Bias & secrecy in the New Zealand Covid Inquiry

1 of the 2 Commissioners in the Covid Inquiry appears to have been a shadow advisor to government during the pandemic and all of the Inquiry is closed to any type of public scrutiny for its duration

Covid Inquiry Commissioners John Whitehead (L) and Tony Blakely (R) from a photo op on the Inquiry website when they visited Northland in February 2024.

When then Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced the New Zealand Royal Commission of Inquiry into COVID-19 in late 2022, she specifically called the Commissioners that were appointed at the same time “...independent of the government and its response…”

However some have already called attention to bias in the Commission due to the appointment of 1 of those Commissioners, Tony Blakely.

While Blakely moved to the University of Melbourne in 2019, his 20 year tenure at Otago University (where he remains an honorary professor) meant he was a close former colleague of the Otago University experts who not only recommended the elimination strategy to the Ministry of Health, but who also sat on offical Covid advisory groups to government.

Blakely collaborated on papers with them in support of their recommendations on pandemic restrictions and the Ministry of Health referenced Blakely’s blog posts that he was co-authoring with them.

New Zealand media leaned on him as a commentator too. In a Radio New Zealand (RNZ) article in 2020 he recommended that people in MIQ should not be allowed out of their rooms at all. Like at all. Not even the miserly masked and socially distanced walk around a concrete car park that they were allowed.

Bizarrely the reporter allows the statement to stand with no questioning, as that particular recommendation violates the Crimes of Torture Act 1989. MIQ was expected under the Act to provide all detainees (which is what the Ombudsman correctly classed people in MIQ as) with “…access to fresh air and sunshine, and time outside of the room in which they sleep.”

The RNZ article ends by quoting Blakely’s directive that “…the Ministry of Health needs to undertake a formal risk-assessment of the suitability of hotels versus using farms.” Farms? Where did farms come from? It’s not discussed at all - it just ends on…farms. How? Where? Do people need to undertake formal re-education farm activities? The Killing Fields vibe goes unasked by the reporter.

In another Radio New Zealand interview in late August 2021 Blakely admits the elimination strategy has an end point but encourages it to be used as long as possible. What is the impact of the strategy of border closures and rolling lockdowns and restrictions on people and society and business? It goes unasked by the reporter and of course like all the experts, Blakely doesn’t attempt to address it.

When Blakely was appointed as a Commissioner to the Inquiry he declared conflicts of interest. This included consultancy payments from Moderna for Covid vaccination research, as well as declaring he gave advice directly to Ashley Bloomfield, the then Director-General of Health on the pandemic response. He further declared he has close collegial relationships and friendships with many of the key players in New Zealand’s pandemic response.

No kidding.

But why was he providing advice directly to Bloomfield when there was a whole eco system of internal and external committees and groups set up to do that? How was this advice measured or considered? What did his advice influence?

The only proactively released documentation that I’ve found that mentions Blakely is in Bloomfield’s 2021 memo to then Covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins on the continued requirement of MIQ.

Under questioning in the Grounded Kiwis court case - Bloomfield describes seeking Blakely’s advice when he was provided a memo by his health officials on the 12th of November 2021 that MIQ was no longer justified on public health grounds. Bloomfield claims he agreed with the advice, then sought his own peer review:

Bloomfield also spoke to Phillip Hill who was at least on the government appointed Strategic COVID-19 Public Health Advisory Group - formed in 2021 to provide “independent” advice. Independent has quotation marks as Hill is of course part of the Otago University group of experts.

Why did Bloomfield specifically ask the Australian based Blakely for advice on the New Zealand pandemic response? Again it goes unasked (as does yet again the impacts of that advice on people and society and the economy).

The response to Blakely as a Commissioner

When the Covid Inquiry was formally announced in late 2022, the Science Media Center (a government funded science communication unit for traditional media to lazily copy and paste quotes from) agreed it was a good thing and they wanted the Inquiry all along and Blakely was ideal.

