Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone
New Zealand First leader Winston Peters has responded to questions about his approach to the Covid-19 inquiry with verbal attacks on the commissioners, academics and the media.
The coalition government on Tuesday revealed plans for a second phase of the Royal Commission of Inquiry which would look into additional matters including vaccine efficacy, lockdowns in Auckland and Northland, and disruption to health, education and businesses.
Peters then announced that while he agreed with the need for the second phase, NZ First would agree to disagree with its coalition partners over the decision to allow the initial inquiry to complete its work with the same commissioners.
The minister responsible for the inquiry, ACT's Brooke van Velden, said they had not wanted to set a precedent of a new government cancelling a Royal Commission of Inquiry just months before it was due to report back.
Questioned about his position, Peters told Morning Report it was because the original inquiry did not have "the appropriate terms of reference", and did not have "appropriate people doing the inquiry".
After the use of the agree to disagree clause was announced, Labour leader Chris Hipkins had said he thought Peters was "trying to court the cooker vote": pandering to conspiracy theorists.
Winston Peters speaks to RNZ Morning Report's Corin Dann about the Covid-19 inquiry
Peters the following day responded to questions about that by lashing out at the media.
"No, those were your allegations at the time. Your mainstream media and RNZ accused us of going down a rabbit hole, the kind of arrogant behaviour which does not belong in a first-world country that understands science and more importantly is one of the world's great longest-lasting democracies. That's what's happening here and you're repeating it," he said.
Also appearing on Morning Report, Hipkins repeated his claim, pointing to NZ First's coalition commitment to "end all Covid-19 vaccine mandates still in operation" - a tricky ask considering these were abolished in April 2022.
That was long before NZ First's manifesto for the October 2023 election was unveiled, just eight days before election day and 10 days after voting had started.
Hipkins said he was proud of the government's response, and the original inquiry was designed to be independent.
Labour leader Chris Hipkins Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone
"The inquiry was set up with a robust public health expert from Australia so that it would have someone independent on it, the ... past secretary of the New Zealand Treasury, and a former National government minister. It was designed to be independent, I think Winston Peters is just courting the conspiracy theorists, to be frank."
Peters said the people doing the inquiry were "conflicted by their past behaviour and action and cannot be called on the basis of that, neutral".
Hipkins says Peters 'courting the conspiracy theorists'
These included the chair, Australian epidemiologist Tony Blakely, who at times was used as an advisor to the government during the pandemic response.
"Excuse me. Excuse me. Excuse me, go and look at his background," Peters said when Blakely's name was mentioned. "Go and track all the things he said during the time and the advice he gave the then-Labour government and innocent, unaware, inexperienced people like Hipkins."
When challenged that University of Otago law professor Andrew Geddis had defended Blakely's involvement in the inquiry because its original terms of reference did not include individual decisions, Peters shifted his sights again, to Geddis, on an unrelated matter.
"Excuse me, why are you going to Andrew Geddis? This is a man that you repeated day in, day out, 27 times, on an attack on us to do with the serious fraud office ... you ran this guy time after time after time as an expert legal witness, he'd never been inside a court of law, on the serious fraud office. They spent $2.4m repeating a lie over and over again, it cost us the election. You're not going to cost us the election in 2026."
The other Commissioner was economist and former Treasury secretary John Whitehead, who Peters said "was working for me in 1996, I know the background of this. He has no scientific background in terms of this inquiry".
He said under the law, the resignation of a commissioner could be considered cause for scrapping a Royal Commission of Inquiry and starting again, and NZ First believed that was what should have been done after former National Party minister Hekia Parata resigned.
Parata resigned in November for personal reasons, having completed the remainder of her duties in the role. Parata also led a report into forestry practices in the wake of Cyclone Gabrielle, delivering that report in May last year.
At the time of her resignation, she said it had been an honour and a privilege to be a Commissioner, that she had learnt much from Blakely and Whitehead, and she was confident they would deliver a quality report.
Hipkins stands by Covid-19 decisions
Hipkins, who had been the Health then Covid-19 Response Minister, said the challenge with looking at vaccine efficacy and the length of the lockdowns in Auckland and Northland was the decision makers at the time did not have all the information we have now.
"Ultimately, yeah, if they want to go back and look over that and say 'oh well, with all the information we know now we would make different decisions well, so be it. The reality is we didn't have that information when we made the decisions."
He was not worried his decision making would be under greater scrutiny. He had previously acknowledged the extended Auckland lockdown was very hard for those living there, and said the inquiry could find ways it could have been sped up.
"Maybe looking back we could find some of those, but it was a very uncertain time at that point. We didn't know what the effect of Covid being released into the New Zealand community was going to be at that stage, we didn't have a very high vaccination rate.
"We don't know what would have happened if we had released the Auckland lockdown or released the Auckland boundary earlier before vaccination rates were as high as they got to.
"Of course the thing that you won't hear from in any of these inquiries is from the thousands of people who are still alive today who wouldn't be if we'd had a death toll comparable to other countries around the world - because nobody knows who those people are."
Asked whether the use of the "agree to disagree" clause - a measure NZ First also used when in government with Labour - was a sign of dysfunction, Hipkins merely said he thought it was not a "particularly well functioning government".
"You had David Seymour literally, during the prime minister's press conference, lecturing the prime minister about the appropriate role for Pharmac," he said.
Peters said the use of the clause was "not the end of the world, but it is the beginning of an open, frank, candid, honest, reliable inquiry".
The final terms of reference for the second phase of the inquiry are yet to be set. A third commissioner will join Blakely and Whitehead, and those two will resign their roles after delivering their report on the first phase.
The second phase will begin with the third commissioner and two new ones after the report is delivered, with its new extended deadline in November.