NZ First wants consideration given to compensating people who lost their job rather than get Covid-19 vaccinations

Public Policy / news

Shane Jones says NZ First wants 'credible, fully independent inquiry into Covid-19 response' including consideration of compensation for people who lost jobs over vaccine mandate

11th Oct 23, 1:09pm by Eric Frykberg

The New Zealand First Party wants to investigate whether people who lost their jobs over the Covid-19 vaccine mandate could receive compensation from the Crown.

The idea of payments for people who lost their jobs rather than get vaccinated has been mentioned by NZ First speakers many times but does not crop up in the party's manifesto.

Instead, the manifesto pledges to "end all vaccine mandates....and hold a credible, fully independent inquiry into New Zealand’s Covid-19 response."

NZ First's deputy leader, Shane Jones, says the possibility of compensation would be covered by this investigation.

"In our manifesto, we are having a comprehensive review of the whole Covid experience," Jones says.

"Included in that review is consideration of whether there should be recompense for those people who were arbitrarily mandated out of their livelihoods."

Polls show NZ First's support may be required by the National Party to form a government after Saturday's election. Both the Labour Party and NZ First have ruled out working with each other.

The final Covid-19 restrictions ended in August, and then-Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced a Royal Commission of Inquiry into NZ's response to the Covid-19 pandemic last December.

Jones says he does not know how much compensating these people would cost, and the review itself could establish this. He adds the inquiry would involve international experts, who would "not be captured by the New Zealand bureaucracy or by those parliamentarians who did not not stand up against the excesses of the Covid response."

During the Covid crisis, vaccination was mandatory for many people working in sectors such as health and education, police and defence.

A recent article in the New Zealand Medical Journal, based on research by doctors and scientists, says NZ's Covid-19 pandemic response has been among the world’s most effective, based on key public health metrics such as low cumulative excess mortality.

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25 Comments

by rastus1 | 11th Oct 23, 1:22pm 1696983743

Of course he knows it will not happen - but hey, he's just grabbed a few more thousand votes.

by Withay | 11th Oct 23, 2:32pm 1696987973

My thoughts exactly. It frustrates me no end that some will be sucked in by that. Winston sure knows how to target his audience.

by Frank Sobotka | 11th Oct 23, 5:20pm 1696998006

No more so than nats targeting the boomer-landlord industrial complex.

If luxon hadn’t shown his inexperience by saying he’d work with Winston, he wouldn’t be riding high in the polls and overtaking ACT.

by d_m | 11th Oct 23, 2:03pm 1696986193

The last sentence is a good example of lazy journalism. We cannot expect an objective evaluation of the New Zealand COVID response from people who had major roles in defining that response. The author should at least include names of the authors of the report in the article to allow readers to make it own decision about the article objectivity.

by Baywatch | 11th Oct 23, 2:06pm 1696986418

A link was supplied? Lazy comment more like it..do your own research and come back to us with a counter argument.

by d_m | 11th Oct 23, 2:41pm 1696988507

I believe that most readers do not have time to look into linked article but rely on a journalist to investigate and raise a potential problem. Otherwise, we don't need journalists and it would be enough to propagate links. I believe that interest.co.nz is among the best news sources in NZ and writing this with hope to further improve it.

by fat pat | 12th Oct 23, 8:56am 1697054175

At a glance, the leading author is Michael Baker who was one of the architects of NZ's covid response. There's no corresponding author because it's it's a "viewpoint" whatever that means. Probably means it's not peer-reviewed? On page 78 of the pdf version there's a graph of NZ doing fantastically in terms of excess deaths. There's a little sticker next to the graph showing "Our world in Data" however if you go to that data source you see that NZ currently has very high excess deaths. Confusingly, one of the quoted data sources for the graph is the Human Mortality Database but that datasource only has data for NZ up to 2021, but the graph goes to 2023. I guess I should just leave it to the experts.

by kiwikidsnz | 11th Oct 23, 2:56pm 1696989391

As you probably know, Labour has restricted the Covid inquiry terms of reference to protect the bureaucrats decision making & exclude the wider economic impact on NZdrs.

