The multi-million MIQ system that's gone quietly unnoticed
How politicians pushed for purpose-built facilities to detain arrivals into New Zealand after the end of MIQ in 2022 and the multi-million cost of what stands at the ready instead.
A week ago former Prime Minister Chris Hipkins ruefully looked back after losing the recent election and observed “…it's clear from the end of 2021, we saw our support numbers drop quite significantly…”
MIQ was a shocking imposition on the rights of citizens and to the economy so if he’s in any doubt why the numbers for the Labour party fell at the end of 2021 - MIQ as part of Labour’s litany of overly cautious, strung out Covid restrictions has to be one of the many reasons.
The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) recently released a tranche of documents on their website up to when they transferred their work on the national isolation and quarantine system to Te Whatu Ora/Health NZ after June 2023.
The 1st business case for long-term MIQ facilities
These documents show how Hipkins seems blind to MIQ’s impact, in fact in late 2021 (and I mean late this was November 2021) he was instructing MBIE to develop a business case to secure a “purposefully designed MIQ network and core operating model.”
MBIE went to work on long-term government run MIQ options, clearly assuming back then that some travellers would be required to go through MIQ for another 1 to 2 years, and MIQ as a possibility would be needed indefinitely.
This MIQ network would consist of a minimum of 1,000 rooms as part of a “stable, flexible and enduring quarantine response.“ Hipkins included personal comments on his briefings back to MBIE, such as considering a specifically trained perhaps “micro-credentialed“ workforce to staff the facilities and requested a meeting to discuss his ideas.
An 8th of October 2021 meeting had MBIE officials note Hipkins had the “…expectation that MIQ would continue to play a role in managing the risk of COVID-19 community transmission, and that currently the risk of transmission from community cases was higher than the risk of transmission from the border.”
The following month the Ministry of Health sent a memo to Hipkins from then Director-General of Health Ashley Bloomfield, which said MIQ as a default requirement for international arrivals was no longer justified on a public health basis as “…the risk posed by international arrivals transmitting Covid-19 is no longer higher than the domestic transmission risk of Covid-19.”
This is after the Delta outbreak had occurred and community transmission was on-going, but also as a move away from the Covid elimination strategy had started to gather pace - which Hipkins was leading. It’s flat out bizarre that Hipkins thought Covid zero would be ending but also maintained by focussing MIQ on community cases.
MBIE polished his request for detention facilities - which is exactly what MIQ was according to the Ombudsman’s review into MIQ complaints, and heck consider this list of ‘must have’ requirements that was presented to Hipkins as part of the business case:
Doesn’t seem much different from a detention facility, does it?
Based on this Ministerial direction of having at least 1,000 rooms - MBIE reviewed the existing 15 MIQ hotel facilities, and found 6 met their above non-negotiable criteria. However this relied on the ability to enact a contract with their private owners. MBIE suggested if it came down to it the Crown could use the Public Works Act 1981 which allows ‘compulsory acquisition or leasing of sites’. MBIE also considered hubs around airport locations and investigating the construction of modular units to boost capacity at existing MIQ hotel facilities or by using Crown land to build modular units for use of up to 10 years.
These modular units would take 18 months to construct and MBIE proposed changing the scope of the business case to support them.
The business case went through a review coordinated by Treasury in March 2022, who rated the project a flashing red: ‘successful delivery appears to be unachievable’.
Despite the border requirement for MIQ largely ending in March 2022 - this didn’t stop the work. The initial business case was canned in favor of starting another, more measured attempt at a business case.
The 2nd business case for long term MIQ facilities
Hipkins appears to have grown impatient, he wanted the hotels that had been used for MIQ to be bought by the government to continue their use as MIQ facilities. Here’s his comment on an April 2022 briefing to him from MBIE discussing how they would proceed with the new business case:
The 2 paragraphs Hipkins referenced were MBIE confirming that his desire to buy hotels used as MIQ facilities was out of scope.
Hipkins was right it wasn’t the 1st time he’d asked - he had nudged MBIE to provide the costs of buying hotels to him in a July 2021 briefing and also which exact ones the government could buy, and to hurry up on it, scrawling back to them on the briefing “…If the Aussies can do it in 6 weeks…!”.
Another briefing to Hipkins in April 2022 assumed that border closures would be a key lever in the face of another pandemic and MIQ would be a necessary part of any future response:
It bears remembering that advice to then Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern in March 2020 stated that any merit in closing the border hinged on whether the health system could be improved by the time it re-opened. Border closures were not recommended by the World Health Organisation (WHO) as doing so would only delay rather than prevent an epidemic and cause hardship and high economic cost along the way.
And just to double-down - again at the time this was being worked on within government - the Grounded Kiwis court case had successfully challenged the MIQ allocation system that was used when MIQ was required.
Although the border requirement had ended, MIQ facilities were still available to house people - as late as June 2022 some border and community cases were still being housed in MIQ. MBIE even maintained contracts to the end of June 2023 with 7 MIQ hotel facilities to provide 1250 rooms if required.
