Top exec moved to sneak through border, as company weighs legal action

Chris Knuth boarded a flight last night from Brisbane to Fiji, via Auckland.

After landing at Auckland International Airport, he left the transit lounge and joined the queue of other travellers headed to managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ).

Knuth wasn't challenged despite not holding an MIQ voucher. At the holding area he spoke to officials and was directed to a transit bus and he will now be a guest of the state at the Sudima MIQ hotel for the next 10 days.

It was a desperate solution for the New Zealand-born Knuth to get back into the country and take up his job as freight division chief operating officer at Move Logistics, after being recruited into the role more than four months ago.

Knuth was also denied entry both as an essential worker, after the definition of essential worker was narrowed, and on hardship grounds, despite selling up all his belongings and being forced to camp out with his ex-wife in Brisbane.

The NZX-listed firm, which employs 1,400 people across essential energy, fuel supply, building and infrastructure and fast-moving consumer goods, will continue to seek a judicial review of MIQ to get executive director and acting chief executive Chris Dunphy back onshore.

Dunphy, who took on the role of chief executive last year, has been running the business from Melbourne having been shut out of NZ since November.

That, he said, is despite being selected for the government’s ‘short lived’ business traveller pilot – a scheme announced in October allocating 150 spots for returning businesspeople to isolate in a private residence versus MIQ. That fizzled out after the government pushed back self-quarantine returns until at least March.

Dunphy said the firm has engaged legal firm Martelli McKegg in the hopes of getting approval to self-quarantine at his townhouse in Christchurch.

Prime minister Jacinda Ardern is due to make announcements today on border reopening, with speculation that MIQ will be relaxed if the omicron outbreak leads to widespread incidence of covid-19 in the community.

Inundated

Martelli McKegg was the legal team behind Auckland businessman Murray Bolton’s successful challenge in November to a Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment decision not to allow him to isolate at home following a business trip to the US.

Bolton, in the meantime, has offered to release his team’s legal research to assist other New Zealanders overseas or needing to travel abroad. Amongst the recipients of that expertise will be the lawyers for Grounded Kiwis, another group challenging the MIQ system on behalf of New Zealanders stranded offshore.

He also recently financed the successful exemption bid for NZ stunt coordinator Tim Wong, allowing him to work on a Mad Max film production in Australia in December. 

More recently, NZ journalist Charlotte Bellis also secured an emergency MIQ spot following a highly publicised battle over MIQ, based on their decision not to allocate her a room despite being pregnant and living in Afghanistan.

Bolton said he’s now being inundated with requests for legal help from people who may not have the financial resources to stand up for their rights in what he says is a “broken system”.

Underused capacity

Despite the pressure from would-be returnees, MBIE has allocated fewer than half of the available 800 rooms set aside under emergency criteria since the agency took over the voucher system on Oct 30, 2020. 

According to MIQ data, MBIE processed 9,388 emergency applications, approving 5,727 applications over those 15 months – an average of 382 rooms per month.

An MBIE spokesperson was not immediately able to provide the number of complaints in respect of MIQ emergency applications.

Dunphy said taking legal recourse was a long shot, “given that neither Chris or I are DJs or are pregnant”. 

But, he said, he is “more than capable” of isolating at his fully contained townhouse in Christchurch.

“I think that what these cases are demonstrating is that responsible businesspeople can self-quarantine at negligible cost to the state.”

*This story has been updated to reflect the fact that Knuth has now successfully returned to NZ.