the bubonic plague is very easily treated and penicillin is the preferred antibiotic, when clearly it is not the case ..

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You should go tell the CDC they're giving bad advice, then: https://www.cdc.gov/plague/faq/index.html#treated

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The CDC article, provides that antibiotics are used in the treatment of bubonic plague. Penicillin ,as you advised is not and without the need to repeat is not the first line antibiotic , for the treatment of bubonic plague. It is not me providing incorrect advice.
https://www.who.int/csr/resources/publications/plague/whocdscsredc992b…

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Yes, sorry for using a specific and basic form of antibiotic, instead of being more general and just saying "antibiotics". My mistake, I'll remember it for next time.

My actual point still stands - the plague is easily addressed by the drugs available in modern medicine and is nothing to worry about. It doesn't require some elaborate or expensive treatment regime.

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Why not Cowpat. Lathanida, like others, can respond to negative comments to defend themselves. Its called a balanced discussion but that obviously does not exist in your play-book.

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I will post you more detailswhen I get. I don't like to spread rumors. I am waiting more details from Government about family.

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Friend just phoned from the Northcote testing station. He's been queuing in his car since 8:30. Traffic backed up for 1km down Lake Rd waiting to get tested and now people are giving up in frustration.

This COVID testing station suddenly appeared outside Northcote shops a week ago so what have the Govt been keeping from the public and why only one testing station between Whangaparoa and the city!

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Traffic is completely buggered all over, people are smashing the supermarkets or driving in to work to pick up stuff too.

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If people weren't such dropkicks and didn't overburden the testing stations despite being symptom free then everything would be fine. The same goes for the panic buying at the supermarkets...sometimes you just can't fix stupid!

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Most virus carriers are symptom free. And for very obvious reason they are the most dangerous careers. So whether or not selfishness is the motive, the outcome cannot be bad.
Testing symptomatic people is the stupid thing to do really, as often there are other avenues to diagnose symptomatic patients (like CT of their longs) and the protocol can easily require for people with any type of flu like symptoms to self isolate for 20 days or so.

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CT their lungs? Do you realise how much more health resource is taken by doing that compared to a nasal/throat swab at a drive-thru testing centre? Someone has to clean down the CT scanner bed, the possibly infectious person has to enter the clinic to get to the CT scanner.

That statement is next level stupid.

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Stupid I maybe and more stupid ct scan idea is. Thanks for clarifying that bit of my comment. But what do you think the risk of spread is coming from? people with symptoms (who for obvious reasons should distance themselves, even if they are not tested) or symptom free individuals? statistic shows that a great number of careers are either symptom free or have weak symptoms. my main argument is that testing people with symptoms (if your objective is to prevent community spread) is not a great idea as you can easily ask them to isolate themselves. The real danger is for people who show no symptoms and are spreading it to others.

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Testing people with symptoms makes perfect sense. The unsymptomatic often won't get tested, because they have no reason to.. until you give them no choice. You test symptomatic people, then every single contact of theirs, that's how you get back to the unsymptomatic who don't volunteer to get tested. They won't refuse, (or will be ordered into isolation anyway) once they are told that the guy Steve they had lunch with two days ago has tested positive.

The testing provides you a place to start the contact tracing, and once you have a positive test to work out from, everybody is assumed infected until they get a negative test result.

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Pragmatist, you see the original complain was people turned up to test without symptoms, right?

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I haven't voted Labour since '84, but I can't remember a better communicator or a more honest one than our PM.

Note the difference with the leader of the Opposition, rushing to divulge what the PM had invited her to learn. Cheap attempt to gain advantage. We are watching one of the starkest differences in approach, on the planet.

But the leader of the Opposition is clearly part of the past. We are headed somewhere different now, and I'm becoming very sure who I want in charge. Now we need the MSM to come to the party, kickstart the real debate. It's time.

