Daily Archives: August 16, 2021

WELLINGTON, Aug 16 (Reuters) - Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern of New Zealand on Monday implored Taliban leaders to uphold human rights in Afghanistan by allowing women to continue in work and education and to let foreigners and Afghans who want to leave the country go.

Taliban fighters took control of the presidential palace in Kabul late on Sunday as U.S.-led forces departed and Western nations scrambled to evacuate their citizens. read more

"I would just again implore those who made these moves in recent days to acknowledge what the international community has called for - human rights and the safety of their people," Ardern said at a news conference in the capital Wellington.

"What we want to see is women and girls being able to access work and education. These are things that have traditionally not been available to them where there has been governance by Taliban," she said

Ardern said the situation in Afghanistan had deteriorated much faster than expected. Efforts are underway to evacuate New Zealanders and some Afghans who worked with New Zealand agencies, she said.

About 37 Afghans have been identified to have worked alongside the New Zealand Defence Forces, Ardern said. Efforts would be made to evacuate these people and their dependents, she said, adding that a C-I30 military aircraft and accompanying personnel would be sent to help with the evacuation.

The Taliban have issued a statement saying they would protect people's lives and property and create a peaceful and secure environment. They also announced an amnesty for anyone who worked for U.S.-led foreign forces or the old government.

"The whole world is watching. Taliban is making claims about the type of administration they wish to be. We would implore them to allow people to leave safely," Ardern said.

"It's not a matter of trust - it's going to be all about the actions, not the words," she said.

Reporting by Praveen Menon; Editing by Christopher Cushing, Robert Birsel

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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New Zealand's Ardern implores Taliban to uphold human rights - Reuters

SYDNEY - New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has said her government will continue to pursue its ambitious COVID-19 elimination strategy indefinitely. On Thursday, she outlined a cautious and staged approach to reopening the countrys borders to some foreign travelers early next year.

New Zealand, which has some of the toughest COVID-19 controls in the world, closed its borders to most foreign nationals in March of last year. The closure is part of a strategy to eliminate the virus that also includes strict lockdowns and mandatory hotel quarantine for New Zealanders returning from overseas.

The borders will remain closed for the rest of this year, and their reopening depends on the success of New Zealands vaccination rollout. The government said this would represent a shift from the collective armor of travel restrictions to the individual armor of inoculations.

No timetable has been set, but it is likely that next year, vaccinated visitors from low-risk countries -- those considered to have COVID-19 under control -- will not have to go into hotel quarantine in New Zealand. Unvaccinated travelers and all visitors from high-risk countries would face a mandatory 14-day hotel isolation.

Ardern said its a cautious approach.

We cannot keep borders restrictions on forever, and to be absolutely clear, we do not want to do that, and neither do the experts we talk to, she said. Border closures were only ever a temporary measure in order to keep COVID out before vaccine was developed and administered. So long as the scientific evidence shows we can safely transition from a border defense to the individual armor of the vaccine, then that is the direction we will go.

Later this year New Zealand will test home isolation or shorter stays in hotel quarantine for selected travelers, including workers sent overseas by local businesses.

The national vaccination program will also be accelerated, with everyone ages 16 or over eligible for their first vaccine dose starting Sept. 1.

About 20% of New Zealanders are fully vaccinated.

The South Pacific nation has recorded about 3,000 coronavirus cases and 26 deaths since the pandemic began.

A quarantine-free travel corridor with Australia, which opened in April, has been suspended because of delta variant outbreaks in Sydney and Melbourne.

More:

New Zealand Outlines COVID-19 Plan to Reconnect with World - VOA Asia

The post from an anonymous bride-to-be revealed the bride had demanded her cousin dye her "natural bright ginger hair" before being a bridesmaid, so it "doesnt ruin the blue and green colour scheme".

AM Show host Ryan Bridge asked Ardern what her response would be in that situation.

"Look in that particular situation I'd say to the bridesmaid, 'lucky escape, you've been given your out clause!'" she responded.

"Oh, you'd say 'don't go'?" he questioned.

"Well I mean it looks like you've been given the option not to," Ardern laughed.

She went on to reveal she won't have any such stipulations for her own wedding party.

"For me it's all about the guests having a good time. You want everyone to have fun," said Ardern.

"Having a precondition on the way you look or appear, that's certainly not the beginning of a fun time."

The PM has previously let some details slip surrounding the big day: In May she announced the couple had set a date for a summer wedding, and revealed the nuptials will take place in Gayford's hometown of Gisborne.

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Jacinda Ardern weighs in on viral 'bridezilla' Reddit thread on The AM Show - Newshub

Jacinda Ardern knows that reopening the border means some people who refuse to be vaccinated will die from Covid. Photo / Mark Mitchell

OPINION:

In a week when Judith Collins fussed about where Winston Churchill's portrait should hang in Parliament, Jacinda Ardern was confronting issues of life and death.

