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Mike's Minute: $3000 quarantine a bargain for offshore Kiwis returning home

Author
Newstalk ZB,
Publish Date
Tue, 28 Jul 2020, 9:39AM

Mike's Minute: $3000 quarantine a bargain for offshore Kiwis returning home

Author
Newstalk ZB,
Publish Date
Tue, 28 Jul 2020, 9:39AM

One of the bigger lessons out of Covid is the fact that not a lot else matters any more.

Stuff that used to fill our days from climate change, to obesity, to advertising sugar, to all the other pressure group dramas have largely vanished from the landscape. The old energy in, energy out equation we very quickly discovered was tipped on its head. And whatever our "super" cause was, no one was listening.

Apparently plastic bags use is up as we decided saving the planet was less important than saving ourselves, so a single use bag was a reassurance against bugs, apparently. Even the evangelical climate changers have had to work hard to get a headline of late.

So given the mood, I think the bunch of whinging expats upset that we are charging them to come back and quarantine are wasting their time as opposed to changing minds. And as such, if they're smart, they will give up before they really kick on with it.

Why they haven't done a poll on this, I have no idea. Given I am convinced it would heavily favour the government move to charge.

Once again by the way ,this is a lesson to the Greens. Labour is for it, National are for it, and New Zealand First are for it, so being the tiny outlier the Greens are on this just reminds everyone what a bunch of fringe thinkers they are. And at a time when all the polls have them dangerously close to annihilation I'd be looking to avoid that.

Or is that why they are doing it? Appeal to the offshore vote? Align yourself with the distant Kiwi, angry in London, and grateful there is still a voice back home that makes you feel slightly less forgotten.

But back here in the real world, the cold hard truth is we are one of those countries lots of us like to leave. That might actually be something we could look at some time, why is it so many of us want to naff off? Is it something that drives us away? Or are we just so disconnected geographically we have to go find out what's on the other side of the earth for ourselves?

Anyway, by year's end the bill for quarantine is half a billion dollars. It's absurd, we don’t have it. And it's not even like the government are making this up, there is no legal right to free entry.

Yes, you have a right to return to your country. But rights aren't carte blanche. Governments regulate and dictate rules, conditions, and boundaries all the time.

All this is, is a price on your re-entry. No, you don't have to like it. And yes, you might want to argue it's unfair and start all the campaigns you like, but that won't be changing your reality.

Like most things in life there is a price, and $3000 to get back into one of the safest places on earth, is a bargain.   

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