When a tsunami is coming, you get out of the way as fast as you can.
That's how Health Minister Chris Hipkins has defended the stay-at-home order in March, which a court has now determined was illegal.
While most of Wellington lawyer Andrew Borrowdale's challenges to the country's first lockdown were rejected, an order forcing Kiwis to stay at home except for essential trips was "not prescribed by law" for the first nine, the court ruled on Wednesday. The problem was fixed with a new order on April 3.
The court said the while illegal, the order was "necessary, reasonable and proportionate" considering the looming threat.
"The court also found we were working at speed, the lockdown was justified. It did meet all of the legal tests, but the paperwork wasn't perhaps as good as it should have been," Hipkins told The AM Show on Thursday.
"If a tsunami's coming, do you want the Government to say 'get out of the way' or do you want them to wait until they've got all the paperwork lined up first? We were operating at speed. I absolutely stand by the decisions we made as a Government at the time."
New Zealand moved into one of the world's strictest lockdowns when only a few cases of COVID-19 were being picked up. The result was taming community transmission, enabling restrictions to be lifted and limiting damage to the economy.
Other countries which waited much longer - such as the UK, which had several thousands cases and hundreds of deaths before it went into lockdown - have struggled to control the disease, and are generally performing worse economically as well.
Hipkins - who wasn't Health Minister in March - said the current restrictions, which largely apply to Auckland, and future lockdowns - should they be needed - will be totally above board.
"We've got better processes now that if we have to do it, we can get the paperwork in order much, much faster - as we did last week."
The sudden move to level 3 restrictions in Auckland, where the current outbreak is centred, are working he said - with the daily reported case numbers not showing exponential growth.
"The growth in that cluster is slowing - we'll get the exact numbers later in the morning and release those at one o'clock. We do seem to be starting to reach the outer perimeter of this cluster, which is of course what the whole contact tracing system is designed to do."