With her announcements yesterday, the Prime Minister has proven she has listened to her medical adviser Sir David Skegg but has proven broader and braver than he can be.

The question now is, will she hold her nerve?

On the eve of D-Day, Churchill famously dined alone with his wife, telling her that "by the time you wake tomorrow, there may be 20,000 young men dead". Clementine's response is not recorded. The next day, Allied deaths were 4414, at the very lowest end of the military's estimates.

Luckily for us, Ardern is more squeamish than Churchill. Nevertheless, neither she nor we can escape the same sort of calculations Churchill and New Zealand's war leader, Labour's Peter Fraser, had to confront.

Once Ardern took Covid seriously last March, every major call she has made has been proven right. Going hard and going early has been the right doctrine to survive the initial phoney war and get the best economic result.

Also like Churchill, Ardern's most powerful weapon has been words. While hardly Churchillian, her oratory has been decisive, getting her "Team of Five Million" to submit to lockdowns and obey her commands, where other world leaders have failed.

Moreover, while Churchill had Hugh Dowding, Bernard Montgomery and later Dwight Eisenhower, poor Ardern has had Ashley Bloomfield.

The health authorities' failure on every Covid operation, from distributing personal protection equipment to vaccinating front-line border workers, means New Zealand's Covid-free status is entirely down to Ardern. But her very success makes her next decisions more difficult.

12 Aug, 2021 05:00 PMQuick Read

12 Aug, 2021 05:00 PMQuick Read

After Churchill's iron curtain fell across Europe, the West's strongest propaganda tool was the evil empire forbidding its citizens to leave, on pain of the gulag or worse.

Unlike Scott Morrison, who banned Australian citizens from leaving Australia without permission from the state, Ardern has not taken the proto-fascist step of introducing exit visas. But she may as well have. Unless part of the nomenklatura, the lack of MIQ spaces on return means visiting family or business associates overseas comes with a semi-permanent sentence of banishment.

The probability of a Level 4 lockdown this side of Christmas is close to 100 per cent, with Skegg saying we are likely to experience an outbreak of the Delta variant in the next few months. The Government says its response will be to move immediately to Level 4. Given the pedestrian vaccine rollout, that is the only possible call.

But whereas Skegg says current border restrictions need to remain until next year, Ardern is prepared to take the risk of trialling alternatives to MIQ this side of Christmas. From October, she will trial home isolation or shorter MIQ stays for vaccinated New Zealanders returning home from medium-risk countries those that have Covid but what Ardern calls "pretty decent rates of vaccinations". When the trial begins, that will define most of the world.

The Government won't say it explicitly yet, but implies you'll arrive home at the airport and have the choice between being locked up in a hotel for a few days or wearing an electronic ankle bracelet at home. Any convict will tell you home detention is better than a windowless hotel.

The Prime Minister is also signalling greater trust in rapid border testing, by which she means drooling into a spoon and getting a highly accurate result within a few hours, or spitting onto a card and getting a less reliable result almost immediately.

The Beehive remains furious that the Ministry of Health has stuffed around over saliva testing.

Ministers see it as part of a pattern that includes the fuss over Sam Morgan's contact tracing card and the inability to deliver anything meaningful from the $1.9 billion for mental health that Finance Minister Grant Robertson made the centrepiece of his failed "wellbeing" Budget.

With the likely assistance of the new "delivery unit" reporting to Robertson, the Government wants quarantine-free arrivals as early as possible next year for travellers from low-risk countries who pass a reliable spit test at the border.

Right now, its focus is New Zealanders returning home, but it isn't too much of a stretch to extend the policy to tourists and international students before the end of the peak tourism season and the start of the 2022 academic year.

All of this raises the risk Delta will appear. For now, lockdown is the only possible response. But once everyone has had the chance to be vaccinated, Ardern faces a horrible dilemma similar to the choices Churchill and his Allies faced in 1944, albeit with lower potential casualties.

Health experts, including Skegg, are obliged to focus almost exclusively on reducing morbidity and mortality. They are right that New Zealand has been let down by other countries, including our old allies, which have failed to eliminate Covid the way we have. But that means they cannot help but offer very conservative advice on re-opening New Zealand, with an opening position of keeping the border shut forever.

That would be fine were we happy to live East German-style behind a closed border, shipping off commodity milk powder, meat carcasses and logs. Few of us, if any, would ever get sick or die from Covid, whether or not we were vaccinated. The commodity economy would trundle along.

But most people value things in addition to reducing morbidity and mortality and earning enough money from commodity trade.

