Jacinda Ardern announces Royal Commission of Inquiry into Covid-19 response, answers questions on Three Waters entrenchment backdown

A Royal Commission of Inquiry into New Zealand’s management of Covid-19 will take place with the intention of preparing for future pandemics, the Government has announced.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern this afternoon confirmed the inquiry would be chaired by Australian-based epidemiologist Professor Tony Blakely alongside two others – former National Party minister Hekia Parata and former Treasury secretary John Whitehead.

Covid-19 Response Minister Dr Ayesha Verrall appeared alongside Ardern to address media on the Royal Commission of Inquiry.

The Royal Commission would begin considering evidence from February 1, 2023, and the report must be delivered by June 26, 2024.

The cost of the inquiry was expected to be roughly $15 million, similar to the inquiry into the Christchurch terror attack – which cost $14 million.

The purpose of the inquiry was to “strengthen Aotearoa New Zealand’s preparedness for, and response to, any future pandemic by identifying those lessons learned from New Zealand’s response to Covid-19″, according to a summary of the inquiry’s terms of reference that was approved today by Cabinet.

The inquiry’s scope included the “legislative, regulatory, and operational settings” necessary to support New Zealand’s public health response, the communication and engagement with people and communities to act in support of public health outcomes and the settings needed to ensure the continued supply of goods and services required to enable people to isolate or otherwise take protective measures.

Also included were the settings required to support New Zealand’s immediate economic response to a future pandemic, the decision-making structures that might be used during an extended pandemic, consideration of Māori interests consistent with the Te Tiriti o Waitangi and consideration of the impact on essential workers and populations and communities that may be disproportionally impacted by a pandemic.

There were several aspects considered not within the inquiry’s scope, including clinical decisions made by clinicians or public health authorities during the Covid-19 pandemic, how and when measures in response to Covid-19 were implemented in particular situations and vaccine efficacy.

It would also not analyse particular decisions taken by the Reserve Bank’s independent monetary policy committee during the Covid-19 pandemic.

When asked why the Reserve Bank was excluded from the inquiry, Ardern said monetary policy was included generally but the Bank’s independent committee wasn’t in scope.

Ardern’s interpretation was that monetary policy decisions “broadly speaking” were included in the inquiry when facing questions on why the Bank’s monetary policy committee was not included in the scope and decisions made by the committee influenced the Government’s response.

Ardern said the scope of the inquiry was “wide-ranging” including the border, community care, and quarantine, among other aspects.

The elimination strategy would also be analysed.

The inquiry would consider the “strategies, settings, and measures” that were in place between February 2020 and October 2022.

The pandemic’s impact on people’s lives was among the main reasons a Royal Commission was necessary.

Verrall said the vaccine mandates were within the scope of the inquiry under the public health aspects, along with public health messaging that would hopefully identify whether the mandates were necessary.

“It had been over 100 years since we experienced a pandemic of this scale, so it’s critical we compile what worked and what we can learn from it should it ever happen again,” Ardern said.

“A Royal Commission of Inquiry is the highest form of public inquiry and is the right thing to do, given the Covid-19 emergency was the most significant threat to the health of New Zealanders and our economy since World War II.”

Ardern said when it came to individual decision-making that came down to a personal level, that would not be included because it needed to be learned broadly what worked and what didn’t to take those lessons into the response of a future pandemic.

“Our job is to maintain trust and confidence in governments,” Ardern said, noting the inquiry was one way to do so.

When asked about the inquiry and suggestions it was narrow and didn’t include assessing whether the juice was worth the squeeze, Ardern said past pandemic plans had been based on influenza which meant our response to Covid-19 was not as well prepared as it could have been.

“Our next pandemic will not necessarily … be a new iteration of Covid-19″.

Ardern and Verrall confirmed there would be an assessment of the trade-off of people’s rights and other matters during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Ardern confirmed the use of a generic tool such as the Large Scale Asset Purchase programme could be included in the scope.

Verrall imagined the lesson had been learned that looking at the characteristic of “one bug” was not sufficient and public health officials needed to look more broadly.

