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Mike's Minute: The MIQ madness has to stop now

Author
Mike Hosking,
Publish Date
Tue, 1 Feb 2022, 11:14AM

Mike's Minute: The MIQ madness has to stop now

Author
Mike Hosking,
Publish Date
Tue, 1 Feb 2022, 11:14AM

I don’t know whether Charlotte Bellis wanted to create a nightmare for the Government, but she's done a good job either way. 

Her case is no more or less important than any other New Zealander who wants to return home, but it's unique ingredients yet again highlight the astonishing way the Government has treated its own people. 

It is illegal to ban citizens from returning to their country, but that’s essentially what they continue to do. Technically they can and have argued it's not permanent, therefore it's not illegal. Technically, they might be right. 

But as each day passes with no change, the policy looks if not increasingly illegal, most certainly increasingly immoral, and it as was immoral to start with. 

The individual aspects of the Bellis case are, of course, the absurd irony of the involvement of the Taliban who grant safe haven while New Zealand's Labour Party doesn’t. And the fact this story has gone all over the world, and paints us in the sort of light you would expect. 

Making it even worse now for the Government is the fact they can't bend because if they do, they’ll be quite rightly charged with favouritism, the Government that oils the squeaky wheel, and the Government that only responds if you scream loudly enough. 

They already suffer from that sort of reputation of playing favourites. The astonishing number of DJs and artists that managed to get clearance. The Wiggles should also not be forgotten. 

We have any number of so-called desperate cases of New Zealanders unable to return and still this mad cap policy ensues. We have people who have sold up, left their jobs, been left stranded, needing to return for funerals, health issues, resettlement, work, and the list goes on. 

But good old MIQ. They haven't expanded it, they haven't involved the private sector and their ideas, they’ve never used their full capacity, and as Omicron arrives, their mad cap extend the stay prison cell thinking is only going to make it worse. 

We are about the only country doing this, so it's no wonder the planet is looking on aghast. 

There remain a few locals here overridden by fear who think the hermit kingdom is worth the price. 

But the trick to most successful decisions and approaches in life is balance, not obsession. We have become obsessed with being locked up at all costs. And the costs, whether it’s a pregnant woman locked out, a business gone under, a mountain of debt, spiraling mental health issues, increased violence, or the economic damage of being left behind the rest of the world, is, as exemplified by Bellis' plight, wildly out of kilter. 

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