Have Your Say

Another serious crack has appeared in the so-called “kind” legacy of Jacinda Ardern’s Covid response.
Last month, former district health board contractor Alister Thorby was sentenced to two years and eight months in prison after fraudulently pocketing more than NZD 1.8 million in taxpayer-funded Covid money.
Thorby, just 28 at the time, claimed links to Māori wardens, worked as a real estate agent, and held himself out as a community leader. In reality, he used his position as a Covid-19 response lead to submit 17 false invoices for work that was never done.
This didn’t happen on the fringes of government. It occurred right in the middle of the bloated bureaucracy that ballooned under Ardern and Chris Hipkins during the pandemic.
From October 2021 to June 2022, while New Zealand was grappling with the Omicron wave, Thorby exploited the confusion and urgency of the response. He invoiced through one legitimate company and two completely fictitious entities, billing for security, staffing, and logistics at MIQ facilities.
None of it existed.
The money—meant to support frontline health efforts—was instead spent on a house in Foxton, multiple vehicles, a motorhome, and overseas travel.
He was arrested at Auckland Airport in July 2022 while attempting to flee to Brisbane, claiming the trip was funded by a Lotto win. He was later convicted of obtaining by deception. At sentencing in Palmerston North District Court on 2 December 2025, the judge described the offending as a serious breach of trust, rejected home detention, and ordered full reparation. Roughly half the stolen funds had already been frozen for return to Health New Zealand.
This isn’t just a story about one man’s greed.
It is a stark example of systemic failure under Labour’s Covid response.
While Ardern and Hipkins enforced some of the harshest lockdowns in the world—locking families into bubbles, shutting borders, mandating vaccines, separating loved ones, and leaving thousands isolated—the government simultaneously poured billions into emergency funding with astonishingly weak oversight.
How does someone siphon off NZD 1.8 million without anyone noticing?
Why were invoices from obviously questionable entities waved through without proper checks?
The “go hard, go early” slogan was used to justify extraordinary restrictions on freedom, business, education, and mental health. But that same urgency mysteriously disappeared when it came to protecting public money.
Emergency procurement relied on trust instead of verification, creating ideal conditions for abuse. Thorby was not an outlier—he was a predictable outcome.
Wage subsidy fraud, questionable MIQ contracts, and other Covid-era scandals have repeatedly shown how Labour’s big-government approach fostered incompetence and opportunity for exploitation.
Ordinary New Zealanders paid the price—losing jobs, missing education, sacrificing basic liberties—while insiders and opportunists gamed the system.
Thorby’s fall from supposed community figure to convicted fraudster is unfortunate on a personal level, but the bigger issue is what it represents: when governments expand power rapidly, spend recklessly in the name of crisis, and resist scrutiny, accountability collapses.
Throughout it all, senior figures basked in positive press while avoiding hard questions. Key decision-makers refused full accountability during the Royal Commission process.
New Zealanders deserved better.
Cases like this define the real legacy of the Ardern–Hipkins era:
unchecked power, wasteful spending, and a profound betrayal of public trust.
Until those responsible are properly held to account, these scandals will remain a dark stain on our country’s history.