The announcement comes as 34,528 new community cases of Covid-19 were reported in the past week and 40 deaths were attributed to the virus, the Ministry of Health published today.

As of yesterday, there were 3900 reported cases, and the seven-day rolling average stood at 4926 – the highest counts seen since August.

Ardern stated that New Zealand’s response has been thoroughly scrutinised, claiming that 75 reviews on various aspects of the response have been conducted since 2020.

“That time is now”, Ardern said about the need for an inquiry.

Minister of Internal Affairs Minister Jan Tinetti lauded Blakely’s “extensive” understanding of public health in her praise of the team leading the inquiry.

“[Blakely] has the knowledge and experience necessary to lead this work,” she said.

“Hekia Parata and John Whitehead will add expertise and bring useful perspectives on the economic response and the response for Māori.”

Ardern said it had been specifically asked for the impact on Māori to be assessed as part of the inquiry.

There is a “very clear stipulation” in the terms of reference of the inquiry concerning the impact of the response on Māori, Ardern said.

‘A great opportunity to be better prepared’

Professor Michael Baker – the Otago University epidemiologist who was a key proponent of New Zealand’s elimination strategy – was “delighted” to see the commission announced.

Baker, who’d been calling for a Royal Commission since the early stages of the pandemic, saw the inquiry as an effective way to evaluate our response – and learn from it.

He was particularly encouraged that a focus would be on making New Zealand more resilient to future events.

”No one doubts the momentous scale of the pandemic and our response, but Covid-19 is still with us, and will be for the foreseeable future,” he said.

”The risk of pandemic is also rising for a lot of reasons – including the potential for bioterrorism – so the more we can learn from this, the better.

”This is a great opportunity for all of us to be better prepared.”

When Covid-19 first hit New Zealand, it found our country under-equipped to meet the threat, with a playbook that had been designed for an influenza pandemic. That was despite warnings from public health experts that we weren’t ready.

With our window to ditch a flawed “suppression” strategy in favour of all-out elimination fast closing, the Government changed tack and ordered a nationwide lockdown in late March, 2020.

Modelling later revealed that delaying that move much longer would have made elimination far harder to achieve.

The decision also likely saved thousands of lives.

Over the pre-Omicron period, New Zealand had minus 215 excess deaths per million, which equated to around 1103 fewer people dying than in a scenario in which the Covid-19 crisis never happened.

Otago University researchers have calculated that, if we’d experienced a similar per capita excess mortality rate with other jurisdictions, New Zealand may have seen 1856 extra deaths (Japan), or 2127 (Taiwan), 2577 (Australia), 3798 (Singapore) or 5167 (South Korea).

Remarkably, there were only nine jurisdictions on the planet which had recorded negative cumulative excess mortality for that pandemic period – of which New Zealand was the largest.

With elimination now well behind us, Baker said New Zealand needed a “coherent strategy” as Covid-19 became endemic – something he expected the commission to address.

”We need to be assembling all of the evidence and asking, what strategic setting do we need now?” he said.

”And I’d say that evidence is still suggesting we need a suppression approach to help keep case numbers down.”

Political reaction: Terms of reference fall short

While other political parties are welcoming the creation of a Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Covid-19 response, there are several criticisms aimed at the terms of reference which have been deemed “narrow in scope”.

Green Party Covid-19 spokesperson Teanau Tuiono did not doubt the inquiry would provide valuable lessons, but he said it appeared “deliberately narrow in scope” and excluded the impact of the Government’s economic response on inequality.

“We would like to see more focus on exactly what went wrong with the vaccine rollout in [Māori and Pasifika] communities,” he said.

“This should also include the advice the Government received on the impact removing Covid restrictions would have on Māori, Pasifika, along with putting measures in place to support our immunocompromised and disabled whānau.”

Green MP Chlöe Swarbrick said the terms of reference fell short by “focusing almost exclusively on the immediate economic pandemic response”.

“To fully understand the economic response, we need an inquiry that will look beyond the necessary immediacy of economic decisions – which undoubtedly kept people in jobs – into the consequences still being felt today,” she said.

“Some economists estimate the price paid was about a trillion dollars from the lowest wealth New Zealanders to the wealthiest.

