We have done well but it could have been better: Jacinda Ardern

“It was the year of the Vaccine and to finish with rates in the mid-90% mark for the first dose, 85% for Maori, over 90% for Pacific, I am really proud of what New Zealand’s done.” – Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern

Deputy Political Editor Craig McCulloch speaks to Ardern to assess the year that has been and the one to come.

She accepts that the government could have done more to assist community-led vaccination efforts but defends the decision not to prioritise all younger Maori in the rollout.

Ardern has just completed the first year of her second term, marking a shift to a Labour-majority government, but like 2020 it has been dominated by one overriding challenge: Covid-19. 

2021 Year of the Vaccine

In January, Ardern described 2021 as the year of the Vaccine.

She said that she is proud of the rates New Zealanders have achieved, but with hindsight, she would have put more focus on community health providers earlier.

“Some of the most successful parts of the (Vaccination) campaign have been where providers have had the freedom to just go out and do things in a way that worked for them. They had barriers and I will think: ‘How could we have taken those down more quickly, sooner for them?’ That is something that I would do differently.’

Ardern said that the government was constrained by a lack of supply early on despite doing everything it could to get access to the Vaccine as early as possible.

As such, she stands by the decisions around targeting the Vaccine to priority groups – including rejecting a Health Ministry recommendation to set lower age brackets for Maori.

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“New Year will bring New Challenges”- (RNZ Photo by Samuel Rillstone)

The inadequacies

There were not enough Vaccines for everybody early on in the rollout, and evidence showed age and comorbidity were the main vulnerabilities, she said.

“We know that we have more comorbidities in our Pacific and our Maori populations, so we knew that would … allow us to go in and target those communities,” she said.

Ardern said that the government also took a whanau approach – where an entire family could be vaccinated if they had a vulnerable person living with them – but she accepts that more could have been done to promote the strategy.

New Year, new challenges

Next year will offer new challenges including new variants and a shift away from Managed Isolation and Quarantine (MIQ) as travel with the world resumes.

It also opens up the possibility of official visits overseas.

Completing a Free Trade Agreement with the EU is high on the agenda, along with travel to the US, but she is less definitive about a trip to China.

“I think that there will be just the practical questions around travel there, but again, as I say, keen to engage,” she said.

Back home, as New Zealand tries to put Covid-19 behind it, the real estate market looms large in the public consciousness.

Ardern said that she hopes that the moves that the government made this year can help bring prices under control.