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Couldn't agree more.
Whatever anyone else is seeing, I just went to Countdown; normal time for me at 10.30 am Wednesday. Did the normal shop and no more; went to the self-checkout without waiting and was in and out in 10 minutes.
I'm sure it differs, but the communication from all and sundry has been excellent, right from every phone in the house going off, loudly, last night.
Judith Collins had yet another chance at statesmanship today and muffed it.

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powerdonkiwi
Agree - excellent both Jacinda and Bloomifeld are great communicators.
Probably more importantly, she is proving to be both decisive and has clear and pre-planned strategies - this must give all Kiwis confidence.
I compare our situation to the confusion, indecisive and conflicting action by Trump - it is not surprising our death rate is 4 per million to USA over 500 per million.

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So are ‘Marketers and Spin-doctors’ - great communicators.
You want a good CEO with clear vision and plan. One that tells it like it is, not spinning crap like.... ‘let’s keep moving’

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You want the Militant Socialist Movement to arrive? They're here! Haven't you seen the signs "Let's Keep Moving". Bet they wish they could go back and change that slogan though. Maybe to "Let's Keep Not Moving" and save on paint.

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I happen to be a student of energy-supply, and the Limits to Growth. My studies have told me that it doesn't matted who does the drawing-down of resources, it's the depleting that is the problem. I see real communism as an attempt by one disenfranchised echelon (workers/peasants) to tap into the resource stream. I see the denigration of communism, as the elite practicing propaganda. And I see almost all wars as being fights over resources (despite the winners writing the histories). I also see that real communism has a flaw; you cannot vote out the scum when they rise to the surface. So they become totalitarian, not communist. They're only called the latter by those who need to peddle a story. And I rate Putin about equal to Nixon in moral terms, but ahead intellectually.

But all that aside, I'd rather someone who cared, to be in charge. The alternative has a track-record that suggests unpleasantness, arrogance and a certain whiff of dis-ingenuousness. Pass.

As for Let's not keep moving - genius. Possibly the only way to avoid collapse, and certainly less viral transmission

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The world will always have different types of people; the relevant in this example being those that want power and those that do not. The best thing about capitalism is you can (for the most part) see and measure those who want and achieve power; it's decided by money. And for that reason, it can be controlled. Corruption can be minimised, as with intergenerational nepotism. The problem with communism (and to that extent socialism) is that those people who want power don't go away; they only find other ways to achieve it which by and large results in corruption leading, as you say, to totalitarianism. For that reason I support social democracy within a progressive mixed capitalist society (which I assume most people do but don't realise).

I couldn't care less how nice or unpleasent my leader is - I care about their work ethic, honesty, integrity, and fundamental view/understanding about how the world works. Most of all, I care about their ability recognise capability in the people they choose to rely upon, and to act decisively when it is realved someone is corrupt, conflicted, or incompetent. Yet, I care that they consider all types of views not just the popular ones. Ardern may be popular, yet Collins fits my definition of a better leader.

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Democracy belongs to times of surplus ...
those times are in the rear view mirror

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Well said Kotare

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What a confused ramble. You claim to care about honesty, yet somehow rate Collins ahead of Ardern. "How the world works" is such a vague statement as to be completely meaningless. Why can't you just admit that you prefer the status quo and couldn't give a stuff how that can be maintained?

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The difference between a communist and a capitalist used to be $10,000, Maybe the price has gone up lately.

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I disagree about the PM's skills as a communicator. She is not strong at actual _communication_ IMHO.

She is a politician of great skill, and I think very intelligent. I think as an intelligent person she forgets that the audience don't know what she knows.

Her points are not made clearly. She runs answers together and you end up with a happy feeling but not much idea of what has actually been said.

This is shown by the confusion we have seen in the press gallery - many have criticised the press, but I feel for them as they are just trying to get to the facts.

I'm listening to her now. She has been talking non stop for about 10 minutes and delivering new information in a rapid stream. That is a poor method of communication to the public, nobody is taking that all in.

Compare it to a lecture, where the lecturer is at least writing notes on the board, and all students have pen and paper in front of them.

