gerard otto today...

 National relies on short memories in the media

Does anyone recall how on 2nd October 2020 Jude the Ripper said that New Zealand could not feasibly open a bubble with Pacific Islands ( The usual suspects plus Australia ) safely until a border protection agency was in place?

"..pushing a travel bubble with Pacific countries is an obvious thing to do, but it's not feasible until a border protection agency is in place and safety can be assured.", said the Botox Vampire herself on RNZ 2 Oct 2020.

This showed clearly how little Jude the Ripper understood about how a bubble might work - only six months ago - yet now she's telling everyone she'd been calling for a trans-Tasman bubble for six months.

But not before a giant white elephant border agency was established - over many months after the election.

Truth is SCOMO announced plans for a limited trans-Tasman bubble on the same day ( 2nd October 2020 ) and that would start on 16th October when three flights would leave Auckland and touch down over the ditch carrying loved ones and family.

Channel 9 News ran a big story about the new Trans-Tasman bubble on 16th October - and at that point SCOMO was still trying to open up some of his own States internally in Australia - which is what some say was the real motive behind the move to even involve NZ so close to our election.

Not only was this a time when New Zealand was about to vote in a General election ( Election was on 19th October ) three days later - but it was also a time when New Zealand had come out of the August 2020 Lockdown so - there was no public mood to travel and Jacinda actually said we were not ready to do this safely.

In these early days everyone was waiting for Australia to sort out things between its Federal and State governments who were fighting independently because both sides were thinking about a bilateral agreement rather than a unilateral one.

Jacinda Ardern revealed today on Channel 9 News that early discussions that took place shortly after the election - involved a bubble eligibility test of a 28 day period after MIQ before a flyer could get on a plane.

The world famous PM referred to this as an example of how it had been good to figure things out after learning more about Covid ( for both countries ) and ...this example provided some insight to National Voters who swam around like vacant goldfish spluttering "why did it take so long?".

For unknown reasons the words "because we wanted to do it safetly" passed clean through the National Voters ears every time they were uttered - so I thought it was best to write them down again.

"because we wanted to do it safetly"

The trans-Tasman bubble was delayed because public health and safety mattered so much - we did not rush this through during our election or just so Scomo could win local political battles.

We learnt that National was wrong and we did not need a border protection agency to do this.

Who knew? Not Jude.

We learned that we did not need to make people wait for 28 days nor did we need a bilateral approach?

Australia realised that in February 2021 and it delayed things by about a month.

So when we finally did announce a start date on 19th April 2021 - it was at exactly the right time really - without the white elephants, the wrong headed thinking, and the political nonsense surrounding the whole thing.

This is a world first so it's of interest and significant to the world and it's only NZ local media who persist in suggesting the whole thing was late for no good reason.

So did anyone ask Jude about the need for a border protection agency this morning - when she spouted on about how National have been calling for this for six months?

National relies on short memories in the media