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Speaker 1: Ever, duplus el so the big COVID inquiry is out

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Speaker 1: the Royal Commission of Inquiry. And to be honest, I

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Speaker 1: don't think this is a game changer because I don't

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Speaker 1: think it tells you anything you didn't already know, or

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Speaker 1: at least suspect auckland is who were the most affected

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Speaker 1: were there. We already knew that Grant and Jacinda and

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Speaker 1: Chippy had kept us in that long lockdown in twenty

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Speaker 1: twenty one for too long. We already knew that the

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Speaker 1: Auckland border could have been lifted earlier. Now we just

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Speaker 1: have the proof in writing that we were right. If

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Speaker 1: there is a revelation in this, it's that Ashley Bloomfield

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Speaker 1: wasn't the conservative one telling the government what to do.

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Speaker 1: He was in fact more reasonable than they were. They

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Speaker 1: ended up ignoring his advice and kept Auckland in lockdown longer.

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Speaker 1: September twenty one. This is how it rolled out September

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Speaker 1: twenty one. He tells them Auckland has been in lockdown

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Speaker 1: level four for long enough, been in there for four weeks.

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Speaker 1: By that stage, almost Auckland can come out in four days.

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Speaker 1: On the sixteenth of September, Chippy takes that to his mates,

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Speaker 1: and Cabinet puts up his own idea, says, you know what,

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Speaker 1: let's keep Auckland and for longer than Ashley reckons. Let's

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Speaker 1: keep it in until the twenty first of September, an

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Speaker 1: extra five days. Cabinet decides to go with what Chippy thinks. Now,

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Speaker 1: remember that lockdown was costing Auckland up to one hundred

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Speaker 1: million dollars every single day, so Chippy unnecessarily killed jobs

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Speaker 1: and businesses when he didn't have to. Auckland's border testing

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Speaker 1: restrictions were in place longer than official say is necessary.

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Speaker 1: Mandates were in place longer than was necessary. What this is,

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Speaker 1: this Royal Commission of Inquiry is this is a vindication

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Speaker 1: for anyone who was saying at the time that Auckland

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Speaker 1: should have been out of lockdown and out of its

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Speaker 1: border earlier. It is an indictment on those who kept

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Speaker 1: those restrictions in place when they didn't have to. Five

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Speaker 1: years on. Let's be honest about it. Mostly we've moved on.

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Speaker 1: Could be triggered from time to time, but for the

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Speaker 1: most part it's ancient history now. But don't forget how

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Speaker 1: hard it was for Auckland at the time, how many

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Speaker 1: lives were broken, with businesses lost, how much we are

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Speaker 1: actually still paying in the cost of living crisis for

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Speaker 1: those poor decisions. As I say, a game changer, but

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Speaker 1: an official record that what they did at the end

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Speaker 1: of COVID was wrong and unnecessary, and that does have

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Speaker 1: some value in holding decision makers to account just for

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Speaker 1: it being on the public record. For more from Hither

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Speaker 1: Duplessy Allen Drive, listen live to news talks it'd be

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Speaker 1: from four pm weekdays, or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.