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The press are so full of assumptions (the generated propaganda that our cohort puts out to comfort itself - that those who resent us getting their oil are terrorists, that growth is possible for us forever, and for them somehow even though we're screwing their resources from under them) that I don't rate them to ask the right questions anyway.

Not one of them questions 'the economy' - not even Kim Hill. Not one of them questions 'Growth'. Certainly none challenge the combination 'Economic Growth'. And few challenge GDP. These are Titanic issues; the virus is a sliding deckchair.

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If Ardern is unclear, you need to check out a Trump press conference. Trump in comparison would be almost a mute. Hence most mainstream media now ignoring him. American acquaintances of mine would give just about anything to swap leaders.

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Is anyone trumpeting the Trump as the best communicator in the world? Apart from himself?

As a contrarian view, a friend of mine has a theory that Trump has already achieved what he set out to do - for himself and his cronies.
So now he doesn't really care.
Reduce taxes, zero interest rates & pump the sharemarket.

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This is spectacular failure on the part of the Government , and Jacinda is not being honest with us . ( again )

She is well known for not being honest and upfront , and showed her true colours during the last election

Why are they not being upfront with us ?

They are not telling us the whole story because they have messed up the testing at the airport , its been utterly shambolic .

To say they dont know how this family got it is simply dishonest , its an outright lie and the truth has to come out .

If he was working at the airport or a quarantine centre , then we need to know

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But you would say that.

To say they dont know how this family got it is simply dishonest , its an outright lie and the truth has to come out .

You sound like someone who calls up talk back radio shows.

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You sound like someone who hates people who call up talkback shows.

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I don't hate them, I feel sorry for them.

That reminds me of my defacto ma-in-law who reckons sex should take more intellectual capacity.

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I find them amusing. And they remind me there is a lot of money in liquor.

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On the midnight to dawn show half the callers were either pissed to the eyeballs or seriously injured

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That is an outlandish claim @Boatman. I have at times valued your perspectives and opinions on various topics on this site but this claim feels like something straight out of the conspiracy theorists.

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Agreed, except I honestly don't recall Boatman ever posting a sensible comment.

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Merv, is that you?

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lol

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That’s unlikely. It would be a stupid lie, easily uncovered. You are enraged by absolutely everything Jacinda says or does- so it’s hard to take such an unverified assertion seriously.

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I’m inclined to agree, the trip to Rotorua looks like a tourist junket, there Is more explaining required.
Perhaps someone came across the border as an essential worker...

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Shipboy...do you start every sentence,on every subject with "... This is a spectacular failure on the part of the Government" ?

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One of the cases works at a finance company with 100 plus employees. Now closed
The other works at a cool store in Mt Wellington (very high risk from Melbourne experience). Cool storage company has 4 other sites around Auckland. Hopefully, they don't share employees between sites.

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Hope the NZ Government is ramping the Electoral Commission up to do online-voting.

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Online voting cannot be made secure enough and since the government hasn't even managed to do it for local government elections, they certainly won't be doing it for this general election.

There are existing provisions for voting by mail, and for the visually impaired voting by dictation over phone. They might expand access for those things. We also have 2 weeks of advance voting, and it's likely they'll have even more polling places this year due to expected demand due to COVID.

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That doesn't sound very democratic to me.
I'd rather wait and know that at the very least, every one who was eligible to vote had as few barriers to them exercising that right as possible.

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What's undemocratic about it?
You have to be registered to vote.
It has been possible to update your details online for some years
Security looks good
ID yourself and once identified, vote, and your record is locked
Doesn't preclude anyone from voting in the usual way and not voting online

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Security absolutely does not look good. Online voting is a terrible idea.

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There are fundamental security tradeoffs that can't be ensured with online voting, with people voting from their own devices.

One is surety that your vote is private - legally you aren't allowed to intimidate or bribe people to vote in a particular way, or not vote, and this is easily ensured at public polling places because no-one knows who you have truly voted for behind the screen. People voting on their own devices at home aren't protected in this way.

