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Jacinda Ardern at a building site in Auckland last year. (Hannah Peters/Getty Images)
Jacinda Ardern at a building site in Auckland last year. (Hannah Peters/Getty Images)

The BulletinNovember 10, 2021

Auckland is different today

Jacinda Ardern at a building site in Auckland last year. (Hannah Peters/Getty Images)
Jacinda Ardern at a building site in Auckland last year. (Hannah Peters/Getty Images)

The city’s lockdown is easing and retail is reopening, with the prime minister set to visit after 85 days of restrictions, Justin Giovannetti writes in The Bulletin.

Lockdown eases as Jacinda Ardern heads to Auckland. The prime minister was last in Auckland on August 17, 85 days ago. Hours after she left, a case of the delta variant was detected in the city and the country was in lockdown by midnight. Ardern is back in the city this morning, with some visits planned. A lot has changed in the past 85 days. More than 90% of Aucklanders have now had one dose of the vaccine, the country’s keystone elimination strategy has been abandoned and a new traffic light system looms, with cabinet all but committed to Freedom Day for the city around November 29.

The first stores have already opened under level three, step two. Aucklanders began queuing outside of malls yesterday morning, more than 12 hours before the alert level shift. As Stuff reports, some stores opened a minute after midnight and were offering freebies to their first customers. After nearly three months of lockdown, retail is now open, along with libraries, museums and zoos. Newsroom has also spoken with retailers about the challenge of getting going again. Under the change, outdoor gatherings have now expanded to 25 people, from multiple groups. However, the official toilet rule hasn’t changed. While director-general of health Ashley Bloomfield seemed to indicate the need for some common sense earlier this week (you really don’t want 24 people using your backyard as a toilet), he was once again overruled by the prime minister. It’ll start feeling like the beginning of the end of lockdown for many in Auckland.

A day of protests before the prime minister’s visit. Ardern will likely travel with more security than usual, making this a cautious return to her home city. Two of the prime minister’s press conferences were cancelled last week after the appearance of anti-vaccine protests at planned events around the country. However, a large anti-government protest at parliament yesterday, with a crowd in the thousands, could mark a shift in the tone of the national debate (more about this in today’s longer read). While the vast majority of New Zealanders are following the rules and getting vaccinated, a small but loud minority are growing angrier and bolder. Parliament was under the tightest level of security in at least a half century, after days of death threats made against politicians. Some carried a noose to the forecourt of parliament. Josie Adams reported on the protest for The Spinoff. I was also at parliament and it marked the first time in my career I’ve seen a protest in the thousands focus its anger at the media at the instigation of speakers and label reporters as “terrorists” among other unprintable things.

However, most of the scorn was directed towards the prime minister, who could hear the protest from her office on the ninth floor of the Beehive. “What we saw today was not representative of the vast bulk of New Zealanders,” she said, while hundreds of the protesters were still outside parliament.

The unvaccinated now face a surge of restrictions within weeks. The government is already asking New Zealanders to create accounts on My Covid Record because vaccine certificates are imminent. Once the country moves over to the traffic light system, the use of the certificates will be widespread. If you want to enter a concert or many businesses, you’ll need to show one and have it scanned and verified against a central database. Dylan Reeve has written for IRL about how the system will work. As RNZ reports, experts are split over whether a move to the traffic light system is a good idea for Auckland. The government could end up going further. As this newsletter reported yesterday, cabinet is also considering moving the entire country over to the traffic light system next month to make life more difficult for the unvaccinated.


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