Roshni Sami and husband Walter Spears with their child.
Photo: Supplied
An Auckland woman who took the Ministry for Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) to court when pregnant after her husband could not secure a MIQ spot believes the government should apologise.
Roshni Sami filed a judicial review in the Auckland High Court last October when she was 29 weeks pregnant, after MBIE had earlier rejected an application for a medical support person.
This was despite the woman suffering acute antenatal depression and “huge anxiety” amid other complications.
“I immediately panicked,” she said.
Chief Ombudsman Peter Boshier today found the ministry acted “unreasonably” over the MIQ allocation system and did not fully consider people’s personal circumstances.
Boshier said the system turned in to a lottery and did not fully allow for the consideration and prioritisation of individual circumstances of people trying to come home during the pandemic.
“While ministers made the final decisions on the shape of the system, I would have expected MBIE’s officials to provide free and frank, clear and sound advice and recommendations on the fairest options that considered the impact it would have on people,” he said.
“This would have allowed decisions to be made, not just with reason, but with sympathy and honour.”
Sami said she received little communication from the ministry after multiple attempts to get the couple’s case reviewed.
She was set to argue in a judicial review that the MIQ system was in breach of Section 9 of the Bill of Rights Act and discriminated against women and the rights of the child.
But the ministry issued Sami’s husband an MIQ spot the day before the court hearing.
Her husband Walter Spears was back home with his pregnant wife by 8 November.
She gave birth to her first child a month later, but said the stress of the situation took a toll.
“I personally did have some complications as a result of the stress,” she said.
“I was so surprised that this was my reality.”
‘Breach of human rights’
Sami said Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and the government should apologise for overlooking pregnancy during a global pandemic.
“It’s hugely disappointing,” she said.
“It’s clearly a breach of human rights. They clearly didn’t get proper legal advice on their obligations to citizens and then they aggressively implemented that policy and we all had to suffer the consequences.”
The exclusion of pregnancy as means to escalate a case under the MIQ system was hugely unfair, she said.
“Pregnancy is a unique situation and women and their unborn child are absolutely vulnerable and must be protected to the highest degree,” she said.
“So why during a global pandemic were New Zealand women locked out and their partners locked out.”
National’s Covid-19 Response spokesperson Shane Reti also called for the prime minister to apologise.
“It separated families and meant people were unable to return to New Zealand to see loved ones and couldn’t be there when family members were in the final stages of life,” he said.
“It was cruel and the prime minister needs to accept responsibility for her government’s actions and apologise.”
The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment said the MIQ system was “not perfect” but stood by the standard of advice to the government.
MBIE’s MIQ general manager Shayne Gray said they were operating in extremely challenging circumstances.
“As the global pandemic unfolded, the effectiveness of decision-making in times of crisis depended on the ability to make sense of constantly changing information,” he said.
“MBIE is confident that it provided a high standard of advice to ministers on the operation of MIQ given the challenging environment.”
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