Young people and the retired want to see the world just for the hell of it. Schools and universities want foreign students and academics to bring different perspectives to their teaching and research. People enjoy being part of a vibrant tourism industry. Exporters need to meet with foreign customers in-market to share ideas for product development and to deliver services. People want to see friends and family abroad, and to welcome them here.

This week's announcements prove Ardern is taking these values into account. But that means some people who refuse to be vaccinated will get sick from Covid and die.

Ardern will need to make the finest and most difficult judgments of her life over the months ahead. They will be informed by medical experts but not limited by them. No one envies her job.

- Matthew Hooton is an Auckland-based public relations consultant.

An earlier version of this column referred to the Government's rollout of saliva testing and claimed a "single supplier" had failed to meet deadlines. That is not the case. The supplier has been undertaking saliva testing since February at MIQ facilities, and is ready to expand its services.

Originally posted here:

Matthew Hooton: Jacinda Ardern shows courage in Covid fight, but will she hold her nerve? - New Zealand Herald

New Zealand is set to raise interest rates this week, the first advanced economy in the Asia-Pacific to begin normalising policy, as a powerful recovery unhindered by Delta outbreaks shows signs of overheating.

The Reserve Bank of New Zealand will lift the official cash rate by a quarter percentage point to 0.5 per cent at its review Wednesday in Wellington, according to 13 of 17 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. One economist predicts a half-point increase and three see no change. Markets also expect a hike as concerns mount that labour shortages will unleash wage-push inflation.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. The countrys economy is at risk of overheating.Credit:Getty

It is clear the New Zealand economy no longer requires extreme monetary stimulus, said Sharon Zollner, chief economist at ANZ Bank New Zealand in Auckland. Signs of overheating are evident across the board, and the risks of a boom-bust cycle are high and rising.

Governor Adrian Orr unexpectedly ended quantitative easing in July, a sign that the RBNZ was already concerned about the potential for overheating from its stimulus settings. Since then unemployment has tumbled to 4 per cent and private wage gains have surged to a 13-year high.

New Zealand is set to be first to move in the region, ahead of the Bank of Korea, which has flagged its commitment to normalise policy in the coming months. The BOK meets next week, with a possible rate rise on the agenda.

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The RBNZ Monetary Policy Committee, chaired by Orr, releases its decision at 2pm in Wellington. The central bank will also publish a quarterly monetary policy statement, including new forecasts, and Orr will hold a press conference at 3 pm

Most economists expect Wednesdays move to be the first in a series of rate hikes. Investors agree, fully pricing in a quarter-point increase this week and a 70 per cent likelihood of the OCR reaching 1 per cent by years end.

Higher borrowing costs would potentially ease pressure on policy makers to rein in house prices, which soared 31 per cent in the year through July. The RBNZ doesnt target the property market, but it is required to assess the effect of its decisions on the governments policy to support more sustainable house prices.

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New Zealand expected to raise rates to cool overheating economy - Sydney Morning Herald

The Government is facing mounting pressure to urgently evacuate Afghan allies from Afghanistan, as the Taliban moves on Kabul, and those who worked alongside New Zealand troops grow more desperate.

Cabinet ministers will meet on Monday to discuss how New Zealand might assist Afghanistan, as the Taliban seized the last remaining provincial city on Sunday, forcing many to flee to Kabul.

Nowroz Ali, who was employed for five months by New Zealands Provincial Reconstruction Team in the Bamyan province, said he had fled for the capital Kabul in the hope of being evacuated.

I left behind my family. While Im on the way, for several hours near Kabul there was fighting for a couple of hours, and we had to stop ... If I be caught, I would be over.

Supplied

Nowroz Ali says NZDF left him to die in Afghanistan after he worked as a volunteer interpreter. Here he is pictured with a US army soldier.

READ MORE:* New Zealand extends Iraq and Afghanistan deployments* Jacinda Ardern isn't sure whether NZDF Afghanistan mission a success* Government pushes out decision on Afghanistan deployment by another three months

He said most of the 38 Afghans who claimed to have been employed by the Defence Force, and were seeking assistance from the Government, remained in Bamyan.

New Zealand needed to send assistance as soon as possible, as the other allied forces countries are.

We expect the New Zealand Government to do the same for us Make a concrete decision as quickly as possible. We never have expected this, no one in Afghanistan could have expected that it could happen this quick.

The United States was planning to send 5000 soldiers to Afghanistan within two weeks to evacuate US citizens and Afghan citizens that had worked with US forces.

Australia was reportedly planning to either join the efforts of the US, United Kingdom, and Canada, or commission commercial flights to collect Afghans it employed.

A spokesman for Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern on Sunday said New Zealand was closely monitoring the situation in Afghanistan, and was concerned with the escalating violence.

