“The Government should just show us the green light and let us get on with our lives,” ACT’s Leader David Seymour says.

“The Traffic Light system that currently exists by virtue of the COVID Response Act is totally redundant. The Government dismantled their own system to the point it has no reason to exist. It was introduced to control crowd limits, encourage vaccination and for contact tracing. None of these elements are in play anymore.

“Today’s non-announcement was conveniently timed to coincide with the Prime Minister boarding a plane to the USA. Now we have to arbitrarily wait another month before common sense can prevail.

“As has often been the with case Labour’s COVID response, it’s political theatre taking precedence over common sense.

“These rules don’t make sense anymore but just constrain peoples’ everyday lives and make us a less attractive destination to tourists.

“Why on earth would people want to come here if they thought they’d have to isolate for seven days after testing positive? Newsflash, they won’t.

“It’s time for real change as people don’t want to come here because of our illogical restrictions, yet ambitious Kiwis are lining up to leave because of the cost of living. The sooner we can move on from pointless restrictions the sooner we can stop the decline.

“New Zealanders are fed up. It’s time to move on. No more pressers from the podium of truth, no more arbitrary traffic light and alert level systems, no more fear about what restrictions could be inflicted on us at a moment’s notice. The COVID Response Act is no longer necessary for New Zealand and the sooner we get rid of it the sooner we will bring some normality back.”