Chris Bishop: National MP responds to current and former Labour MPs declining to appear for the Covid inquiry

Current and former Labour leaders and ministers deciding not to appear at the Royal Commission's Covid inquiry is being described as 'disgraceful'. 

Jacinda Ardern, Chris Hipkins, Grant Robertson and Ayesha Verrall, who were all involved in Covid decisions - have declined invitations to appear. 

They say it would have been performative - not informative - and there's a risk livestream recordings could be manipulated and misused. 

National MP Chris Bishop says they should front up because New Zealanders deserve answers over the scale of Covid spending, which is still having impacts.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Afternoon. The COVID Inquiry has canceled any further public hearings
because Jacinda Ardurn, Chris Hopkins, Grant Robertson and Aischeveril are
refusing to front for it. The former ministers argue that
it would be performative rather than informative hearing from them.
National Party MP Chris Bishop is with me at the moment,
High Chris good afternoon. Far from ideal, isn't it?

Speaker 2 (00:20):
Oh? I think it's disgraceful. New Zealanders deserve answers to
the scale of the COVID spending that we are still
bearing the consequences of today, and they should front up
and explain to the public and to the COVID Inquiry
exactly why they did this, the scale of the spending
that they did, and how they did it.

Speaker 1 (00:36):
Do you think the quary's done, the Inquiry's done the
wrong thing. Deciding not to summons them.

Speaker 2 (00:41):
Well, that would be an extraordinary step. I think really
what Chris Hopkins should do is decide to do the
right thing and actually front up, because he was in
charge of, alongside j Cinder Ardourn, an economic response to
COVID that has left us with enormous amounts of debt.
Core Crown debt increased by one hundred and sixty nine
percent from twenty nineteen to twenty twenty three, one hundred

(01:03):
and fifty five billion dollars. That is money that my
kids and your kids are going to have to repay.
We have very little to show for it. By the way,
I can tell you that the country's not one hundred
for one hundred and sixteen nine percent better off as
a result of that record spending. And as the Treasury
report that came out last week revealed, half of the
response to COVID that the extra spending was completely unrelated

(01:26):
to COVID. So we seen ended up spending things like
you know, jobs for nature programs so called shove already
programs increased, to welfare benefits, training schemes, tax changes. You know,
none of these things are actually related to COVID, but
we're all of course bearing the price of that through
high inflation and high debt that we're still enduring today.

Speaker 1 (01:42):
Listen, I don't know if you know the details of
what's gone on here, but my understanding is that what
these guys have done is like a depositions. They've done
a pre interview with the view and the reason it
was done was a pre interview so that they could
do the main interview. But once they did the pre interview,
they basically said that you've got everything you need and
pulled out. Is that what happened.

Speaker 2 (02:01):
That's my understanding about what happened. The inquiry invited them
to appear in public and overseas. That's you know, some
of these hearings have been in public, like the UK
COVID inquiry has all been in public. For example, for
the Stage one of our inquiry was all done behind
closed doors. The Stage two, which is focused on the
economic response, has was designed to be done in public,
and they've basically just thumb their no's at it and

(02:21):
said no, we're not going to I mean, I think
the irony that a lot of New Zealanders will understand
is great, which is, you know, more than prepared to
speak up from the podium of truth day after day
during those awful COVID years, prepared to do all of that,
take questions during that period, but not prepared to front
up a few years later and actually answer some tough
questions about the economic response. I think it says at.

Speaker 1 (02:40):
All listen at the risk of sounding petulant, and I
am aware that I could we do that. There are
perks associated with some of these officers that continue. For example,
we continue to pay a stipend to just Sindada and
because she was once a former prime minister. I mean,
should we think about would it be would it be
would it be cheerlish of us to take it away
from her?

Speaker 2 (02:59):
I think, I mean, look, I can understand people's anger
about that. I think you get into dangerous terry when
you do that. So I wouldn't recommend that, but I
do think they should be doing the right thing here
and I think New Zealanders will judge them for not
fronting up, and in particular, I think they will judge
Chris Hipkins, who, let's remember, is still in politics. So Zeishaverel,
Justinda Ideirne has left, but Chris Hoipkins is wanting to

(03:20):
be the Prime Minister of this country again, and I
think it's disgraceful that he won't front up and explain
to the public why they went on a spending spree
that sent New Zealand crashing into recession that we are
still bearing the consequences of today.

Speaker 1 (03:32):
Thank you very much, Chris appreciated Chris Buship, National Party MP.
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