ROBERT KITCHIN/Stuff

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern will discuss the situation in Afghanistan with her Cabinet ministers on Monday.

Cabinet will meet tomorrow to discuss ways New Zealand can support the international humanitarian efforts, the spokesperson said

We are also actively looking into the issue of Afghani nationals who supported the New Zealand Defence Force while based there.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (Mfat) knew of a small number of New Zealand citizens in Afghanistan, including 17 that had registered on the SafeTravel website.

We are providing consular assistance to a small number of New Zealanders. For privacy reasons we will not be releasing any details about those people, an Mfat spokeswoman said in a statement.

We are exploring options to help New Zealanders who wish to leave including helping secure seats on any available commercial flights. We do understand however that bookings are heavy.

Hamed Sarfarazi/AP

A man sells Taliban flags in Herat province, west of Kabul, Afghanistan, on Saturday.

Mfat officials were in contact with other governments that had citizens seeking to leave Afghanistan, the spokeswoman said.

The Defence Force did not respond to questions whether it had intentions to assist an international effort, or its former employees. The last New Zealand soldier left Afghanistan in March.

About 38 Afghan citizens who were employed in various capacities by the Defence Force have been lobbying the Government for assistance.

Immigration Minister Kris Faafoi on Thursday said he was considering what could be done, after denying a request for help in July. However, indicating that plans were not well advanced, Defence Minister Peeni Henare appeared unaware the minister had decided to reconsider.

On Sunday afternoon, the Taliban claimed control of Jalalabad, Agence France-Presse reported. The capital city, Kabul, was the last remaining city under the Afghan Governments control.

The Taliban, a fundamentalist militant group which controlled much of Afghanistan prior to the US invasion in 2001, has swept across the country in little more than a week.

Rahmat Gul/AP

Passengers walk to the departures terminal of Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Saturday.

US President Joe Biden on Sunday (NZ time) said the 5000 US troops headed to Kabul would conduct an orderly and safe evacuation of Afghans who helped our troops during our mission and those at special risk from the Taliban advance.

A similar promise to resettle Afghans threatened by the Taliban has come from Canada, which last week promised to take on 20,000 Afghan refugees.

The Sydney Morning Herald reported on Friday that senior Australian Cabinet ministers had been planning for months to expand the number of Afghan citizens it would resettle, and officials were talking with counterparts about an evacuation.

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'If I be caught, I would be over': Defence Force affiliated Afghanistan national pleads for NZ Government evacuation in face of Taliban - Stuff.co.nz

A decision on whether to vaccinate children as young as 12 against Covid-19 will come in the not so distant future, Prime Minister Jacinda Arden says.

Medsafe approved the Pfizer vaccine for children as young as 12 in June but the Government has not said whether they will be included in the roll-out.

But when asked on Monday whether young people aged 12 and over would need to be offered the vaccine before border restrictions eased, Arden said only those as young as 16 had been included in the plans.

We didnt bank in any of our assumptions the idea of vaccinating anyone else who had not been approved, she said in a post-Cabinet media conference.

READ MORE:* Covid-19: Decision to jab 12- to 15-year-olds coming in next few weeks* Covid 19 NZ: One in five Kiwi adults have had jab, but third of frontline workers still unvaccinated* Covid-19: Scanning, masks to become embedded in daily life as Government looks to mandate use - experts

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Whether children younger than 12 will be vaccinated is yet to be decided. (File photo)

When it comes to children, decisions there will be based on evidence and advice around children. We have an expectation we will be able to share those views in the not so distant future.

The Government would also look at how young adults were prone to spread the virus, citing evidence the Australian government used for its pathway out of the pandemic from the Doherty Institute.

The research found vaccinating younger people was key to stopping the virus spreading and the most effective strategy to slow down outbreaks.

Their suggestion was that young adults are a particular focus because they do seem to be a point of transmission in Australia, she said.

It will be important for us to look across each age cohort, not just the most vulnerable but those who may be a risk to the most vulnerable because they are a point of transmission.

New Zealands elimination strategy should continue to protect children not yet eligible for vaccination as the borders are eased, she added.

Amanda Kvalsvig, a senior research fellow in the department of public health at the University of Otago, on Friday urged officials to plan to vaccinate children as young as 12 right away fearing their inoculation could be delayed by up to six months because of school holidays while the threat of Delta remained.

But Ardern said officials were likely to take a family approach and not focus solely on vaccinating at schools.

Our decision will be absolutely based on the advice of experts and we are not going to make a decision that is solely about whether it improves the logistics or ease of our roll-out. That is not our consideration, she said.

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Covid-19: Decision to jab 12- to 15-year-olds coming in 'not so distant future', Ardern says - Stuff.co.nz