Another is surety that your vote has been registered and counted accurately. Again in-person voting with scrutineers who are tasked with integrity of the ballot boxes provide this guarantee. Phishing sites and vote hijacking are too high a risk for e-voting from unsecured terminals.

What potentially *could* be feasible is in-person voting on an electronic platform. But if you're doing in-person voting you might as well just continue with the low-tech pen and paper process we have now, because it's easier to secure than any technological implementation would be.

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Someone who flies for AirNZ lives with my family. He's returning from 4 days in San Francisco tonight, he will get tested at the airport on his arrival and then come home where he has to self-isolate in his room for 2 days (that's when he gets the result of his test). He obviously still needs to go to the toilet (doesn't have an ensuite) and to the kitchen to eat. Last week he flew a day trip to Sydney (didn't get out of the airport) and a 3 day trip to Hong Kong. On his return from Hong Kong, he was not required to self isolate at all (and he did not).

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You should choose your boarders more carefully. Yvil household to be under strict quarantine shortly.

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He's a very good friend and a great person, that's why he's staying with us. I'm not worried in the slightest about CV.

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"How not to run an effective border quarrantine operation". This is your current govt folks, costing us billions due to their failure to plug gaping holes in a half assed operation. That we have not had a resurgence before now is obviously down to luck.

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The whole world is watching...

https://youtu.be/zj3d1oBj3Wo

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83k subs and 6k views. Wow the whole world is watching! Some obscure youtuber from the northern hemisphere telling us how to run our country...

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You forgot to mention the climate change denier website that clown is associated with.

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So you call him a clown pragmatist.
Well I suggest you check out his credentials and if yours are better let me know.
It's rather a long list:

People are constantly questioning my credentials. Here are a few of them:

BS Geology, Arizona State University
Masters Electrical Engineering, Rice University
Boston University Geology
Northern Arizona University Computer Science
Colorado State University Computer Science
University of New Mexico Geochemistry

Lifelong environmentalist.
I testified at my first Congressional hearing in support of Wilderness in 1972.
I fought for the Clean Air and Water acts
Wilderness Ranger Cibola National Forest, New Mexico
Wilderness Ranger Santa Fe National Forest, New Mexico
Currently battling the City of Boulder, Colorado to stop development on the South Boulder Wetlands
Full time cyclist for all my local transportation, for the past 40 years

Teacher.
Science teacher, Athletic Director and Soccer Coach at Oak Creek Ranch School, Arizona
Math teacher at Phoenix Country Day School
Substitute teacher at Murphy School District, Phoenix Arizona
Computer instructor at Tomball College, Texas

Geologist.
Geothermal research at Los Alamos National Labs
Oil shale research at Los Alamos National Labs
Thermodynamic research of methane hydrates at Los Alamos National Labs
Volcano research at Los Alamos National Labs
Safety Analysis Report for the Permian Basin DOE nuclear waste disposal site
Volunteer curator Arizona Mineral Museum

Electrical Engineer
Compaq/SGI MIPS consortium design team
Power PC design team IBM/Apple/Motorola (Used in most game consoles over the last three decades, and PowerMacs)
Sandia Labs computer architect
Sandia Labs representative to Al Gore’s Bankers Trust key escrow consortium
Cyrix Media GX microprocessor design team manager
Raycer Graphics OpenGL graphics processor verification lead
Design manager Hitachi/ST SH5 microprocessor
Verification lead MemoryLogix microprocessor
Founder, design lead Visual Media video effects/editing software
OpenGL driver development ATI
Itanium/i7 design team Intel (very likely being used by you right now)
Sped up Helicos DNA sequencing algorithm by 50X
Sped up NCAR weather microphysics kernel by 500X
Ported NCAR’s radiative transfer model to GPU
Ported NCAR’s WRF weather model to Windows
Drone visualization and control software for the US military
Medical device control systems (under NDA)
Virtual reality visualization design (under NDA)
Radio control and visualization software (under NDA)

There are many more projects I haven’t listed here. You will be hard pressed to find anyone with a broader and more successful career in science, education, environment and engineering. I use the same skill set and techniques to analyze climate science claims, as I have used in science/engineering.