“This really matters in the context of today’s inflationary environment, which impacts low-income New Zealanders the most.”

National Covid-19 Response spokesperson Dr Shane Reti was disappointed other parties weren’t consulted on the inquiry’s membership and the “limited” terms of reference.

“We also note that a separate independent economic inquiry is still needed to paint the full picture of the effects that Covid-19 had,” he said.

“It is critical that this inquiry is wide-ranging, independent and gets to the heart of the major decisions, actions and inactions of the Government.”

Act Party leader David Seymour welcomed a Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Covid-19 response, something the party first called for in May, 2020.

“Act has repeatedly said New Zealand literally cannot afford to repeat what people have just gone through, so we all need a frank assessment of how to do it better.

“The only issue is, it should have been done earlier to report before the election. In a democracy, people should be able to judge Governments with full information.”

“The Government has now been making excuses all year so they can say ‘sorry, it’s going to report eight months after the election.”

Seymour believed the inquiry’s terms of reference were inadequate, highlighting the removal of the operation of the private sector, except where services were integral to a pandemic response, from the scope.

“One of the key issues of the response was the failure to take an overall wellbeing response.

“Like the whole pandemic response, these terms of reference are blind to the wider issues of human wellbeing.”

He encouraged the Government to involve experts from other countries to be involved in the inquiry to ensure it was an “objective investigation”.

Three Waters entrenchment backdown

On the Government’s backdown over an entrenchment clause in the Three Waters legislation, Ardern said she knew the Greens wanted a discussion on the matter, while also acknowledging a mistake had been made.

Asked if she personally knew the amendment was going before the House, Ardern said she knew a proposal was going before the House but noted that entrenchment was commonly known as 75 per cent.

“What came before House was novel in that regard, it wasn’t 75 per cent.”

Asked if the 60 per cent threshold was raised with her before it went to the House, Ardern said she wouldn’t get into the matter, saying she wouldn’t go into Cabinet discussions.

When asked whether Local Government Minister Nanaia Mahuta had given her significant information, Ardern said she acknowledged there had been a “general discussion” but regardless, a mistake had been recognised.

Ardern said it appeared people were looking for one person to blame when in fact, responsibility was being taken as a team. Asked if the team was covering for an individual, Ardern rejected that suggestion.

She said she had no plans to change the Local Government Minister following what had happened, saying any suggestion was “unfair speculation”.

PM quizzed on Minister’s Q+A interview

Ardern said she had spoken to Broadcasting and Media Minister Willie Jackson following his controversial interview on Q+A on Sunday, saying she disgareed with some comments he made that appeared to conflict with what she deemed the Government’s strong commitment to editorial independence.

Ardern said she hadn’t given Jackson any direction on whether to do interviews today, when asked about Jackson not doing interviews today.

Asked whether she had confidence in him as Broadcasting Minister, Ardern said she did.

PM defends Government’s OIA record

On an investigation signalled by Chief Ombudsman Peter Boshier into delayed responses to Official Information Act (OIA) requests, Ardern defended her Government’s record.

Ardern’s expectation was that everyone fulfilled their obligations to the OIA, despite the large number of requests being made – she cited more than 20,000 requests had been made in six months.

Some were conspiracy theories, Ardern said, which she noted did waste time.

The battle in Hamilton West

On the upcoming Hamilton West byelection, Ardern wouldn’t hedge bets on the outcome but noted turnout would be a determining factor.

Turnout was lower than the 2022 Tauranga byelection which she considered to have a low turnout.

When asked whether Labour had an advantage, Ardern said it was generally accepted those people who were considered progressive didn’t come out to vote as much as some thought.

Pharmac’s media ban

Speaking on Pharmac’s decision to ban giving interviews to Mediaworks, Ardern said it wouldn’t be appropriate to comment on the position Pharmac had taken.

She said it was important to note Pharmac was a negotiating body and negotiations were commercially sensitive, an example of how keeping details secure could be necessary.

Ardern said it was her understanding Pharmac had a process that individual interest groups could be notified of funding announcements alongside the media. However, she said the questions were for Pharmac, saying the Government simply funded the body.