Labour should apologise to New Zealanders for the lottery of human misery that was MIQ, after the Ombudsman found the Government acted “unreasonably”, National’s Covid-19 Response spokesperson Shane Reti says.

The Ombudsman’s report comes on the back of the High Court’s judgement that Managed Isolation and Quarantine was “unlawful.”

“National has been calling for the Prime Minister to apologise to the hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders she locked out of their own country,” says Dr Reti.

“The Ombudsman has said what many New Zealanders were saying at the time that there was insufficient consideration for individual circumstances and that the system did not take into account the very real impact it had on people’s lives.”

Dr Reti says the Government was heavy handed and overbearing and there will be families who will never recover from what they missed out on.

“It separated families and meant people were unable to return to New Zealand to see loved ones and couldn’t be there when family members were in the final stages of life.

“It was cruel and the Prime Minister needs to accept responsibility for her Government’s actions and apologise.

“MIQ needs to be fully investigated in the Royal Commission of Inquiry to ensure New Zealanders are never locked out of their country again like the way they were in this case.”