Your computer/game consoles work, partly due to my efforts. By contrast, climate science doesn’t work, because it is done largely by dishonest, incompetent hacks who don’t follow or even understand any legitimate methodology.

I don’t receive any funding from anyone, other than small donations to my blog – which work out to about $5/hour. I hate cars and would love to see 90% of them off the road. I have been hit by cars several times riding my bicycle, and they foul the air with pollution.

https://realclimatescience.com/who-is-tony-heller/

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You forgot tinfoil hat manufacturer..

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A list of credentials means little, i work with a couple of highly qualified mechanical engineers that I wouldn't trust to design a reliable can opener, one of them i wouldn't trust to go to a mall and buy a decent can opener tbh. One look at the website an the tinfoil hat territory it lives in should be enough.

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Imagine John was in charged and managing this crisis, I can kind of seeing him saying with a smile "Yeah it will be alright, let it spread"

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At the end of the day.....

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What comes after the end of the day??? I want to know.... Lol. Is it the covid 19 is not a crisis but a positive challenge to unite the country???

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I do not blame the Government for the lock-down. It was what most health experts were recommending and it was successful.
But I blame them for inaccurate information, hiding facts and incompetent crisis management. Anything that relied on their organisation, management and execution ended up lacking. The only successful bit was for people who listened, with so little need to enforcement, to government.

ONce NZ decided to go down the elimination route, it was obvious what government needed to do: they needed to ensure that the incoming passengers do not carry the diseases to our population. If they know that they are not capable of that (which they did not say that at any time), then the elimination objective should have been replaced by preparing for a different route. It is very obvious to me that NZ government has failed massively as they did not have a clear strategy. Elimination strategy would have required all resources and more to be directed at screening incoming people and a real assessment of the government capability to execute it. It was very very obvious that they were not up to the task and they must have known that they are not capable of doing it. Yet they continued to divert attention, avoid honest and transparent communication and just hoping for luck.

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They have been doing the right things - but they have been consistently doing them poorly and late .
No execution - just like the other policy areas.

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So many hindsight armchair prime ministers on Interest lately. It seems the issue is who's making the decision, rather than what the decision is.

It's been abundantly clear that this government went hard and early. Look globally. I'm not sure what more you expect at this point.

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The thing you have missed is that a lot of the "Armchair prime ministers" were correct. Many people have picked many things accurately, a few have got enough right to suggest bonafide intelligence.

I would ask - What have our Govt been doing? They have had 102 days to prepare for this, yet still appear to be rushed and reactive.

- Masks should have been priortised and distributed. $250mil could have been spend on a 50 pack of masks for every single human in the country. A much better spend than half the junk they have actually "bought"
- Hospitals should have been prepping, preparing isolation wards, and setting up so that they could maintain day to day heathcare along with Covid.
- Quarantine facilities should have been planned in advance. Not wait until they are full then start looking for the next one.
- Testing should have been compulsory the entire time for anyone displaying symptoms.
- Contact tracing process should have been worked on, and been ready to roll out. Not a half-arsed app that barely functions.

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And also snipers on isolation center roof tops to 'discourage' escape attempts... Kek

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Actually they've done a huge number of things well and on-time. You just don't know what they are because they did them well and on-time so you never saw them as being bad and therefore didn't complain about it.

Very easy to complain about the 1/3rd of the iceberg sitting above the water line, and be completely unaware of the 2/3rds sitting under it.

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Lol, I would use that analogy the other way. The 1/3 above is the things they have done right, is being oohed and aahed at by the masses on the deck, meanwhile the 2/3 below is ripping apart the hull.

Also, out of interest what are the things they have done well and on-time?

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Yes I am keen to hear about these well and on time things too. I might offer one partial example; they scaled up the testing to a sufficient degree - though it was a month late.

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The only thing I could come up with is that they did stop most foreign nationals from entering. i.e. tourists and students. I simply cannot believe National would have implemented something like that.

