James Shaw and Jacinda Ardern must massively scale up NZ’s response, say NZ health leader. Photo: Hagen Hopkins

OPINIONPoliticsOctober 29, 2021

Be braver about climate change, New Zealand

Guest writer

James Shaw and Jacinda Ardern must massively scale up NZ’s response, say NZ health leader. Photo: Hagen Hopkins

Seven health professional organisations groups have written an open letter to Jacinda Ardern ahead of COP26, demanding a huge increase in Aotearoa’s international climate contribution. Here Dr George Laking, Aotearoa New Zealand president of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians, introduces the letter, which runs in full below.

The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.
– HP Lovecraft

From Sunday through to November 12, the United Kingdom hosts the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties in Glasgow.

It’s hard to write positive words on this. The first Conference of the Parties was in 1995, in Berlin. Everything we needed to know about climate change was known at the time. The world could already have its low-carbon future, if only the advice of scientists had been followed.

The 15th Conference of the Parties was in 2009, in Copenhagen. That was the year we formed OraTaiao, the New Zealand Climate and Health Council. Human-induced climate change is the number one threat to health this century. Many people are used to thinking of health as cancer and other chronic conditions. But the things that truly decide health are such basic matters as a food supply and political stability, that in turn depend on the environment.

That was also the year of so-called “Climategate”, the sham attack on integrity of scientists based on out-of-context quoting of hacked emails. At the time I wrote “although some climate change sceptics are just plain contrarian, most turn out to have a stake in fossil fuels. This includes the oil and coal industries, and in New Zealand, fossil-fuelled agriculture and transport”. Such powerful interests continue to control our politics, despite all the rhetoric of a Labour-Greens coalition. Our middling status on such scales as the Climate Change Performance Index makes this obvious for any to see. We sit at 28 in a field of 58, where no one scores very highly.

What is there to hold us back? I see mainly fear, and a failure of imagination in many of our leaders. Acumen in business depends on vision and self-confidence – qualities that our legacy economic systems seem to suck from the mind.

Things had seemed to improve a little with the resolutions from COP21 in Paris in 2015. But then the US lost its collective mind for a presidency. And then along came Covid, to remind us all of the relevance of health.

So starting this Halloween, New Zealand has a 26th chance. OraTaiao and six leading health organisations, including my own College of Physicians, have written a letter to the prime minister and the climate change minister. We urge Jacinda Ardern and James Shaw to significantly step up Aotearoa’s climate contribution, to limit global warming within 1.5 degrees. Health and wellbeing must be at the heart of our climate response. Health gains will help fund a strong response. Aotearoa must proactively place Indigenous and marginalised voices at the centre of COP26. Aotearoa’s new contribution must be ten times more than our 2016 contribution.

The trick will be if we can dispel our business and political timidity. The treat will be that our children and grandchildren have a liveable future. Aotearoa New Zealand, please can we avoid a 27th Halloween sequel.

Open letter from OraTaiao, the New Zealand Climate and Health Council, to the prime minister

Tēnā koe Rt Hon Ardern,

OraTaiao: New Zealand Climate & Health Council, the College of Nurses Aotearoa, New Zealand Nurses Organisation, New Zealand Medical Association, Australasian College for Emergency Medicine, The Royal Australasian College of Physicians, and New Zealand Society of Anaesthetists welcome climate minister Shaw’s in-person attendance at the COP26 negotiations in Glasgow this November. This is the crucial chance to significantly strengthen Aotearoa’s international climate contribution, build on the Climate Change Commission’s recent advice, and keep the capacity to limit global warming within a humanly adaptable 1.5 degrees.

Our three recommendations below let Aotearoa lead at last with a healthy fair climate response:

1. Health and wellbeing must be at the heart of our climate response

• The UN Declaration on Human Rights recognises the right to the highest attainable standard of health, and hauora is guaranteed to all citizens as a taonga under te Tiriti o Waitangi.
• We strongly support the recent editorial simultaneously published in over 200 medical journals worldwide, which highlights that climate change is a health crisis that will dwarf Covid-19 in the years to come.
• The WHO Manifesto on a healthy and green recovery from Covid-19 gives a six-point plan for urgent climate action. This will be added to with a WHO COP26 Special Report which will be a focal point of the conference and highlight the health benefits of climate change action.
• Modelling published in The Lancet Planetary Health this year demonstrates that health-centred NDCs can increase ambition and realise substantial health co-benefits. NDC health co-benefits till 2040 were modelled for nine representative nations with half the world’s population, three-quarters of global emissions, and key global or regional influence. Here in Aotearoa, our stretched health sector takes up one-fifth of government spending.