Who were the experts agreeing on Blakely’s appointment as Commissioner? His collaborator and former colleague Michael Baker of course from Otago University who offered up this quote: “The mix of commissioners is an excellent choice. It is particularly good to see that a public health researcher and practitioner of Professor Tony Blakely’s standing has been chosen to lead this process. He is well equipped to help the Commission achieve maximum benefits from what will be a large, complex, and resource intensive review.”

Blakely collaborated with his former colleagues to push the elimination strategy, appeared in New Zealand media justifying and encouraging this strategy and at a minimum provided advice to the Director-General of Health on the continued use of the incredibly costly and divisive MIQ (that by then bordered on farcical as Covid cases in the community outstripped those in MIQ - hence the public health advice it was no longer justified yet it continued for a further 4 months).

In December 2023, King’s Counsel Deborah Kerr wrote in the NZ Herald on Blakely’s appointment: “Putting an epidemiologist in charge of this inquiry is like putting a rabbit in charge of the lettuce garden. There is little doubt that epidemiologists such as Dr Michael Baker are convinced the Government response was the correct one. Our Government was so reliant on the epidemiologists that for a year or so they effectively became our unelected government. The advising epidemiologists have intellectual skin in the game in terms of justifying the decisions that were made.”

Secrecy in the Commission

Since being set up in late 2022 and allowed to gather evidence since February 2023, the Inquiry has held confidential meetings gathering evidence on…well it’s not entirely clear.

The Inquiry is expressly closed to any type of public observation or scrutiny which includes Official Information Act (OIA) requests being forbidden. Their 2-page quarterly reports make light reading giving little indication as to how the Inquiry has been conducting their meetings with ‘stakeholders’ and gathering evidence.

The NZ Council of Civil Liberties included requesting a review of this secrecy in their terms of reference submission to the Inquiry, stating it violates the requirement for both open justice and ensuring public confidence which is required under the Inquiries Act 2013, as well as under the norms of an open democracy.

They also make the point that the public cannot understand nor challenge claims made without this openness. While the Inquiry does publish the organisations and senior government officials they have meet with, the basis of how they structure the meeting and questions are completely unknown.

In July 2023, the Inquiry met with former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern - what was asked? What about the “various independent economic commentators” they met with in November 2023? Were any of the economists that released cost-benefit analysis (CBAs) that expressly found lockdowns had less benefit than costs met with? Unknown.

In December 2023 the Inquiry met with "various academic researchers to understand their research on contact tracing technology” - doesn’t that sound like embedding the pandemic response to be more efficient rather than were those measures justified and worthwhile and had a measurable expected outcome? (For instance strict community mask mandates were never tracked nor evaluated, not once, yet had significant effects on people - people were arrested and could be fined up to $15,000 for not wearing a mask to affecting learning in schools.)

In a June 2023 opinion piece on the Inquiry Blakely states “New Zealand’s response to Covid-19 was strong compared with other countries”. This seems to back up Kerr’s statements that asking the people who suggested the policy to review said policy - can only lead to them saying it was the right policy without any examination of the costs and outcomes!

A recent NZ Herald article explained it would be incredibly hard to remove any appointed Commissioner - however they could simply be asked to leave by the Minister of Internal Affairs, Brooke van Velden. Or the Minister could appoint an additional Commissioner, perhaps someone who was critical of the response to ensure the Inquiry at least attempts to have a veneer of transparency.

The Inquiry’s final report is due with the Governor-General by the 30th of September 2024. The September deadline was part of a 3 month extension that the previous government agreed to in October 2023, which also means the budget is now estimated at around $17 million.

The $17 million appears unlikely to deliver a transparent and accountable Inquiry process at this point.

Yet luckily - there’s an entire Substack that uses official documentation to examine the government’s response including the MIQ experience and the incredibly pointless self isolation trials of late 2021 and how people were encouraged to report others for Covid restriction breaches.