Two New Zealanders who found themselves impeded by the MIQ allocation system as they desperately tried to reach their seriously ill parents last year want the Government to apologise.
Paul Mullally had to watch his mother Angela die by video link in January.
"I sat in my garage at 4 in the morning trying not to wake my daughter while I watched my mother pass away. It's not the nicest thing to have to do," the Irish-born New Zealand citizen told Breakfast on Thursday.
Mullally still had family back home. In April last year, Angela was diagnosed with stage four breast cancer.
At the time, she was given four to five years to live. So, Mullally decided he had time to wait for borders to open and Covid-19 to play out so other Kiwis in more precarious positions could have MIQ spots.
But, Angela "started to go downhill rapidly" by December, though she still had her good and bad days, Mullally said.
Things worsened by mid-January. On January 21, Mullally applied for an emergency MIQ spot so his family could go to Ireland and then return to New Zealand.
"We heard nothing back. Absolutely nothing, we got an email. We rang everybody, we rang politicians. Every time we rang the helpline, one of the first things they said … the people you're talking to cannot give you an answer."
READ MORE: Grounded Kiwis group win case against MIQ in High Court
That application was still pending at the time his mother died.
A day after his mother's death on January 31, Mullally received news he was granted a last-minute MIQ spot to give him and his family four days in Ireland to say goodbye.
He now wanted the Government to acknowledge the hurt the MIQ allocation system caused and an apology soon - not years down the line when it would be "too late".
"They need to acknowledge that, yes, Covid and all the restrictions were needed at the time. But, this Government, to me, seems to react to things. They don't plan ahead."
It comes after advocacy group Grounded Kiwis won their case against MIQ in the High Court.
In a decision released on Wednesday, Justice Mallon acknowledged that while MIQ played a vital role in achieving the Government's public health objectives and that requiring returnees to stay in MIQ was lawful, its virtual lobby "lottery" system didn't sufficiently allow individuals' circumstances to be considered and prioritised.
A judge ruled the way New Zealand's borders were managed during part of the Covid-19 pandemic did in some cases impede the right of returning Kiwis. (Source: 1News)
Another person calling for an apology is New Zealand citizen Rachel Bradley, who is based in France.
In September last year, her dad's condition deteriorated. He was repatriated home from Australia after getting an emergency spot in MIQ after two attempts.
In December, Bradley said the situation became quite serious. She started applying to come home to New Zealand and made a total of eight emergency allocation applications to see her critically ill dad in hospital.
"One after the other. Because I thought that if I just keep going and keep giving them information, maybe it will get elevated into another process where someone will have some compassion and look at my case and say, yes, this is an emergency."
READ MORE: Law expert explains Grounded Kiwis MIQ court case win
She said she included doctor's notes in her application which said her parents needed support from an additional family member.
But, she wasn't granted an emergency MIQ spot because she couldn't produce a letter from the doctor that specifically said her father was terminally ill with less than six months to live, Bradley said.
She said, in her last application, officials told her she might have been applying under the wrong category and asked her to send a dependent person application.
When Bradley completed that application, she was declined again.
"The response was so impersonal you could tell it was somebody ticking the box and saying no."
She eventually made it back to New Zealand, but only through getting lucky in the MIQ lottery.
Bradley hoped Wednesday's court ruling set a precedent to say "this can never happen again".
She said she agreed that MIQ was needed to protect New Zealanders, but there should have never been a situation where Kiwis who needed help overseas were told by their Government they couldn't come home.
Hipkins acknowledges High Court ruling
In response to Wednesday's court ruling, Covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins said the lobby system "may have infringed" on some citizens' right to enter New Zealand in the way it was operating between September 1 and December 17 last year.
He didn't offer an apology, but said the Government was "carefully considering the Court’s decision".
"MIQ was always the least worst option to help keep Covid-19 from entering and spreading in New Zealand, and the Court concluded that other options would not sufficiently have achieved the public health objectives the Government had legitimately determined to pursue," he said.
"We have long acknowledged the difficult trade-offs we’ve had to make in our Covid-19 response to save lives and the effects of those decisions on all New Zealanders, particularly those living abroad."
Hipkins also noted that the Court found the requirement for people entering the country to isolate was "lawful", "reasonable" and "proportionate even when, from mid-October 2021, those in the community who had the virus and their close contacts were able to self-isolate at home".
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