Summarised by Centrist
As governments meet in Geneva to try to agree on a global treaty around pandemic cooperation, Newsroom has published an OIA indicating the government put its sovereignty ahead of mitigating pandemics.
So what?
After an entire Cabinet paper was published addressing whether the Pandemic Treaty might cause NZ to give up sovereignty to the WHO, further documents were released by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
Newsroom’s Marc Daalder argues the documents show the government worried more about its own sovereignty than about cooperating with other countries to mitigate pandemics.
MFAT has been working on Pandemic Treaty negotiations for over two years.
NZ has previously told WHO it won’t allow a treaty to enforce lockdowns or vaccine mandates in NZ.
Newsroom quotes Helen Clark as saying the new National government’s position would harm New Zealand’s reputation on the world stage compared to Labour.
“NZ will be seen as a somewhat irrelevant and quirky actor with little to contribute,” Clark said.
Editor’s note: Clark’s suggestion that NZ will lose status on the world stage is obviously only true for those who have a particular political leaning. A significant number of Kiwis voted for the coalition government on issues of national sovereignty and medical freedom. In our opinion, national sovereignty is worth preserving here (what argument is there against that?) And nothing has to be given up on the health front to do so.