Yet the exact nature of how and when to re-enact any MIQ requirements - and the social license to even use them - is not addressed in these documents.
The 2nd business case that MBIE was tasked with was to explore 3 options:
The readiness plan that’s mentioned in option 1 (and appears to be in place now) has contractual arrangements with former MIQ hotels in Auckland and Christchurch, and key suppliers like security, and has the ability to stand up 1,000 to 6,000 rooms within 8 weeks if needed. The plan also involves, with no detail, supporting people to isolate in their homes with technology options to monitor them for compliance.
MBIE delivered their 2nd business case in September 2022 and the business case scored option 2, which consisted of the above readiness plan from option 1 and a contracted rag-tag portfolio of suppliers, as the preferred option.
By this time there were *just* 30 permanent full time staff at MBIE working on MIQ, down from 650 full time people in March 2022, and the mantle of Covid-19 Response Minister had passed from Hipkins to Ayesha Verrall who eagerly took over where Hipkins left off.
MBIE had also reflected within the 2nd business case public health advice from the Strategic COVID-19 Public Health Advisory Group. This group was chaired by vaccine advocate, and personal friend to Verrall, Nikki Turner. The advice Turner’s group provided was a direct output of Verrall meeting with them and asking for their comment in November 2022.
Turner had a un-documented conflict of interest when through her directorship of the Immunisation Advisory Centre (IMAC), she also led the Covid vaccinator training roll-out for the Ministry of Health. She was awarded this work valued at $16.5 million with no competitive process - which she then sub-contracted part of to her husband.
The group didn’t just restrict themselves to focus on border arrivals as a reason for MIQ but also domestically, particularly for measles. Their overall recommendation was, “We consider that an approach that sits on the continuum between options two and three, would prepare New Zealand well for a future infectious disease threat.”
Verrall then pushed MBIE to focus on option 3 - creating purpose-built MIQ facilities, however both MBIE and the Ministry of Health and Te Whatu Ora/Health NZ and Treasury did not recommend option 3. Incidentally option 3 was estimated by MBIE to cost $154 million to $1.17 billion to build facilities - with $20.1 million to $32.1 million spent per year to just keep them at the ready.
The Cabinet paper based on this 2nd business case needed updating following this feedback from Verrall, which MBIE reluctantly updated:
Interesting that MBIE suggested waiting for a Covid inquiry.
But MBIE also told Verrall to go and do more Ministerial consultation on her preference to discuss and understand what happens if they build facilities and they sit there un-used.
This advice from government officials seemed to be a handbrake on Verrall’s authoritarian, spend thrift impulses as in December 2022 the Social Wellbeing Committee approved a Cabinet paper that recommended option 2 and agreed to allocate funds of $3.7 million per year to it.
The Cabinet paper rationale for this work still focused on border arrivals and for any infectious disease again such as measles, but also added to that public health advice by including that this MIQ system could be used for “housing people following a natural disaster or mass arrivals.” The paper costed activating these arrangements and using these rooms at between $600m to $800m.
Although MBIE expected media interest and prepared reactive lines for Verrall as the new Health Minister from February 2023 - I only found a lone 2022 article on the readiness plan.
Under vote health in the April 2022 budget, funding was secured for 2 years of almost $7 million on New Zealand’s future quarantine and isolation capability.
This is presumably the short-term funding that MBIE recommended for 2 years until it can be absorbed into baseline funding to continue work on the readiness plan and maintain various contractual arrangements with MIQ suppliers like hotels and security.
On the 1st of July 2023, Te Whatu Ora/Health NZ proudly announced that they had taken over from MBIE to oversee this long-term MIQ capability.
The costs of MIQ for dubious benefit
MIQ had significant costs from a societal and economic perspective. Putting aside the fairness of its use that was challenged in court, MIQ was cruel, kept too long, it stopped the healthy functioning of society and the economy and it had limited use despite what self-congratulatory government papers say. Of the 189,315 people who went through MIQ to the 13th of November 2021, when the requirement took a total of 14 days, MIQ only captured 1,401 border cases of Covid (less than 1% of people who went through to that point).
Were the billions spent on MIQ up that point - and now further money spent on it - worthwhile or should this effort have been better focussed on supporting the health system as suggested to Ardern in March 2020?
This fortress mentality of narrow minded politicians has caused incredible amounts of money spent on a system that may not be needed, hasn’t been reflected on by the public it seeks to allegedly serve, and importantly hasn’t considered if and how the social license exists to ever set up MIQ again. It’s not surprising Labour’s numbers fell - it’s surprising they didn’t fall further.
Note to the readers:
I’ve covered the MIQ experience and it’s incredible costs, trials on self-isolation that government ran but had no plan to ever implement, and government trials at MIQ to increase surveillance of people.
Wow, thank you - I am shocked at the incredible waste of money the "fortress mentality", lack of consideration of the bigger picture, any possible social licence, and consultation with the public. Happened in other aspects of the Covid response too....