During the height of the pandemic restrictions, thousands of New Zealanders desperate to return home had to roll the dice month after month as they struggled to secure a coveted bed in an army-run quarantine hotel. A New Zealand court on Wednesday ruled that the government had violated its citizens’ rights by imposing a lottery system on them. A group called the Grounded Kiwis had used crowdsourcing to help fund their anti-government case. But while celebrating their victory, the case may have little impact in the future, as New Zealand has since abandoned its zero-tolerance approach to the virus and has largely dismantled the controversial quarantine system. Central to the case was the New Zealand Rights Act, which guarantees every citizen the right to return to their homeland. Supreme Court Justice Gillian Mallon ruled that forcing people to stay in quarantine hotels for two weeks initially, and later for a week, was reasonable given the pandemic conditions. But he found that the operation of a lottery-type system for the beds was absurd and did not take into account how long people waited abroad or whether they had an urgent need to return home. “New Zealanders’ right to enter their country could in some cases be violated in a way that is not proven to be justified in a free and democratic society,” the judge concluded. The flaws in the system were highlighted earlier this year in the case of Charlotte Bellis, a pregnant New Zealand journalist who was temporarily barred from Afghanistan due to New Zealand’s strict border policies. The case quickly became a disgrace to the New Zealand government, which backed down and offered Bellis a home path, which he accepted. Paul Radich, a lawyer representing Grounded Kiwis, said he was “happy” with the decision, which came as a vindication for people who had struggled to return home. Opposition MP Chris Bishop said the government’s Managed Isolation and Quarantine (MIQ) system has caused a great deal of suffering. “We now have a court confirmation of the state cruelty that was the MIQ lottery,” Bishop said. “Pregnant women, like journalist Charlotte Bellis, were denied MIQ vouchers to enter New Zealand,” Bishop said. “People could not go back to being with loved ones in the last stages of their lives.” However, COVID-19 Minister Chris Hippins said the court confirmed that the MIQ system was legal and justified. He said he acknowledged that the court had found that some citizens’ rights might have been violated by the bed lottery system. “We have long recognized the difficult exchanges we had to make in our response to COVID-19 to save lives and the impact of these decisions on all New Zealanders, especially those living abroad,” Hipkins said. The court specifically considered the so-called virtual lobby system, which was essentially a state lottery for quarantine points, as it operated from early September to mid-December 2021. New Zealand’s approach to the pandemic has changed significantly over time, which led to the abolition of the quarantine system this year. Until last October, the nation of 5 million followed a zero-tolerance approach as the government led by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern tried to eradicate the virus completely. This gave way to a repression strategy during an outbreak of the Delta variant and then finally to something close to being accepted as an outbreak of the Omicron variant proved impossible to limit.
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