4.1 Keeping the country closed: border restrictions and quarantine Ka noho kati te whenua: ngā rāhui pae whenua me te noho taratahi
Home Reports Main Report Part Two: Looking back 4.1 Keeping the country closed: border restrictions and quarantine
Introduction | Kupu whakataki
On 19 March 2020 the Government announced that the country’s borders would close to all travellers except returning New Zealand citizens and residents from 11.59 pm that night. This was an unprecedented move.
Technically, Aotearoa New Zealand’s borders did not in fact ‘close’, neither then nor later. No legal mechanism was ever in place preventing people or goods from arriving: planes continued to land and ships to dock (apart from cruise ships) throughout the pandemic. But a changing combination of immigration settings and public health regulations – particularly the requirement to quarantine in a designated facility – meant that, for all practical purposes, most non-New Zealanders could not enter the country for two years.
New Zealand citizens and residents, whose legal right to enter was never extinguished, had varying responses to these restrictions. While some were supportive, others felt as if the border had closed to them too.
“As a New Zealander living in Australia, I felt very proud of New Zealand’s response to the pandemic & grateful to the NZ Government of the time for keeping our whānau safe. Although borders were closed and I couldn’t return from Australia, the clear communication & leadership from [Prime Minister] Jacinda & [Director-General of Health] Ashley meant I fully understood and supported the reasons why.”
“Restricting people from returning home is incredibly damaging.”
What’s in this chapter
This chapter examines and evaluates the border restrictions and quarantine requirements that collectively kept the country’s borders closed for the duration of the pandemic.i
- In section 4.2.1, we describe the mechanisms used to close the air and maritime borders, how the borders were managed over the next two years, and the gradual steps towards reopening them. We also look at the regime for granting border exceptions to particular people in certain circumstances, and how the visa system changed over the period in which the borders were closed. The broader economic impacts of the border closure – on the labour market, the supply chain, tourism, the maritime industry and more – are discussed in Chapter 6.
- Section 4.2.2 traces the development of the MIQ (managed isolation and quarantine) system from its rapid establishment in April 2020.
- Our assessment of the utility and impact of the border and quarantine measures adopted during the pandemic response is set out in section 4.3. While we consider these measures were effective in stopping the virus from entering the country, and limiting its spread when it did, we also recognise the social, economic and personal costs were very high. How those costs might be mitigated in a future pandemic is something we return to in our lessons for the future and recommendations.
i While it might be more accurate to refer to border ‘restrictions’, we often use border ‘closure’ in this chapter since that was the term widely adopted (including by the Government) throughout the pandemic and since.