2. Aotearoa must proactively place Indigenous and marginalised voices at the centre of COP26

• This is particularly important this year as the Covid-19 pandemic and inequitable vaccination access has created major difficulties for representatives from poorer nations to travel.
• We must acknowledge both our own Indigenous voices from ngā iwi Māori and our position in the wider Pacific community, and centre these voices in all negotiations.

3. Aotearoa’s new contribution must be 10 times more than our 2016 contribution

• Our new nationally determined contribution (NDC) must take full account of our historical cumulative emissions, our privilege as a wealthy country with the resources to make the necessary changes, and our position in the wider Pacific community.
• We urge a 10-fold increase as Aotearoa’s fair share contribution (as outlined in OraTaiao’s Climate Change Commission submission, this means 117-133% cuts in 1990 levels by 2030).
• This increase means prioritising accelerated domestic decarbonisation and strong methane cuts, through Tiriti partnership and just transitions, and including health-centred climate policies that self-fund in health gains and health sector savings.
• The balance of our better contribution must be also significantly more climate finance, real support for developing nations’ loss and damage claims, sharing emissions cuts expertise, and minimal offshore emissions credits as costs inevitably soar.
• We urge our government to signal the overall direction of Aotearoa’s delayed Emission Reduction Plan (ERP) by signing the Global Methane Pledge (to cut global methane by at least 30% of 2020 levels by 2030) prior to COP26, plus committing to enforceable climate
protection in all our trade agreements.

The difficulties encountered with COP25 and the time lost due to the Covid-19 pandemic amplify this November’s crucial global Conference of the Parties. We no longer have the luxury of time to allow for a weak response. Aotearoa must step up as a climate leader (not laggard), strengthen our contribution 10-fold, and place human health and equity at the heart of our climate response.

Nāku noa, nā

Dr Dermot Coffey, Co-convenor, OraTaiao: New Zealand Climate & Health Council
Dr George Laking, Aotearoa New Zealand President of The Royal Australasian College of Physicians
Dr Sheila Hart, President, New Zealand Society of Anaesthetists
Professor Jenny Carryer CNZM, Executive Director, College of Nurses Aotearoa (NZ) Inc
Dr John Bonning, President, Australasian College for Emergency Medicine
Mairi Lucas, Acting Chief Executive, New Zealand Nurses Organisation Tōpūtanga Tapuhi Kaitiaki o Aotearoa
Dr Alistair Humphrey, Chair, New Zealand Medical Association

Keep going!

Photo: RNZ

OPINIONPoliticsOctober 29, 2021

Andrew Geddis: Our MIQ system is at a legal and humanitarian tipping point

Andrew Geddis

Contributing writer

Photo: RNZ

The High Court has ordered MBIE to reconsider a refusal to grant an MIQ exemption. But the system as a whole may not be sustainable for long, writes Andrew Geddis, law professor at the University of Otago.

The government’s announced changes to the Managed Isolation and Quarantine (MIQ) system appear to be less about easing the return of the thousands-upon-thousands who remain locked out of their country than a way to free up quarantine space to contain the expected wave of Covid-positive patients. That’s a shame, because I’m not sure that MIQ will be for much longer a sustainable concept on either legal or humanitarian grounds.

In the first round of our national battle with Covid, the concept of some kind of tough MIQ system made sense. We decided to eliminate Covid entirely from our community, and keep it eliminated. That meant the threat resided offshore, with anyone and everyone entering the country representing a risk of undoing our collective efforts. Consequently, an extremely “hard” border where entry was constricted and returnees were closely monitored and controlled was not just a good idea, but a necessary one to confront that threat. And so, while the legally recognised right of return to New Zealand was limited by MIQ requirements, that limit almost certainly would be considered justified at the abstract level.

Of course, that’s not to say that the way MIQ was implemented in practice lay beyond criticism. The overall number of places available to those wanting to return to Aotearoa reflected governmental resourcing decisions, as well as political preparedness to go against local communities opposed to having potentially infected “outside” people living among them. The basis on which MIQ places were allocated to those wishing to arrive, and the consequent numbers of different kinds of travelers able to do so, can be queried. The primary method of MIQ allocation – first a “fastest finger” approach, then an always resetting random lottery – might be considered unfair at best, discriminatory at worst.

