“The Government needs to front up and reveal why Police have set up a key checkpoint between Auckland and Northland at Brynderwyn, which is in the Kaipara District, outside of Auckland’s level 3 boundary, and why,” says ACT Leader David Seymour.

“Schedules 4 and 5 of the Order in Council in Chris Hipkins’ name published yesterday make it very clear the level 3 border aligns with the Auckland Council border, identified in 2010.

“The Kaipara District isn’t inside that border but as of 11.59pm yesterday it has a Police checkpoint in it.

“This has led to terrible confusion, with even Labour MP Marja Lubeck saying it’s in the wrong place and is impinging on the ability of people from settlements in alert level 2 to move around their region.

“Once again, despite now being in our third major lockdown, the Government seems unable to set clear, sound rules of the game.

“One of the five points in ACT’s platform for COVID-19 recovery released in August is that the Government must adopt a culture of continuous improvement.

“ACT wants to support the Government in this work, but it’s more difficult when they repeat their mistakes instead of learning from them.

“We saw this most recently three weeks ago when there weren’t enough testing sites in Northland and inadequate numbers of personnel at those sites.

“Yet that was one of the things the Government promised wouldn’t happen again following chaos at public testing sites when Auckland was placed into level 3 lockdown in August.

“We should be getting good at this stuff but for some reason the same mistakes keep happening.

“The public in Kaipara need a swift solution, the most obvious one being moving the Police checkpoint somewhere that isn’t outside of the boundary of the Order in Council the Government passed yesterday.”

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