Greetings from the Red Zone.

 

This morning the Stuff website published what is to me is an extraordinary article regarding the rationale for not imposing checkpoints at Auckland’s southern border.

It quoted stark modelling by the New Zealand Transport Agency forecasting that if checkpoints were imposed during the holiday period, traffic queues could stretch 25 kilometres back into the city and the time waiting in traffic may be as much as 9.5 hours.

Those figures are horrific, and I commend the agency for stating that they create “significant” concerns for the welfare and safety of people and pets stuck in a hot car for anything over two hours.

The agency also said [the delays] would lead to irrational behaviour because of frustration.

Rightly, in my view, the agency recommended against checkpoints.

But that is not why I think the article is extraordinary. On the contrary, I believe the views of the agency and the reporting of them by Stuff is logical, responsible, and mercifully free of the politicisation that governs so much of our lives these days.

So, it is not what the article says; it is what the article doesn’t say—the checkpoints at the northern border.

Surely the same arguments apply to the north. What are the differences? The Stuff article doesn’t supply an answer. There is no mention of the northern checkpoints other than a short statement from an unnamed source that the northern checkpoints are not stopping every car.

Really. So, what are they doing? Why are they there?  If every car is not being checked, why not simply have the random checks administered by police (and only by police) that are now in place to the south of Auckland?

Again, what is the difference?

The defenders of the checkpoints point to Northland’s low vaccination rate and the need to protect a “vulnerable” population.

That, of course, is just obfuscation. If that was the only reason, I could make the argument that Aucklanders need protection from us. There are, I submit, other reasons, to some unpalatable and therefore not to be mentioned, why there are checkpoints in the north and not in the south. I alluded to some of them back in May last year—and I’ll leave it at that.

But getting back to the article. Good on Stuff for publishing it. Stuff and the Transport Agency present compelling reasons against the continued use of checkpoints. Public safety is paramount amongst them.

Why is no such concern expressed for those, my family included, travelling north?