To take but one example, I still cannot for the life of me see how the overall allocation process could regard the English netball team as being more deserving of a MIQ place than Bergen Graham, a pregnant New Zealand citizen whose request for an emergency spot in MIQ was turned down six times. A small part of me wonders if permitting decisions like this represented a form of extra reward for those of us resident in lifeboat Aotearoa. Our hard, collective effort had won “us” a normal life, and so our life would be made as normal as possible – netball games against international competition included. And if that meant our citizens and residents outside of the country suffered, well, maybe “they” just shouldn’t have left in the first place? Out of sight, out of mind, and all that.

Suspicions regarding just how fair and justifiable MIQ’s operation has been in practice are compounded by the way the government has avoided having its allocation decisions scrutinised. On the two occasions that people who were refused emergency MIQ spots took their claims before the courts, previous decisions that they failed to meet the criteria were reversed mid-trial. It may or may not be entirely coincidental that doing so had the consequence of putting the legal action to an end before the High Court had a chance to rule on the government’s actions. And now the government is busy moving the legal basis for making MIQ decisions from secondary legislation into a primary enactment. That this parliamentary move will have the effect of largely insulating the overall MIQ process from being judicially overturned at a time when it is being challenged in the High Court again may or may not be coincidental.

Ultimately, the ombudsman’s inquiry into the MIQ booking system might give us some answers to questions regarding the way the government went about running this process. However, any such answers will likely be moot, given the changes that already have been announced and those that I think are going to have to happen to it in the future. Because, the original purpose of MIQ, and the processes used to achieve that purpose, seem less and less justifiable as circumstances change. First, and perhaps most importantly, delta’s rise means we no longer are a Covid-free nation. While bringing more Covid cases into the country obviously would not be desirable, the danger it poses can now be contrasted with the risk of virus spread within and between areas of New Zealand. And we now have vaccines that reduce the risk of individuals spreading Covid, meaning that not every person represents the same level of danger to the rest of us.

Those facts change the ballgame markedly. Because, from a rights perspective, it seems almost impossible to justify effectively barring a double-vaccinated New Zealand citizen from returning to their country to self-isolate for a week (or longer) while simultaneously allowing a non-vaccinated New Zealand citizen to travel from Auckland to Christchurch with no concomitant requirement to isolate. Which of these individuals then poses the greater risk of spreading Covid? And, if it is the latter (as we’ve just seen), why is their right to move within New Zealand being honoured when the rights of New Zealanders to move into New Zealand are curtailed?

This, in a nutshell, is going to be the government’s problem going forward. Imposing tight clampdowns on internal travel is going to become more and more difficult from a political perspective. Yet, if internal travel is permitted in spite of the risk of Covid spread involved, then how can international travel continue to be tightly constrained? The only reason would seem to be “you’re not here, so you just don’t count as much”. But that is precisely what guaranteeing the right of New Zealand citizens to return to this country was intended to preclude.

The problem with the answer to this issue given by the PM – “even if you have a wildfire it doesn’t mean it’s OK to go around striking matches” – is that it sees those living overseas purely in terms of risk. And, yes, they do pose some risk to the country. But they also possess rights, including the right to return home. And if others rights to travel in Aotearoa are being respected despite the risks they pose, then why aren’t theirs? To use Ardern’s analogy, on what basis is it OK to stop matches being struck when people are being allowed to ferry burning brands from the wildfire from one place to another?

We may have seen the first hints of this sort of approach in a High Court decision handed down yesterday, where the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment was ordered to reconsider a refusal to grant an exemption to MIQ requirements to a “multimillionaire and prominent businessman”. The particular facts of the case are unlikely to be repeated. Indeed, they have a certain Succession mood about them – the businessman involved wishes to fly to the US on a private jet to attend a board meeting, and then self-isolate in his home upon his return. But it’s the things that Justice Venning required MBIE to go away and look at again that are revealing. Most importantly, MBIE was told to examine “the need of the applicants to enjoy rights conferred by the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990, including the right to freedom of movement and as citizens to enter New Zealand without unreasonable limitation”. MBIE, Justice Venning said, then must “balance those considerations against the degree of risk to the community of further spread of Covid-19 involved in the applicants’ isolating or quarantining at a place other than an MIQ facility”.

Perhaps at the end of the day, having done so, MBIE still will consider the risk too great and so refuse the exemption. At which point, it will be interesting to see if the court accepts that assessment or goes a step further and orders MBIE to grant the exemption in question. Because, as time goes on and the balancing of Covid risks makes it harder and harder to demonstrate that New Zealanders overseas are more dangerous than those at home, then the basis for the sort of MIQ system we have been operating will become more and more difficult to justify.