Heather du Plessis-Allan: What Chris Hipkins is doing to the Covid Inquiry

Let me tell you what Chris Hopkins is busy doing to the Covid Inquiry. 

Let me tell you, when he says that the Covid Inquiry is providing a platform for those who have conspiracy theorist views, he is trying to undermine it, and he's doing that. So it doesn't matter what the outcome of the inquiry is, people have already written it off as a nut job investigation.  

I suspect Chippy already knows that he's not going to come out of this flash. Neither is Jacinda. Neither is Ashley. Neither is Grant.  

Because we already know what went wrong. We can see that the lockdowns went too long. We know that the border was done badly. We know how much money was printed, to name just a few things that they did wrong.  

It's kind of rich of Chris Hipkins to complain that the terms of reference have been deliberately constructed to achieve a certain outcome, because that's coming from the guy whose government did exactly the same with the original Covid Inquiry.  

They set up such a limited set of terms of references that we had to set up a second inquiry after they lost the election just to get to the stuff that we actually care about, which is the mandates and the Auckland lockdown, and so on.  

They set up an inquiry, deliberately designed their words to only learn lessons, not assign blame when actually blame, or you can call it just taking responsibility, is exactly what a lot of us affected by all of this stuff would like to see.  

But what really bothers me about what Chris Hipkins is doing is the continual demonising of conspiracy theorists. Now, look, I don't love a conspiracy theorist. They're a bit nutty. I've had to sit through lectures about the world order hours on end, trying to be polite and pretending that you care because you love the person, right? A lot of these people went down the rabbit hole because Labour forced to the jab on them, so they went off to do their own research and they came back a bit strange.  

They shouldn't be excluded. They may be conspiracy theorists, but they're still our friends and our brothers and our uncles, even if they're a bit slightly different at the moment. Conspiracy theorists or not, they were as affected by these decisions as everyone else, therefore, they get a say too.  

And whatever, by the way, happened to “they are us”? Or does that only apply when it suits Labour? 

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