spinofflive
Image: Tina Tiller
Image: Tina Tiller

The BulletinSeptember 8, 2021

NZ to have vaccine passport by Christmas

Image: Tina Tiller
Image: Tina Tiller

Meant for international travel, a debate looms for the country on how the passports will be used domestically, Justin Giovannetti writes in The Bulletin.

A vaccine passport is coming. New Zealanders will soon have access to digital proof that they’ve received a Covid-19 vaccination. Colloquially known as a “vaccine passport”, a government-run app will soon be as indispensable as a real passport for international travel. Many countries already require them to sit at a bar or attend a sports game. You can’t climb the Eiffel Tower without one.

Qantas has unveiled plans for a travel passport that will make it easier for flyers to get going without needing to bring other proof of immunisation to the airport. Air New Zealand has said it won’t mandate vaccine passports, but expects clients will keep track of requirements. Proof of vaccination is already a condition of entry for a number of countries around the world. Just as you can’t board many international flights now without the right visa, the vaccine passport will be added to your pre-flight checklist.

What it’ll look like. If you want to travel now to a number of destinations you need to first request a letter from the government attesting to your vaccination status. It’s a significant risk and there are stories of countries turning down the printed documents. Instead, the Ministry of Health says “a digital Covid-19 vaccination certificate” will be available from December for New Zealanders who want to travel overseas.

The term passport can be politically loaded—think of “papers, please”—so it’s one of the reasons many places around the world opt to call them certificates instead. New Zealand’s app will contain a QR code, a digital signature and the certificate itself will be printable.

The health ministry has been clear that New Zealand’s passport is designed for international travel and said nothing about domestic use. Based on how the passports have evolved around the world, that won’t last.

What’s happened overseas. The UK rolled out the passports for international travel, only to then announce that they’ll be required to get into English nightclubs and other venues in England at the end of the month, the BBC has reported. Despite criticisms, the government has said it’s the only way to reopen the economy safely. In many cases, private industry was ahead of the British parliament, with Premier League clubs requiring fans to show proof of vaccination when they reopened stadiums to capacity crowds last month.

The looming debate. I spoke with Andrew Chen, a researcher at the University of Auckland, about a debate that’s about to take off in New Zealand. It’ll start like this: A business, hypothetically a supermarket chain, will announce that all customers will need to show the vaccine passport to buy groceries. Suddenly the international passport is domestic. The government can either ban businesses from using them this way (unlikely), or set the standards for who can ask for the passports and when.

“It’s coming. The government just needs to make a decision and figure out how to control the risks of discrimination and problems created by using an international document in a domestic context,” says Chen.

How does it discriminate? With Māori and Pacific peoples expected to have lower vaccination rates, do we just accept that portions of those communities will be banned from businesses going forward? That’s not a long-term solution, says Chen. There are also human rights and privacy implications that need to be settled. Chen has already received reports of employers asking their staff to tell them when they’ve booked vaccines. The privacy commissioner has said that vaccination status is health information that’s private and protected by legislation. This will only become a more significant issue in the coming weeks.

While the freedom of movement is enshrined into the New Zealand bill of rights, limits on that freedom have been justified on public health grounds. A number of the country’s international agreements also require it to prevent and control epidemic diseases.

What about people with exemptions? It’s one thing to trust trained border guards with the information in a vaccine passport, it’s another thing completely with a bouncer at a club or a security guard at a restaurant. The EU’s vaccine passport is working on a way to indicate when someone has a legitimate reason for not being vaccinated, something Chen says should be pursued in New Zealand as well. As he explains, do you want to show a supermarket worker a note from your GP that you’ve got a disease?

International exemptions will vary. What happens when a visitor from overseas arrives with an approved vaccine passport that says they’ve not been jabbed but they have, for example, a religious exemption not recognised by New Zealand? Chaos.

There’s a lot more chaos. Astrid Koornneef, a manager in the government’s Covid-19 vaccination programme, told The Bulletin that work is under way to ensure the passport is “compatible with emerging international standards, so it can be recognised by as many countries as possible”. The US, European Union and Australia have all developed vaccine passports technologies that can’t be used interchangeably. This is something the world will need to sort out. The best case scenario, according to Chen, is that you can change the settings in the app and get a different QR code for each jurisdiction.

The BMJ has published a helpful map with descriptions of a number of vaccine passports. Here are some systems being used overseas:

  • The European Union has a “digital Covid certificate” which proves that people have been vaccinated, received a negative test result or have recovered from Covid-19. It’s been in force across the EU since July 1 and has been adopted by nine neighbouring non-EU states, including Norway, Turkey and the Ukraine. Many EU countries require a vaccine passport for domestic venues.
  • The United States federal government has said it won’t adopt a national passport, while seven states like New York and California are slowly rolling out proof-of-vaccination systems. Another 22 American states have banned vaccine passports, largely along partisan lines, with Republicans opposing the apps. The MIT Technology Review has a fascinating look at the politics behind US vaccine apps.
  • Canada is working on a digital vaccine passport for overseas travel and most provinces are implementing local versions as a requirement for people to access restaurants, bars and other venues.
  • The Israeli government has a “green pass system,” allowing people over the age of 12 who are vaccinated to attend large events. It was suspended after the country’s vaccine rollout largely surpassed the virus, but was reinstated in July.
  • Singapore has bundled a vaccine passport into its contact tracing app and is required to enter many venues, including malls, schools and places of worship.
  • China has largely outsourced the job to private industry, with Alipay creating an app that sorts people based on national surveillance data into whether they should be restricted in their domestic movements. WeChat has created a health certificate for international travel showing vaccine status.

