Home ›› 19 Apr 2020 ›› World Biz
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is being sued over the country’s coronavirus lockdown, with two applicants making multiple claims at the High Court in Auckland Friday.
The applicants even claimed the lockdown to be "all for her political gain".
They also asked for a writ of habeas corpus, which seeks to rule an imprisonment unlawful and release the applicants.
The two men, who are known to each other, argued the alert level four lockdown has left them unlawfully detained and is not worth the economic cost compared with the low number of COVID-19 deaths.
The pair have interim name suppression orders in place after citing death threats and safety risks.
The first applicant, who is currently serving a home detention sentence, told Justice Mary Peters on Friday "the whole thing's a joke" and it has become a "panic-demic, not a pandemic" – noting his sentence allows him to leave the house between 8am and 5pm each day.
He said Ms Ardern had no grounds to enact the lockdown.
(Source: News.com.au)
/teb