Hence the criticism from left & right

https://www.nzinitiative.org.nz/reports-and-media/opinion/country-may-n…

https://www.greens.org.nz/covid_inquiry_disappointingly_narrow

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/politics/covid-response-royal-commission-…

by Middleaged | 11th Oct 23, 5:59pm 1697000341

The link takes you straight to the source document. I work in health and found it challenging, technical reading. I doubt most people would have the skills and stamina to properly read it. The author has saved us the trouble and summarized the main finding.

by interesting1234 | 11th Oct 23, 2:42pm 1696988527

He'll pull people away at the last minute from all the tiny parties pushing this narrative also, as they will think he will be more likely to get traction given the polling numbers.

by dumbthoughts | 11th Oct 23, 3:12pm 1696990326

Someone else commented on a different article that Winston really has timed this to perfection. He is riding the momentum for the last week, and will now - as you say - probably be able to hoover up another couple of percent that might have gone to the real fringe anti-mandate parties.

by Three Veg | 11th Oct 23, 2:46pm 1696988772

One wonders how many of the doctor and scientist researchers in the aforementioned NZMJ article were part of the 11,000 secretly exempted from vaccine mandates (as discovered through FOI requests)

https://hatchardreport.com/the-ministry-of-health-granted-vaccine-exemptions-to-hundreds-among-its-key-staff/

by meh | 11th Oct 23, 4:10pm 1696993843

I wonder when MSM will report this?

Or this?

https://hatchardreport.com/startling-revelations-change-everything-new-…

The whole lab leak/weaponised virus has been quietly dismissed by the media. Anybody who spoke about this at the start was dismissed as a conspiracy theorist.

by Cur8or | 11th Oct 23, 2:58pm 1696989518

At least, if you've been double boosted, you won't have to worry about cancer since your heart is now the limiting factor.

by lastlegs | 11th Oct 23, 3:18pm 1696990683

why stop there,lots of disaffected folks out there,.anti-fluoridation,cell towers,blood transfutions.no figures for percentage of population suffering from PPD (paranoid personality disorder) but could be considerable,problem getting them out to vote as they turn back when think they are being followed.

by Don m | 11th Oct 23, 3:32pm 1696991551

AS per Dans reference

"" Current COVID-19 vaccines have limited and short duration of immunity to asymptomatic infection and mild disease and therefore have little effect on reduction of community spread.""

but I thought we had to all get vaccinated to save Granny?

Turns out ..not.

But you lost your job because you figured this out on your own.? .Tough luck it would seem.

by realterms | 11th Oct 23, 3:48pm 1696992498

Ugh. I'm tempted by nzf just to thwart act, but they make it so hard.

by Brutus Iscariot | 11th Oct 23, 6:09pm 1697000941

As much as academics like to hand wave and say "look at the overall death stats,our whole response was so effective", you need to dimension it into its components.

How many lives did vaccine passes actually save particularly once it was established that the vaccine didnt stop transmission?

How many lives did employment mandates themselves save?

Were either of those measures worth the human rights cost?

Or were lockdowns and masks the blunt instrument that purportedly saved all the lives? Plus our isolation and dumb luck?

by Cur8or | 11th Oct 23, 6:13pm 1697001230

Remember team, never again!

by mfd | 11th Oct 23, 7:12pm 1697004756

I'd have thought lockdowns and the closed borders until Delta was dominant and vaccines were in arms were the big hitters.

The various coersions must have increased vaccine uptake but I suspect it would have been quite high anyway, well into the 70-80%? Much higher for the elderly and those at most risk

In my technical medical speciality, the vast majority of my colleagues got the vaccine as soon as it was available. As far as I'm aware, a couple of percent of us (nationwide) were coerced into vaccination by the threat of being fired. Another percent or two quit/were fired rather than being vaccinated.

by solardb | 11th Oct 23, 6:44pm 1697003042

Do they Actually vote though? If you look at Billy t.k etc last election, they had lots of very vocal supporters, but got very few votes.

by streetwise | 11th Oct 23, 7:25pm 1697005525

Lets have a close look at what the anti-vaxers were worried about:

Actual deaths from the vaccine = 4 at the most, and in those 4 cases none can definitely be attributed to the vaccine.

Last annual road toll = 378

So, a simple inference will be that anti-vaxers must always be indoors at home and too afraid to venture out the front gate because they have a nearly 100 times greater chance to be killed on the pavement or road than from a bad reaction to the Covid vaxination.

Not a lot of people know that, including that pompous ass Shane Jones.

by Murray Falconer | 11th Oct 23, 9:10pm 1697011857

So, a simple inference will be that anti-vaxers must always be indoors at home and too afraid to venture out the front gate because they have a nearly 100 times greater chance to be killed on the pavement or road than from a bad reaction to the Covid vaxination.

It may have been, if your initial assumption about what anti-vaxers were worried about was remotely accurate.

While I cannot speak from personal experience, the anti-vaxers I know often took active steps to catch it when the opportunity arose to get natural immunity (radical and without precedent as I'm sure that sounds).

by Don m | 11th Oct 23, 10:26pm 1697016360

They also tried to obtain a supply of ivermectin in case the virus was as bad as the govt claimed..

but that too was confiscated at the border..

Just got home from watching the "river of freedom".Good movie (a bit long).

I'd forgotten all the bullshit foisted upon us in 2020/2021.

by nktokyo | 12th Oct 23, 7:01am 1697047278

He won't get any outcomes but he will create a fuss.