This is part of The Bulletin, The Spinoff’s must-read daily news wrap. To sign up for free, simply enter your email address below

Photo: Getty Images; additional design Tina Tiller
Photo: Getty Images; additional design Tina Tiller

The BulletinSeptember 7, 2021

How house prices are dividing the country

Photo: Getty Images; additional design Tina Tiller
Photo: Getty Images; additional design Tina Tiller

Justin Giovannetti writes in The Bulletin about a new way of looking at the country’s housing crisis.

Can you afford your own home? Three out of five property owners could not afford to buy their home at its current value, according to new research from Consumer NZ. The finding shows the impact of two years of rapidly increasing house prices.

The biggest problem. House prices are clearly a concern weighing on the country’s mind, as the non-profit found that housing is the top issue for New Zealanders, outweighing Covid-19, as well as electricity and food prices. The study was conducted before the current lockdown, but it’s worth repeating that house prices are more top of mind than a deadly global pandemic.

The creation of two New Zealands. If you own your home, crunch the math and find out if you’re in that 60% who couldn’t attempt to buy their own home today. Maybe the deposit would be unmanageable and the monthly mortgage would be thousands more than you’re currently paying. However, you’ve paid off your mortgage or it’s quickly shrinking, so why should you care? I put the question to Gemma Rasmussen, the head of campaigns for Consumer NZ.

“The issue is that it means that housing is no longer accessible for the majority of people. It means that we now have this division of people in the country: those who own property and everyone else. It creates a division within New Zealand based purely on property,” she said.

A slippery bottom rung. None of this is new, but Consumer NZ’s data shows a different way of looking at the problem. It also reinforces the argument that of the people who don’t already have a foot on the property ladder, few will cross the threshold into the property-owning class without significant help from parents or two very high-paying jobs.

It’s not about blaming existing home owners, but the national discussion needs to change, Rasmussen said. “The narrative around home ownership has been around capital gains and investments. Not around houses as a home,” she said. “Home owners now expect prices to double every few years and those great gains to keep on coming.”

It’s a division few people would want. Earlier this year, the prime minister was asked if she was comfortable with a situation where New Zealand was divided based on property. She said she wasn’t. “No one wants to live in a country where the only way that you can move into your own home is if your parents can help you,” Jacinda Ardern told reporters in February. House prices have only increased since then.

Falling home ownership. The division is already starting to solidify, according to Consumer NZ. Home ownership is now at a 70 year low and falling. The group in this country most able to afford their property is counterintuitively the one that likely paid the most, those between the ages of 18 to 29. If that’s confusing, remember it only includes people in their 20s who already own their homes, which is likely a small group. Those younger people who can’t are likely still in flats, where almost half are spending over 30% of their income on rent.

Some more data. The average house price is now more than 12 times the average wage, at about $940,000. That’s up $200,000 in a single year. Of those that don’t own a home, 42% told Consumer NZ that they’ve been completely locked out of the market. Another 20% said they are trying to save for a deposit, but with housing prices still climbing at 10 times the average annual wage increase, they won’t be able to catch up.

Looking at Auckland, Stuff reported on the fastest increasing prices across the city over the past 20 years. It found that areas with former state homes increased the fastest, with the median house price in Point England increasing by 616% over the past two decades. The median value in 2001 was $176,400. Had that house increased at the rate of inflation, it would cost $267,111 today. Instead, it’s now valued at $1,263,250.

A housing crisis. While the AM Show’s Mark Richardson has said there’s no housing crisis, only young people who can’t afford a house, the data seems to suggest otherwise. Of all the people surveyed by Consumer NZ, 82% thought the housing market was either overinflated or out of control.

The housing crisis means different things to different people, far more than can be discussed in today’s newsletter. While increasing housing prices have already had an impact on poverty rates, a more lasting change could be felt in the coming years.

How it impacts the country’s future. As a relatively recent migrant to New Zealand, I wonder how the mixture of low wages and high house prices will impact international recruitment in a post-Covid world. This problem isn’t new to New Zealand, but the calculus has shifted tremendously since early 2020. A doctor or nurse would be paid more in Australia, North America or Europe and could buy a home that’s cheaper and likely of better quality. Meanwhile, New Zealand needs more skilled workers, and is searching for them abroad.

It’s not a theoretical problem. Stuff recently wrote about the problems tech companies are facing retaining New Zealanders being offered triple their local salaries in the US, that’s before stock options and bonuses. As a result, some local jobs are now being outsourced via Zoom to workers in India.


This is part of The Bulletin, The Spinoff’s must-read daily news wrap. To sign up for free, simply enter your email address below