A Wellington bar owner says the onus should be on individuals to scan Covid-19 QR codes, not staff to enforce it.
It comes after Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern yesterday said Cabinet had asked for advice around making QR code scanning compulsory in high risk locations, in places where people are close like bars and restaurants and locations with increased risk of catching Covid-19.
In addition to that, Cabinet was also considering mandating face masks at Alert Level 2 or higher, or in certain high-risk locations.
However, Danger Danger's Matt McLaughlin this morning told Breakfast his staff are already under pressure without having to enforce mandatory scanning.
He has security on the door from 9pm onwards, five nights a week when they are open.
"Our security guards, they're under pressure, it's a busy job, they've got to have their eyes on the ball, they've got to be looking up and down the street as well as identifying people that may be intoxicated, checking people's IDs, so to throw something else at them as well, it's gonna be pretty difficult," he said.
"We can give them [patrons] all the tools necessary to be able to scan in but don't think the onus should be on us as operators to ensure that people are scanning in.
"We could make it as available as possible - QR codes at the door, QR codes perhaps at service areas, at the bar, we could even print them on our menus and put them on our tables - but the onus I think has got to be on the individual.
"For us as operators and for our security staff and our managers I just don't see logistically how he can enforce this."
Yesterday when talking about the move, Ardern said the Covid-positive Sydney traveller who moved around Wellington just over a week ago used the Covid app well which allowed for quick contact tracing, but she added the use of the app was consistently low across the country.
However, McLaughlin said he's not against scanning in but that putting the onus on businesses was not fair.
"I think it's nearly impossible for us to enforce it and I just don't see and don't understand how we are going to," he said.
I think what the Government should be doing is working closely with the industry and try to understand our business and how we roll and come up with a plan that is gonna work for us and for Covid and for the general public."
He said at the moment only between 10 and 15 per cent of his patrons scan in.
But his bar is not the only place with low scan-in rates.
Modelling shows scanning throughout the country spikes amid a Covid-19 outbreak, but steadily drops off again when New Zealand doesn't have any community cases of the virus.
When news broke on the Auckland cluster in February, usage of the Covid Tracer app suddenly went up by 540,000 scans in a single day.
But now, the Government is looking at penalties for those who don't. It could be in the range of fines or the ability for prosecution.
However, there's about six per cent of the population who do not have the technology to be able to scan in, with Internet NZ's Andrew Cushen, also on Breakfast this morning, saying manual signing in poses a privacy risk for these people.
"It's a huge privacy risk. All of a sudden I have to either put down my name, my email address, my phone number and my home address in order to go to Matt's bar and then Matt has to keep it behind the bar as well which is a privacy risk there too," he said.
"We've got arguably hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders who won't necessarily have the tech, have the confidence to be able to use this mandatory check in tool."
Cushen said there were a range of reasons why people may not be able to use the technology, but he gave one example where an elderly man had been taking photos of QR codes wherever he went rather than scanning in.
"I worry that when we talk about mandatory use of scanning in that we're trying to solve a problem for those people that aren't scanning and not looking at the problem of those people that can't scan in," he said.
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