{"id":18067,"date":"2026-07-30T05:41:55","date_gmt":"2026-07-29T17:41:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/?p=18067"},"modified":"2026-07-30T05:41:55","modified_gmt":"2026-07-29T17:41:55","slug":"pandemic-preparation-you-dont-want-it-to-be-a-political-fight-michael-baker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/?p=18067","title":{"rendered":"Pandemic preparation: ‘You don’t want it to be a political fight’ – Michael Baker"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Epidemiologist Michael Baker is urging MPs to keep politics out of preparation for future pandemics.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The government on Wednesday\u00a0accepted “in some form”<\/a>\u00a0all of the Covid-19 inquiry’s 63 recommendations – 21 in full, 36 in principle, leaving the remaining six partially accepted.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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They focused on pandemic preparedness and response.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Professor Baker said the government’s acceptance of the recommendations was pleasing, but he was concerned about their implementation.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“This can’t be just business as usual, because many of these activities require a very concerted response by multiple government agencies led by the Ministry of Health,” he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“It does indicate that wherever possible, these measures will be implemented in the next 12 months, which is quite ambitious.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Many of the measures would continue in perpetuity, which was the nature of pandemic preparedness, he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“It is an ongoing, continuous refinement process, and that is why it does require committed resources.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Baker said it was important that work was non-partisan.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“I think that’s really important to get cross-party support and processes operating because that’s what you need when you have a pandemic or any emergency, you don’t want it to be a political fight,” he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“I hope that government and all our political leaders carry on that tradition of putting New Zealand right above political infighting to say, how do we ensure that New Zealand and New Zealanders are as safe as possible in the future, and protected from what could be far worse pandemics than Covid-19.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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But after the government released its response to the inquiry on Wednesday, MPs immediately reverted to party politics.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Prime Minister Christopher Luxon took the opportunity to repeatedly accuse Labour of economic mismanagement during the pandemic, while Labour’s Kieran McAnulty said the government’s response to the inquiry was a distraction from the fact that “they’re doing bugger all” in office.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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New Zealand First leader Winston Peters labelled the government’s response “pathetic” and called for another inquiry, saying this one was a cover up.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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ACT leader David Seymour said the Labour government’s overreach during the pandemic was devastating to public finances, education, business and mental health.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The Greens’ co-leader Chl\u00f6e Swarbrick said the coalition has undermined the health system’s capacity to respond to the next pandemic by underfunding front-line staff.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

rnz<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Epidemiologist Michael Baker is urging MPs to keep politics out of preparation for future pandemics. The government on Wednesday\u00a0accepted “in some form”\u00a0all of the Covid-19 inquiry’s 63 recommendations – 21 in full, 36 in principle, leaving the remaining six partially accepted. They focused on pandemic preparedness and response. Professor Baker said the government’s acceptance of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":18068,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[222,174],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18067","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-news","category-nz-news"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18067","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18067"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18067\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18069,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18067\/revisions\/18069"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/18068"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18067"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18067"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18067"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}