Govt knew the Northland women were not at fault, yet still blamed them

David Fisher reports:

A blunder by a government worker sent Northland into an 11-day lockdown after travel documents that were meant to be declined were mistakenly approved. …

Detective Inspector Aaron Proctor’s summary of “Operation Hiking” quoted an email from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment which said the travel documents were “issued in error by the Ministry of Social Development, (the error not being the fault of the applicant)”.

Another document showed it was known three days before the 11-day lockdown was announced on October 8 that human error was behind the travel documents being granted to the women.

One Northland mayor has branded the case “incompetence by the bureaucracy” while another says it would have been “tipping point” for some businesses struggling under Covid-19 lockdowns.

The women were publicly vilified for crossing the border with then Covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins accusing them of using “false information to travel across the border”.

So much for the podium of truth. Hipkins stated the women used false information and the country collectively hated them. And now 11 months later we find out this was a lie. The Government made the blunder that locked Northland down, and even worse knew about it three days before the lockdown.

In March Hipkins said he had yet to receive any information to suggest he was wrong.

Now compare this to:

This led to the October 13 briefing from MBIE to Hipkins, Finance Minister Grant Robertson and Regional Development Minister Stuart Nash. The briefing said: “It is our understanding that the intention was to decline the application but it was approved in error.”

Hipkins was told on October 13 that the fault lie with the Government, not the women, yet in March he was still claiming the women provided false information.

This is a huge cover-up. It should not take 11 months for the truth to emerge.

The podium of truth was the podium of disinformation.