Andrew Dickens: A different take on the Covid Inquiry

Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

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25d ago 1:41

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We all know the Covid Inquiry is looking at MIQ, amongst other things.

And we all know that MIQ had noble aims and notable successes. But we also know the execution was far from perfect, and many people ended up feeling ostracized from the rest of New Zealand.

The idea of the Inquiry is to find out what went wrong so we do better next time.

And yesterday, Les Morgan, the Chief Operating Manager of Sudima Hotels, wrote an exceptional piece in the Herald on the rights and wrongs of MIQ and in the middle of his piece he took my heart away with a stunning piece of writing.

He learnt at a 1pm briefing that his hotel had been requisitioned for an MIQ facility. Except no-one had told him and his team and their first refugees were expected that very day. He wrote this:

"The hotel in question had been closed indefinitely, meaning staff had moved on and there were no consumables or PPE gear on site.

"Once I had run the gauntlet of shock and bad language, our team swung into action and I am proud to say our local staff welcomed the first guests by 8pm the same day with full PPE equipment and comprehensive operational procedures. (The military and public health teams involved arrived on-site equally unprepared but also rallied.)

"These were staff who had left the business earlier in lockdown but came back to bravely face an unknown health risk and the enormous task of recommissioning a hotel, all because they thought it was the right thing to do to help save the lives of fellow New Zealanders. They are all heroes, and they deserve to be properly recognised by the Government."

Damn right.

In London there is a Covid Memorial Wall on the banks of the Tames opposite the Houses of Parliament.

It features over 240,000 individually hand-painted red hearts. Each heart represents a person in the UK who died with COVID-19 listed as a cause of death on their death certificate. It’s all ages, but particularly the young and the old.

We have nothing like that in New Zealand.

This Inquiry will not give everybody want they want. It will prove MIQ to be neither right or wrong.

But it will remind us that there are silent heroes in New Zealand who we have not thanked nearly enough.

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