“The Ministry of Health’s bureaucratic exemption
process for travelling in and out of Auckland is strangling
local businesses,” says ACT Leader David
Seymour.

“Businesses in Warkworth and Pukekohe,
which are located just inside Auckland, are finding it
impossible to get exemptions for their employees who live
just outside the city to travel across the boundary to
work.

“Local businesses have been waiting several
days to hear from the Ministry of Health whether their
employees can travel a few kilometres to go to their jobs.
That’s insane.

“Businesses are losing significant
revenue but the Ministry is being totally
unresponsive.

“During the last lockdown, the process
for determining essential business was run by MBIE. But the
Government has inexplicably given this job to the Ministry
of Health.

“The Ministry has received more than
10,300 applications for exemptions but has made decisions on
just 1,900.

“How many officials are working on the
several thousand remaining applications? Are they working
weekends to clear the backlog? What’s the average wait
time for an application?

“Meanwhile, the Government
has created a bizarre exemption for Rocket Lab employees to
be able to travel in order to scrub rockets.

“ACT
has always maintained that businesses who can operate safely
should be allowed to do so. The same goes for travel.
Businesses shouldn’t have to fight the bureaucracy for
several days just so their employees can travel a few
kilometres across the Auckland boundary.

“The Health
Minister needs to front up and tell New Zealanders what he
is doing to reduce the level of bureaucracy facing local
Auckland
businesses.”

© Scoop Media

Imagine a twenty-first century piece of software trying to run on a twentieth-century computer, and you have a fair picture of the New Zealand democratic system.

Most of us receive from private companies an unprecedented level of personalised service – online, just in time, targeted, responsive. Yet our democratic systems have not caught up.

They are not deeply responsive to our voice as citizens in the same way that markets (often) are to our choices as consumers. They rely too heavily on elected representatives to take decisions on our behalf, when we are clearly capable of taking more of them directly ourselves, or at least being more deeply engaged in the process… Read More on The Dig>>