The National Party is calling for the immediate end of most vaccine passes and a shorter Covid-19 isolation period, saying it is time for New Zealand to "move on".
National leader Christopher Luxon says it is time to phase out Covid restrictions. Photo: RNZ / Angus Dreaver
Cabinet ministers are reviewing all its restrictions this week and next, with an announcement expected soon.
In a statement issued this morning, National leader Christopher Luxon said vaccine passes should be scrapped for all but large indoor events and all scanning requirements dropped.
National would also cut the seven-day isolation period to just five days, Luxon said.
"It's the right response, right now - the country needs to get back to normal, we need to think about a future beyond Omicron and beyond Covid, and now's the time for us to start moving mentally to say how do we actually make a future happen fro New Zealanders.
"Vaccine mandates, vaccine passes have served us incredibly well, don't get me wrong, we were big fans of it ... but for Omicron and the world we're in now they have much less utility, much less relevance."
It would not leave New Zealand open to a new variant, he said.
"Risks go up and down and so measures should go up and down. And so what we're saying is dispassionately looking at the risk that we've got, right where we are right now it's okay to ... remove these restrictions. Should there be a different threat and a different risk then you put in place a different set of measures.
"You can't just leave the country in the mode that it's in, you've got to be able to adjust the modes, change the gears, manage the risk."
Luxon rejected the idea National was simply getting ahead of the government's announcement expected next week, saying they were putting their cards on the table as to what they believed should happen.
"We have ideas every single week ... we have our own thoughts about it and it's important we do because the New Zealand people need to see that we are a government in waiting.
"They don't get to see that unless we propose ideas and that's what we should be doing in opposition."
They also were not copying ACT's policies, he said.
National Covid-19 response spokesperson Chris Bishop said restrictions should be further relaxed once the border reopens to Australians next month.
From 13 April, the government should axe the entire traffic light framework, drop pre-departure testing, and begin phasing out vaccine mandates, Bishop said.
"Vaccine passes and mandates made sense under Delta. They don't under Omicron," Bishop said.
"QR code requirements no longer make any sense. Most people don't scan - you can see that in the numbers and I freely admitted that I sometimes forget to scan in - and there really isn't any point.
"The public health rationale for vaccine passes just isn't there anymore, and they are now putting unjustified limits on people's rights. It will be logistically impossible to apply the vaccine pass system to Australians anyway, and we'll be a month on from the Omicron peak by then."
Bishop said the government's instinct should be to remove restrictions on normal life as soon as they are not justified.
"Of course, if the risk changes in the future we can always put the framework back in place... but overall, we need to send the message that life is returning to normal."
He said the government also had not fixed a problem with vaccine pass requirements for young children doing school sport, as they claimed.
He said the vaccine passes and mandates had created a real sense of division between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated, and "life is pretty tough if you have made the decision not to be vaccinated and life is pretty tough for kids aged 12 and above who are affected by the vaccine pass and vaccine mandate system".