This may look like a meeting of an academic department’s admin committee but it is actually one of the first sessions of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Covid Response in New Zealand. Note that there is no formal seating arrangement; no one making a formal recording of proceedings; no legal counsel is asking questions; there is no media desk for intrepid reporters; and, of course, no members of the public are observing. This is because the first act of the 3 person Royal Commission was to issue a decree that the initial hearings would be held in effectively private session, meaning no media would be present, no formal evidence would be recorded, and no outsiders would be allowed to observe anything. We only learnt of this meeting because they issued a press release which most of the news media have ignored. But apparently the hoi polloi are allowed to make their own submissions in three months time.

So let’s be clear about this, the Covid commission is not like any previous Royal Commission which was convened by a senior judicial figure or presiding judge. That is a rare event in New Zealand anyway, compared to Australia and the U.K. In the latter country its Royal Commission into Covid 19 is well underway, and it is open to the public, is being reported by the media, and the evidence of expert witnesses is subject to cross examination by legal counsel, or so I believe. New Zealand has had royal commissions into serious policy issues, and into accidents leading to the loss of many lives, such as the Air NZ plane that crashed into Mt Erebus (in Antarctica) in 1979. The Royal Commission of Inquiry then, chaired by Peter Mahon QC, established that Air NZ had engaged in a cover-up, or ‘an orchestrated litany of lies’, as Mahon famously put it. This Royal Commission, which Ardern intended to be an exercise in ‘learning the lessons’ from the Covid response, is simply a chance for the experts who promoted some of the most draconian policies in our history to have their views reinforced, or their excesses excused.

(Dame Jacinda) Ardern wanted to circumscribe the evidence and, more importantly, the policy response timeframe, to only include the period when the death toll was low, up to March 2022. Giving this elitist talk-fest the imprimatur of a Royal Commission is both inappropriate in constitutional terms, and also dubious in legal terms. For instance, the vexed question of imposing vaccine mandates is still being considered before the courts, in a number of examples of the brief policy of forcing certain groups of public sector employees to keep getting injected with the Pfizer drug. Likewise, it is unclear whether civil servants are going to be asked to give some form of evidence, and whether this will be able to become part of the public record, and from when. So far it seems that the priority is academic public health experts, and representatives of interest groups not directly involved in policymaking. The figure in the photo who joined the three commissioners is Dr Colin Tukuitonga, an expert in Pacific health provision, and an associate Dean at Auckland University. He is one of the so-called experts who was regularly commentating on Covid policy responses in the media during the crisis. So it is at least ironic that his opinions on the policy response are now not going to be made public, and are effectively secret.

In previous posts I have offered criticisms of Covid policy, and, in particular, looked at the official Medsafe reports into vaccine safety, which listed the reported injuries and deaths. When the Medsafe reports were ceased in December last year there were a total of 184 deaths, and only four of these cases were referred for a coronial inquiry. I was critical of the authoritarian policies pursued by the then Prime Minister, which seemed to be based on the assumed need for the physical segregation of those that were deemed ‘unvaccinated’, but also assumed that the ‘vaccinated’ could meet in public spaces without being at risk of virus transmission. We now know that Ardern went beyond the policy of mandated vaccination for public health workers, and against the advice of officials, and was much closer to the views of academic experts who wanted to force all citizens (and then children) to get injected. And I detailed how academics like Michael Baker advocated in the media for the forcible removal of the unvaccinated from all public spaces, as well as running an argument for internment of all these recalcitrant former citizens. Certainly, Ardern’s policies looked like the re-constitution of citizenship based on vaccination status.

None of these things are likely going to be properly examined in the Covid royal commission: it seems clear that lockdowns will be seen as very effective; and vaccine mandates being necessary, based on the assumption that the Pfizer drug was safe and effective. Of course, the Pfizer corporation never provided evidence that their vaccine was going to provide lasting immunity, or stop the transmission of the virus; though they did seem to know that it would cause random cases of myocarditis. But what actually happened after Ardern opened the borders up again in March 2022 was that millions of New Zealanders contracted the virus, and thousands of them have died in the last 18 months. The academics continue to say that the Pfizer vaccine is effective because it prevents serious disease and death for people who keep getting ‘booster’ injections. So a significant proportion of those that were told they had the best possible protection, and would not get a severe version of the virus have gone on to die, but without the actual numbers being released. The truth is that the official statistics on the Covid cases are no longer reliable.

It is not just the numbers of Covid related deaths that are unknown, after officials changed the definition of it being a death occurring within 28 days of contracting the virus. Even under the new definition, which involves someone deciding on cause of death, the toll is still in the thousands in the last year. But there also should be some questioning of the published numbers of patients with Covid in the intensive care units in the hospitals. When these figures are released they seem very low, and suggest that not many of the people with severe disease are actually getting a ventilator. Of course, in other countries there is much greater scrutiny and media access to hospitals, but secrecy is part of media practice in New Zealand. And there are still thousands of cases weekly, involving hundreds of people in hospital, and death rates are still in double figures. However, the government announced this week that the last mandated policies are coming to an end: this means that the mandatory 7 day isolation period for positive cases no longer applies; and there won’t be any requirement for mask-wearing in medical facilities and pharmacies. Of course, these thing weren’t actually mandatory, in the sense that they could be, or were being enforced, they were effectively voluntary anyway. Yet we have the usual suspects once more appearing in the media outlets claiming that some form of mandate is necessary even when it is now pointless, since no one has to comply. It’s about as pointless as having a commission of inquiry where no one is compelled to account for their mandated policies, and everything is secret anyway.