Government reacts to my controversial NZ Herald article to open tourism without isolation

Three weeks ago I published an op-ed article in NZ Herald that went "gang-busters" according to NZME. (I have copied it in full below) It was the first article in NZ that crunched the numbers on the covid risk travelers arriving at the border brought, compared to the numbers of domestic covid cases. At the time just 1 positive case would slip past RAT tests and there were 1929 in the community.

Radio NZ, Stuff, NBR, The Platform, BusinessDesk and Reuters picked up on the story, whilst Mike Hosking read most of the article on his NewstalkZB show. BusinessDesk's editor described me as the most "vociferous" complainant, but concluded that "he has a point". Opposition political party newsletters followed suit mid-week, and by the end of that week Dr Bloomfield was acknowledging the inconsistency and the PM called for "rapid advice" on opening up earlier than the second half of the year, which was what the government had announced a few weeks earlier.

Today we saw the result of that week of media frenzy. The tourism, hospo, and international student industries can now plan for a positive future with open borders, as can New Zealand's farms and factories that desperately need staff too. Once again, the government responds to pressure, and I am proud of the role I had sparking that media 3 weeks ago that achieved this outcome.

Tourism is not even my industry, but I was tired of standing by and doing nothing whilst it got unnecessarily punished once Omicron was widespread and traveler isolation no longer required. I believe that when a mainstream CEO from a good size company is not afraid to speak up strongly for another sector, that forces government to listen.

To get the analysis out there and start the media momentum that week I needed more than the typical 'time to open borders' headline from someone in the business community. That had been done to death and wouldn't get picked up by the Herald editors. I needed a headline that just HAD to be read. The Wellington protests were happening at the time, so the media 'hook' I used for the article was 'I'm a protest funder - here's why'.

I had several friends in the protest at that early stage - trying to save their businesses and get their teacher jobs back - to to give fact to headline hook, I had to donate something. I donated $250 in my personal capacity toward the costs of keeping the area tidy, toilets and internal security for my friends and their kids.

As outlined above, most media ran with the analysis, and this helped trigger the early opening without isolation announced today. RadioNZ was the exception. It took my Herald article as an attack on the government, so instead of focusing on the point I was making, decided to try to paint me as some form of pay-master behind the protests. It then disingenuously stated that my company made the donation and tried to drive a wedge between the company and an important clients. This was disappointing for a state broadcaster funded by our tax dollars. It should have been focusing on the need to open the border to save an $18 billion important industry, not trying to shoot the messenger. It is true that a more aggressive element had started to dominate the protests at that stage, but those people are responsible for their own actions, and I certainly did not condone their actions or cause them.

So looking back, one can criticise the 'hook' strategy I used to get the word out there in the media, but it helped get the result. This is not to take away the excellent work by many others in the tourism and other sectors to lobby for earlier change - mine but was one extra shoulder that got the boulder moving this week. Thank you government for listening and acting.

My NZ Herald article was behind the paywall, so for those interested in it, I have added it below:

I'm a Protest funder - here's why

The risk-reward of opening the borders to quarantine free travel has become the most asymmetrical no-brainer in the history on economic management. One simple calculation explains why. My hope is the protests will push the government to do the maths.

?As the CEO of one of New Zealand’s largest companies I tend to also run a business eye over government decisions to see if risks are being weighed properly against opportunities. This is especially important with a government made up of people with very little personal experience in risk taking.?

?When it comes to opening the borders to quarantine free travel, the case in favour of opening has suddenly become undeniably compelling. Let me explain by running a simple equation across Friday’s covid numbers.

?There were 1929 new Covid cases in the community and 12 detected at the border. Now let’s assume for a moment that those entering the country were required to be vaccinated and tested negative before travelling, yet had no quarantine obligation. Instead they had a RAT test on arrival. Given RATs are 80 percent accurate, of the 12 cases detected at the border, just one would have got into the community. The eleven caught by the RATs would have gone to MIQ.

?The one extra community case would have pushed that tally from 1929 to 1930. That change is nothing, a rounding adjustment,?and completely negligible in light of the high community cases.

?But to protect New Zealand from that one extra case daily we have the border closed to international tourism. They won’t come if required to quarantine. Our previously largest foreign exchange earning industry has been destroyed.?With winter coming and no imminent tourism opening date announced, hundreds/thousands of businesses are set to close. Already they have been holding on by their fingernails for two years.

?Tourism’s contribution

?It is useful to recap on the contribution tourism was making pre-Covid because we are going to need it again to have any hope of repaying the massive debts incurred in the last two years. Annual international tourism expenditure was $17.5 billion.?Tourism was New Zealand’s biggest foreign exchange earner, contributing 20.1 percent of total exports. 225,384 people were?directly and another 158,802 indirectly?employed. Annual GST paid by international tourists was $1.8?billion.

?All that is now largely foregone in the name of stopping one extra daily case in the community.

?Now the astute reader will be saying, but Marty, what if there were indeed ten times as many people arriving in New Zealand on Friday with borders open??Well, that would mean ten instead of one person would have slipped through the RAT cordon that day. Ten extra cases is still insignificant compared to the nearly two thousand daily community cases.

?With a $17 billion upside potential, never has there been a more asymmetrical risk-reward opportunity for a country.

?It's not just international tourism businesses being decimated. On Wednesday I met a distraught Rotorua tenant with a café on the brink of closure because of a lack of tourists and people being too scared to go out. Next day I went to a mate's restaurant in Raglan, it too was largely disserted. On Friday I had a beer with Peter Burling, and he told me about the Sail GP. No MIQ spaces allocated meant the New Zealand leg was cancelled. Another tragic missed opportunity. I came home that night and immediately looked up the border cases for that day, expecting to see the data justifying the ruining of these people’s lives. Instead the calculation above demonstrated the folly of our current border settings and the huge opportunity being missed.

?Quarantine-free low hanging fruit

Now the problem with this government is that it needs to be pushed to make decisions that aren’t ultra conservative. The squeaky wheel gets the oil. Right now, that loudest squeak is coming in the form of the Wellington occupation. My hope is that by supporting the protest and shining a light on the simple calculation above, the government will take a fresh perspective on the need for quarantine. ?

?We are not the first country to deal with Omicron. In fact, we are one of the last. The smarter people in Wellington should be able to use the international experience to model and forecast beyond this current outbreak peak and name a date two month out for quarantine-free opening.

?For the record, I'm pro-vax. But I am also pro-choice. Last year my company Red Stag made headlines by repaying the wage subsidy through a $3,000 bonus to staff that got vaccinated. Despite a 50 percent Māori workforce and Rotorua being one of the lowest vaccination areas of the country, Red Stag's vaccination rate jumped to 95 percent as a result of the initiative. We did not mandate staff to be vaccinated in order to keep their job, and it makes no sense to me that fire fighters, police, teachers and nurses had to lose theirs. I thought we needed more of them, not less.