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The thing is, you're setting a fairly high bar for what you expect as 'minimum competence'. So when they do something well, you just say "well anyone should have been able to do that, so they get no credit for it", forgetting that piratically every other country in the world has shown that "anyone" CAN'T do it.

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I think you confuse competence for natural advantages.
We are an isolated island with low population density. We should always be better under this sort of global issue.

None of us will ever know how we would have faired under other circumstances, however we can still call out issues that appear to be blatantly obvious.

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And I think you have no idea just how much work is going on behind the scenes in addressing COVID-19.

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so how do you know ?
You do not work for the government ( or Labor ) you say - and yet like to refer to that special inside knowledge the great unwashed are not privy to.

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Same here. Jacinda only did a bare minimum job at her role as pm and most thinks she is best leader ever!!! Sure if you compare her to the likes of trump then yea she is awsome but the bar sure is low.....

This is like cases where CEO gets big fat bonus for just doing a mananger job without any special groundbreaking input for the company.

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Same here. Jacinda only did a bare minimum job at her role as pm and most thinks she is best leader ever!!! Sure if you compare her to the likes of trump then yea she is awsome but the bar sure is low.....

This is like cases where CEO gets big fat bonus for just doing a mananger job without any special groundbreaking input for the company.

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You really are tiresome.

I mean precisely what I said

I never claimed to know the details myself, or have special insider knowledge.

I simply stated my opinion.

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Ms Ardern eloquently dodged the question in today's presser about the testing of workers in managed isolation facilities. Reiterating repeatedly that workers at Jetpark quarantine facility were tested weekly. But ignoring the other facilities where countless people have arrived asymptomatic and have been in managed isolation for 3-12 days before testing positive and then being transferred to Jetpark. The workers in those facilities have been exposed to CV19. But have not been tested on a frequent basis or at all. They have had to negotiate with workers and unions to make asymptomatic testing mandatory.

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Just purchased online NZ made face masks for the family - hope you all have too - especially boatman with all those lies flying around?

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Boatman needs spray - voila, flies lying around.

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What's the bet, I think it's wide spread and we lost this battle

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Being widespread may be the best thing in the long run.

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it's a tough choice now, level 4 and lots more borrowed money? My daughter if off work again, does she get another 8k? I'm due to be in the south Island this weekend, going to have to cancel as I cannot afford to be stuck down there, with cattle here needing attention daily.

Once people symptomatic go on trips to tourist sites in Rotorua, it's not hard to imagine it's about to go ballistic. Lockdown has failed. We spent billions needlessly and now get to suffer austerity policies for years to come.
Should have protected the vulnerable and the rest just gone about business as usual, just been to town, went into shop and he asked me to sign in, I said "forget it" and walked out.

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"Protect the vulnerable?" - and how does one accomplish this my friend? Easier said than done. We are not just talking about shutting down rest homes. There are hundreds of thousands of kiwis (comprised of a hugely heterogeneous demographic) with a plethora of different and concurrent co-morbidities throughout NZ.

As for you walking out of a shop because you couldn't be arsed to facilitate a request to contact trace, well, you are part of the problem.

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we are only level two and not required to sign in, the shopkeeper was being an ass. Lock up rest homes, hope we get herd immunity soon.

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Well we spent billions on people sitting on their butts. We could have tasked that money to protect the vulnerable no matter how complex it would have been. Labour went for the low hanging fruit because it was easier to measure, easier to implement, and cabinet is only capable of easy at best. However, it wasn't necessarly the best course of action.

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The 3 that deliberately tripped off to Rotorua in a symptomatic condition, knowing they were sick should be named. If they don't like it - tough

The Whangarei guy who broke into the Crowne Plaza was named. Why not those who flaunt the rules

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GUILLOTINE! GUILLOTINE! (now where did I leave my knitting?...)

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Actually the initial lockdown succeeded but the subsequent processes failed ie quarantine all inbound passengers for 12 days except for the bit between the door of the aircraft and the hotel.

