The inquiry into New Zealand’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic has concluded the second and last stage of its investigation and produced a report with 25 recommendations on how similar crises should be handled in the future.
It found fault with several aspects of the former Ardern Labour government’s actions around balancing civil rights with health priorities but concluded that, overall, lives were saved by the response.
“By many measures, New Zealand’s response to the pandemic was enviable,” the report says. “[The country] recorded lower case numbers and fewer COVID-19 deaths per capita than nearly all comparable countries.”
The health system did not collapse, and the economy rebounded strongly from the initial shock, with unemployment rates remaining low throughout the pandemic period.
“But in 2026, post-pandemic New Zealand seems a bruised and more divided place to many. Questions about the response and its consequences still linger,” the report says.
“Our national response may have won international acclaim, but how deeply has the pandemic scarred our society and economy, and who has borne the brunt?”
Impact of Vaccine Mandates Not Properly Assessed
The Commission (formally called the Royal Commission of Inquiry into COVID-19 Lessons Learned) found most of the measures taken to combat the pandemic were reasonable, given the risk of overloading the health system, but that said, “it is also clear that the vaccination requirements had significant negative social and employment impacts for people who declined vaccination—and, for some, a loss of trust in government.
“Some of this may have been unavoidable, but the advice to ministers did not always make these impacts clear, and the final decisions did not always align with earlier warnings raised about the risks posed to social license or cohesion.”
The Commission noted situations where vaccine mandates “did not strike a reasonable balance” between public health goals and the minimisation of social and economic disruption.
“Proportionality is important because vaccination requirements engage fundamental rights and freedoms,” the Commission said, finding that the scope of the requirements went “beyond what was necessary, or the mandates were kept in place too long.”
Mandate Removal Slow, Lack of Proportionality
In the case of public-sector workers at the border, for instance, a month elapsed between the Cabinet’s decision to lift the mandate and its actual revocation. For healthcare workers, the delay was 2 months.
“Where measures limiting fundamental rights are found to be no longer necessary, they should be removed promptly and as a matter of priority,” the Commission said.
It was also critical of the decision to mandate vaccinations for family carers (which the High Court later found to be unlawful), saying it was one of several “clear cases where the span of mandates went too far.”
“Another example was the continued requirement for people under 18 years old covered by mandates to have two doses of the Pfizer vaccine, when technical experts stated that the risks of the spread of COVID-19 among those aged under 18 were ‘insufficient to justify mandating a 2-dose schedule of the Pfizer vaccine prior to working in any environment,'” the report says, citing a memo from the government’s own COVID-19 Vaccine Technical Advisory Group.
Some of the blame for the lack of proportionality appears to rest with the public service, with the Commission noting that the “quality, coherence, and timeliness of formal advice on economic, social, and educational impacts did not in general match that of advice on health impacts.”
The government is also criticised for taking a conservative approach to testing technology.
The Commission found that Rapid Antigen Tests (RATs) should have been widely available much earlier, as reliance on PCR testing eventually overwhelmed the system.
“Officials and other commentators foresaw problems and consequences arising from the government’s conservative approach … and urged changes, but these calls were either not heeded or were picked up too late,” the report says.
Cabinet also appeared to lack a plan for moving beyond an elimination strategy, and as a result, the exit from elimination was “difficult, rather than prepared and staged.”
In future, the Commission recommends that laws should only be passed “through ordinary, transparent processes and consultation.”
In 2020, the High Court ruled (pdf) that although the lockdowns were compliant with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act (NZBORA), certain directives from the prime minister, ministers, and health officials exceeded what was permitted by law, and as a result, some restrictions were illegal.
The government responded by passing amending legislation to make its actions lawful.
Current Government’s Response
Health Minister Simoen Brown, who was in opposition when the pandemic hit, focused primarily on the economic costs in his response to the report’s release.
“Treasury advised from the outset that pandemic spending should be timely, temporary, and targeted. The $60 billion COVID-19 Response and Recovery Fund spanned 821 programmes, around half of which were unrelated to the pandemic,” Brown said.
“The Royal Commission has made it clear that the debt accumulated during the pandemic has left New Zealand with less flexibility to respond to future economic shocks, and that prudent fiscal management is required to rebuild those economic buffers.
“The report also found that the cost of living pressures New Zealanders are still feeling today—and the ongoing lack of social cohesion for some—are part of that story.
“New Zealanders made enormous sacrifices and placed enormous trust in their government. We owe it to them to understand what happened and learn from it.”
The government is carefully reviewing the Commission’s findings and plans to outline its response to the recommendations by July.
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