Jacinda Ardern says there’s no magic vaccine number that will see NZ open the border – Stuff.co.nz

Jacinda Ardern has a lot on her mind as she prepares to sketch the public a course out of the Covid pandemic. She talks to Henry Cooke about why there wont be a clear milestone when New Zealand has vaccinated enough people, why 2021 is harder than 2020, and her commitment to climate change policy.

Theres not going to be a magic number.

Jacinda Ardern is happy to crow about hitting two million doses of the Covid-19 vaccine as she sits down for a long interview with Stuff on Wednesday evening, but shes also clear that she won't be able to point to some milestone like Scott Morrison is in Australia, some percentage of the population vaccinated or number of doses in arms and say: Thats it, no more lockdowns, open the borders.

Just a number oversimplifies things. And I dont expect that is going to change, Ardern says.

ROBERT KITCHIN/Stuff

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says 2021 has been a hard year for everyone.

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Sipping a gumboot tea as the evening light starts to fade, two days after the first bad-ish poll for Labour in over a year, Ardern admits 2021 is turning into a bit of a grind.

This is a hard year. I pick up and often feel the same thing that our voters feel. You get a sense that theres a grind to things at the moment for people, Ardern says.

Thats the beauty of being a politician in a small country, you dont have to go far to be able to get a sense of things without having to rely on a poll.

She puts this down to both a grim global outlook and the impact her Governments border restrictions are having on everyday life.

Christel Yardley/Stuff

Jacinda Ardern gets her second Covid-19 shot.

Its totally natural as humans that you look for light at the end of the tunnel but were in the middle of a pandemic where even when you get the light of a vaccine you still see a massive toll in countries that you think have done a pretty good job.

Looking over to Australia, rather than feeling lucky that youre not in that position, its the same feeling as living on a street where your house is fine but your neighbour's is on fire. The reality is that this thing isnt going away, and its hard. Its hard for businesses who need people, and its hard for people who want to see their family and friends.

But despite her trademark empathy, the prime minister does not appear to be preparing a nice clean path out of the pandemic to present at her big speech about the second half of the year of the vaccine next Thursday.

ROBERT KITCHIN/Stuff

The prime minister says true certainty during the Covid-19 pandemic is impossible.

There will be no aforementioned magic number, she says. Because Covid-19 is changing too much for that kind of certainty.

If everything were stable and you had certainty about the way Covid-19 was going to behave then there is a certain level of decisions that you might be able to make. But Covid isnt stable or certain and I think that we are still in a bit of an experimental stage globally, where variants that could demonstrate vaccine resistance could emerge.

This caution about the changeable notion of Covid-19 also makes Ardern unwilling to seriously consider allowing it to run loose in the community once a high proportion are vaccinated, as Boris Johnson is in the UK.

At the same time, she doesnt think its a simple choice between opening fully up and standing still with the current heavy restrictions in place.

So what is the path that we can choose that factors in a changeable virus but still keeps making progress for us because I dont think its a zero-sum game.

When we are vaccinated we can still keep all the positives while removing some of the negatives. Thats the path Im looking for.

Ardern keeps telling the country high vaccination rates create options - without spelling out what those options are.

She told Stuff a large part of it was just the option of saying goodbye to lockdowns, before border controls are considered.

When you have an unvaccinated population, it limits your options it means you have to use extraordinary tools like lockdowns in order to protect people, Ardern says.

I ask people: If you had a choice what would you want to get rid of first, the uncertainty of a really heavy level 3 or level 4 lockdown, versus a bit less friction at the border?

People want to get rid of the idea that at any moment in time a big life event might end up being cancelled because you're going into a lockdown. That hangs over people. I just think about the psychological impact its hard on Victoria, for instance.

Shes also eager to point out that the free and normal life Kiwis are living right now is the source of our economic good fortune, and that even countries that are loosening up border controls like Canada still have serious rules restricting social gatherings.

ROBERT KITCHIN/Stuff

This interview was a rare opportunity for Stuff to sit down with Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern.

The benefit is there has been an economy that has broadly recovered to pre-Covid levels, and that is astounding relative to what we've seen in other places, and relative to what was predicted I mean, unemployment at four per cent I celebrated that in a non-Covid period, let alone a Covid period.

On the border shes happy to admit that shes asked her officials for advice on things like vaccinated people isolating at home or going through a shorter stay in managed isolation, but wont get into her actual thoughts on such measures yet.

These are the things that we are trying to think about nice and early, even though obviously while were unvaccinated thats not something we would do. These are the kinds of questions that we are asking.

The Government has been in rapprochement mode with some of its harshest critics over the week: Opening the border to more seasonal workers, and signalling the likely-demise of the hated Auckland cycle bridge.

But despite the Groundswell protests, Ardern says the Government isn't about to back down on the climate or freshwater policies angering the agricultural sector.

There's always things that we could do to make implementation easier. Im not going to shy away from the things I said I would do though: Im committed to our climate work, I'm committed to our freshwater work, but I will always listen to how we can do things in a way that eases some of that change.

ROBERT KITCHIN/Stuff

Jacinda Ardern said she had a big job to do nailing down two free trade agreements.

Whats yet to be seen is how her Government would handle the inevitable protest that would happen should agricultural emissions lose their exemption into the Emissions Trading Scheme next year.

On other sore spots like housing, mental health, and immigration, Ardern wont concede any ground to critiques.

She says the full impact of her Governments housing package from March is yet to be fully rolled out into the economy, but hints that there could be more on the supply side, as the big changes to planning rules wont be in place until 2024.

Were exploring what we can do around accelerating housing development from a planning perspective so we aren't quite finished in that area.

But thats not all the rest of the year has in store: If possible, Ardern wants to get the trade deals with Europe and the UK finished, whether thats from New Zealand or by travelling over there.

I have a role to play in helping complete it. I will play it.

Even with Covid shutting the borders and farmers protesting it seems one thing does remain certain: New Zealand will have a lot of milk to sell.

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Jacinda Ardern says there's no magic vaccine number that will see NZ open the border - Stuff.co.nz