If the horse has bolted then the last 6 months and billions spent have been for nought.

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Hmm ..I suspect that had we followed your advice there is a chance you would not be commenting on this sight right now Andrew..surprised at your level of pessimism? however reading your last sentence sums it up really

"Should have protected the vulnerable and the rest just gone about business as usual, just been to town, went into shop and he asked me to sign in, I said "forget it" and walked out."

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I think we should have locked down sooner as a precaution, once you miss that window, it's almost impossible to control the future. This looks to have been sitting in the community just biding time. Now it could be well and truly out of the bag, which I am not happy about, but sense is inevitable.

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nah, we had 3 months of no cases in the community, when something like 5% of infections end up needing hospitalization. Possibly a few leaked out of quarantine without ever infecting others, but if it had been slowing doing the rounds then a lot would have become serious enough to be detected.

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There's no way this has been in the community for an extended time as we would have seen symptomatic cases picked up a while ago. One only has to look to Melbourne to see how in a matter of several weeks since initial confirmed community transmission cases skyrocketed.

Just to throw a spanner in the works, could this infection have arisen from cold-stored fomites?

https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/122423538/coronavir…

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If they've found 4 cases then dollars to donuts there are 20 undetected. Only lockdown+masks can eradicate, gotta be another month of lockdowns to be sure.

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Sure. But then what?
We've learnt from our mistakes and we won't let it get back out into the community again?
I'm not saying don't try, but I just don't see how they can hope to get the same level of buy in amongst the team of 5M for a second round.

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The only reason the team of 5m has to solve it, is because the team of 20 in cabinet couldn't organise a p*ss up in a brewery. The strategy was elimination and so we faced one the top three most stringent lockdowns in the world. As such, there is simply no excuse for a quarantine breach, and if they can promise this wont happen (which they cant, cause it happened), then the elimination strategy is just an epidimiological experiment at the expense of Team 5m.

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Maybe the govt starts to take their responsibility for quarantining seriously. Don't let arrivals into contact with ANYONE not in their cohort unless they are wearing full PPE. After all; $10 billion wasted here $10 billion wasted there and pretty soon you are starting to talk about some real money.

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The point I'm trying to make, is that even if they can somehow now guarantee us a gold plated quarantining system going forwards, the horse I'm afraid has already bolted. And although most people will be on board with going back down lock down levels, I reckon there will be more on the fringe this time round. As an analogy, go for a walk around town and see just how many people these days are talking or texting on their mobiles whilst driving. There's a large percentage of us that just don't give a 5hit for either rules, or disregarding the rules, possible consequences for their own selfish behaviour.

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Those who will break the rules will never take quarantine seriously without the snipers on roof tops deployed strictly with a you walk you die policy.

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Question is how does the RBNZ react and will we hear about it in the MSM today? Of course we won’t.

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Once our government decided that NZ should adopt the elimination strategy the implied corollary was that the government would implement procedures to ensure that once eliminated the virus would be kept out. Yet they happily admitted returnees who could not give a guarantee that they were covid free. In fact, many of these people subsequently tested positive. This policy completely negated our strongest weapon - our physical distance from the rest of the world, and has placed intolerable strain on the only other tool at our disposal - the ability to quarantine. Given the present government's track record of successful ( ? ) implementation of its own policies it should come as no surprise that the failure here is also one of execution.

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So what happens if someone tests positive in Rotorua? Do they lock down also? Does the entire region (Bay of Plenty)? The entire North Island? Country? I'm a bit confused on what happens next.

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It makes sense to minimise the level of quarantine geographically - try to maintain more economic activity. That was a big screw up last time round when much of the country was virus free for more than a month but were forced to stay locked down till whole country was clear. The smaller the area you can lock down (and be effective in eradication) the better.

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How many other large workplaces have been undertaking this? Fonterra have been taking all 12,000 NZ staff temperatures DAILY since the first lockdown.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=12…

And not just in NZ either https://www.farmonline.com.au/story/6734239/factory-stays-ahead-of-viru…

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