2 Sep 2022

Watch: PM Jacinda Ardern on Covid-19 rules, construction sector and international students

11:12 am on 2 September 2022

Watch the PM speaking here:

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says the government is reviewing Covid-19 rules and looking at the broader settings more generally.

"We've been working with the traffic light system for ... upwards to a year now, so now's the time for us to look at whether all of those settings are fit for purpose, we include mask use in that analysis."

Asked about disabled communities being given just 24 hours for consultation on the potential removal of mask mandates in many settings, she says she cannot speak to that directly.

"We work on the process of receiving public health advice ... you may be speaking to a particular sector who may have been engaged with by our departments as they work on the advice they prepare for us, we have not formally concluded all this or received the final advice yet."

On Masks on public transport: "I would caveat everything I say that no final decisions have been made and final advice is still yet to be considered ... in the past where we've had cases in circulation one of the reasons that public transport had a bit of a specific focus was, A, New Zealand had experience of transmission with public transport, B, it is a environment that is less likely to be well ventilated, you have a large churn of people.

"And so that's why in the past with high case numbers it has been an area that has been a focus."

"Whenever we receive advice we do take into account the wide range of interests in our settings and of course they span from everything of course from our disability sector to those in our education sector, business community, a range of interests, and of course it's our job as government to factor all of those things in."

She says regardless of the question being put to different groups, the government is aware of the concerns within the disability community.

"We have been throughout Covid management."

She says through winter, the government has been mindful that as we come out of winter, the season has been a time when the health sector has been hit particularly hard and as we emerge into spring will be looking at whether the settings are all fit for purpose now.

On the construction industry

On the construction sector, Ardern says there are strong health and safety rules in place in New Zealand across many different work places.

"We are looking at the moment at some of the specific areas we know to be higher risk, it includes working from heights, just to ensure that the practices we have and the safety measures in place to look after workers are fit for purpose."

"Specific questions, I'd be delighted if you'd put those to Minister Wood."

Her comments come as the construction industry is being called out for not doing enough to prevent deaths and injuries on the job.

PM welcomes back international students

Ardern is also welcoming back international students at an event at the University of Auckland today.

She says today she met with a mix of students from around the world in both secondary and tertiary.

"We know at this point in the process leading into the next academic year, our tertiary providers - our universities - have 50 percent of the enrolments that they had pre-Covid, so that bodes well for international education to come back strongly."

"You could see that for many of them, coming to New Zealand had been something they had worked towards for a long time and to hear just their joy at being here in New Zealand I think is only matched by our joy of welcoming them here."

"One of the international education leaders from their school explained to me that actually from the moment they've arrived they've been particularly emotional because it was such a dream to be in New Zealand."

Hipkins says the government is hearing encouraging feedback about the levels of interest from international students.

"We're monitoring very closely the processing times for visa applications, obviously we've only had one month since the visas fully reopened and so it's difficult yet but what we're seeing is a good number of them processed within that 10-20 working day period."

"We are expecting to see a good strong bounce back in the number of international students studying here in New Zealand next year, it won't be fully back to the levels it was pre-Covid-19 because it will take several years to build towards that."

He says three-year programmes of study, for example, will need time to build back student numbers through each year.

He says a lot of work has been done to support 501 deportees when they arrive, recognising they often come from troubled backgrounds.

"It's not a policy that we support but it is a policy that we have to live with."

He says many of them already have established relationships with other 501 deportees.

Ardern says their circumstances differ, and in some instances "there's no requirement on them, they come back into New Zealand as citizens, there's no onus on them to stay in touch with us".

It's the beginning of an attempt to jump-start an education industry that was gutted by Covid-19 border lockdowns.

Immigration New Zealand has reopened visa applications for foreign students and numbers are expected to rise for the 2023 academic year.

Student numbers have plunged from an estimated 52,000 in New Zealand before the pandemic to just 12,000 earlier this year.

Universities have warned it could be several years until the number of foreign students returns to pre-pandemic levels.

On UN report on claims of abuse against Uyghurs

On the report, Ardern says: "In different situations we may have contact with those individuals depending on the circumstances and situations so I do know some of those family members are in touch with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

"Speaking generally to Michelle Bachelet's report, we've already shared our grave concerns over what we've seen come from the commissioner there and continue to call for China to respond to what are increasingly international concerns."

"Here you're seeing the Human Rights Commissioner which I think was a key part of giving the international community those insights that they were seeking and now I think, rightly so, we're calling for a strong response to that."

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