Former Covid-19 Response minister
Chris Hipkins has admitted there were a number of things the
former government got wrong about the pandemic, but has stood
by the initial response.
Appearing on the Dom
Harvey Podcast, the now-opposition leader spoke at
length about his career, including how he became an MP, how
he found out he was going to be Prime Minister, and what was
going through his head during those 1pm
briefings.
“That first 18 months, I reckon we nailed
it. I really do, I’m really proud of it. But the exit from
elimination was the bit that we didn’t get right. Once Covid
started to spread in the community, things moved really
fast, and we weren’t keeping up with how fast that was
moving,” he said.
Hipkins said if he were to do things
differently, one would have been the treatment of
Auckland.
“At the end of that final lockdown, I think
we could have still had the boundary around Auckland, but
given people more freedom within Auckland.
“You know,
as long as people are staying in Auckland, not spreading
around the rest of the country, more freedom there. And then
we probably could have released that boundary around
Auckland earlier.”
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He said the re-opening of the
border was another one that could have been done
differently, saying the government had a stepped plan but it
was trying to balance too many things.
“The airlines
were saying to us things like ‘we need six weeks, because we
haven’t got any planes, and if you just reopen the border
we’re not going to be able to cope with the influx of
demand’. At that point, we should’ve said ‘well, that’s not
actually the government’s problem’, but we didn’t.
“We
took that on, and we tried to work with the airlines to
sequence the border re-opening in a way that was going to
work for the airlines as well, which meant we got blamed for
the fact people couldn’t come back into the country, when
actually in many cases there were other
restraints.”
Hipkins said often, things were moving so
fast that the government did not have all the information,
which left other people trying to fill the void
themselves.
“We had an issue with people who had
travelled between Auckland and Northland. There were
questions about why they had done that, and what their
motivations were, and whether there were gangs involved,
whether they were sex workers.
“And I remember
standing there saying I’ve got no evidence that they’re sex
workers. And yet now, five years later, I still get people
saying ‘are you going to apologise to those people you
accused of being sex workers?’ I was like ‘well, I stood
there and said that we had no evidence that was the
case.
“Winston Peters, on the other hand, was in
Northland at the time and he was making those claims
publicly. Now the anti-Covid people seem to think that he’s
their hero, and yet he was the one making those
allegations.”
Referencing the Parliament occupation,
Hipkins said social media had emboldened people who were in
echo chambers to go out and “be horrible” to people they
thought were wrong.
“The thing that really made me sad
about that was, I knew some of the people out there. I
recognised some of their faces, and not all of them were at
the end of this, you know, of that extreme. Some of them
were moderate, nice people who kind of got caught up in
something, or in some cases there were actually people out
there with, I thought, altruistic motivation,” he
said.
“So they weren’t necessarily anti-vaccine. They
just didn’t believe that government should do things that
kind of had an element of mandate about them, and so they
were there on principle.
“Now, I actually respected
that, even though I disagreed with them. I did respect that,
but then they got sort of swept up in something that ended
up becoming a violent protest where they were throwing
bricks at police.
“And I don’t think that’s who those
people, many of those people were, but it just sort of shows
how these movements can sort of morph and take on a life of
their own.”
He also spoke about the process of taking
over as health minister from David Clark, revealing Clark
had told Hipkins over a beer that he should replace
him.
Hipkins said upon Labour’s re-election, Jacinda
Ardern wanted him to keep Health and lose Education, which
Hipkins did not want to do. So a compromise was reached
where Andrew Little would take Health and Hipkins would look
after the Covid-19 Response portfolio.
Even still,
Hipkins said he was “frustrated” he could not do all he
wanted in Education.
“The education reforms that we
wanted to do just kind of got stuck, and we just couldn’t
progress them because of Covid. And it wasn’t just because
of lack of time on my part, I would have made the time to do
it. It was just that you couldn’t ask schools to do major
reform when they’re just functioning day to
day.”
Hipkins admitted there were times during the
daily Covid press conferences where he got things wrong, or
did not know the information.
But he said admitting
not to know something was something Christopher Luxon could
take on board.
“I’m not going to give him too much
advice. I don’t want him to get better. But one of the
things that I think sometimes he just needs to say, ‘I don’t
know,’ or ‘I’m not in a position to answer that
question’.
“At the moment, people by and large again
will respect you for saying that. I think it’s when you try
and bluster your way through that people get a bit
frustrated.”
He would not criticise Luxon for the
photo opportunities he puts himself in while abroad, saying
it was important to “be human” while Prime
Minister.
“Every now and then, just taking a moment to
enjoy the job, there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s a hard
job, and there are some fun aspects to it, and just taking a
moment now and then to take a deep breath and enjoy it, I
probably didn’t do that enough.”
Hipkins confirmed he
had the support of Labour to lead it into the next election,
and hoped his previous time in the role would allow him to
hit the ground running should Labour win
re-election.
“I think that actually gives me a head
start in a way that most incoming Prime Ministers don’t. The
learning curve is steeper than you could ever
imagine.”
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