Excellent analysis from @marcdaalder.bsky.social on the Covid Inquiry.
"If the health minister believes the pandemic response was so poor, it’s now his job to lay the groundwork to do better next time"
newsroom.co.nz/2026/03/11/n...
It's impossible to have it both ways: That the lockdown went longer against health advice and that it was 107 days which was too long.
Certainly it's possible to argue that the level of restriction was higher than necessary for those five days (but then you have to deal with the oral advice issue).
We know L3 was lockdown because:
1. The Royal Commission defined lockdown as L3 or L4
2. That was the common understanding at the time
3. If you ask any Aucklander, they'd say they were locked down for 107 days to Dec 2 when L3 ended, not just 35 days to Sept 21 when L4 ended
The key thing about the "Auckland's lockdown went longer than recommended" claim is not that Bloomfield may have updated his advice in an oral item to Cabinet, but that this actually had no impact on the length of the lockdown. This was about moving from L4 to L3 - but L3 was still lockdown.
The oral advice was, of course, not written down. The Royal Commission notes this as a flaw in phase 2. But it's surprising that they didn't check post-Cab transcripts when making this finding and that it didn't come up in the natural justice process.
Pretty crazy how important the blockade of a trade route is right now
The Covid-19 Royal Commission has broadly backed the decisions taken during the pandemic, while identifying areas for improvement.
Grant Illingworth bridged the two (though he was there only for the latter part of phase one)
It's pretty consistent with Phase 1. I think both reports are balanced and sensible. I disagree with each on some points, but certainly the overall thrust of both is "the response was fundamentally good but there are specific areas where it struggled".
In particular re: transition from elimination.
The Covid-19 Royal Commission's second report has been published, I've read (almost) all of it and here are the key takeaways:
newsroom.co.nz/2026/03/10/l...
Mazda says it plants five trees for every car sold, but a climate expert says 41,000 trees would be needed to offset the vehicle’s CO2 emissions.
Mazda has now been taken to the Advertising Standards Authority over the allegedly misleading promotion.
newsroom.co.nz/2026/03/09/m...
Diesel pays RUC, same as EVs. Basically all passenger/commercial diesel/electric vehicles (under 3.5 tonnes) pay same RUC rate.
Just a broken fuel excise system. Will be rectified by universal RUC.
Govt gets more road tax from EVs than many petrol cars
In this case, I understood Meager's argument to be that he is protecting the free and frank expression of *his* opinion to the AI, which I agree could potentially be covered. I did make your point in my complaint though - that the AI cannot have "opinions" and therefore doesn't get protection.
This was a large part of it. If the law was a problem, the Govt could (and did) change it. Like a lot of what went wrong in 2021/22, the difficulty was in the unclear transition from elimination to something else (which the Govt had not articulated internally, let alone externally).
Over summer, I OIA'd every minister for their AI chat logs.
Here's what I found:
newsroom.co.nz/2026/03/06/h...
The design of the Constitution divided warmaking authority between Congress and the executive to prevent a president to take the country to war by themselves for any petty or self-serving reason. You know, like a king would. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...
I spent two days delving through Transpower data to understand what the grid owner and electricity system operator thinks our energy future might look like.
Here's what I found:
newsroom.co.nz/2026/03/04/c...
requiem for vanished birdsong
the war is unpopular but it's also illegal but it also doesn't serve any purpose but it also undermines diplomacy but it also is set to produce the opposite outcome as intended but it also already has hundreds dead and threatens more but it also will not make anything better for anyone but it also
I promise you that the government that murdered Alex Pretti and Renee Good does not give a flying fuck about the protests in Iran.
Do you think FIFA will revoke his peace prize
illegal use of force by every measure, domestic & international
the congressional authorization thing is bad but honestly for me the whole "the crime of aggression is the supreme international crime" thing is what keeps me up at night
This is fake news from RNZ. Unfortunately, G-I-Z is not how the birding term referred to here is spelled.
www.rnz.co.nz/news/nationa...
art of the deal, baby
