NZ First leader Winston Peters says parts of the Government's handling of the Covid-19 pandemic have been "brilliant", while other parts are a "serious worry".
Peters slammed what he says are "pages" of Covid-19 vaccine "propaganda about the ease of the rollout", telling Q+A's Jack Tame on Sunday morning that as an over 65-year-old it wasn't as easy to get the vaccine as advertising makes out.
He's now got his two jabs, but said "you won't believe how long it took to get them".
"It took me two months and I only got it by deciding to go in on a Labour Weekend Monday when I was told 'they're going to be really slack in the afternoon, give it a try there'. That's how I got started.
"I was sent through a 45 minute rigmorale like most older people so-to-speak. I have to tell you, yes I have got them, not in the way that it was advertised in full pages and 10s of millions of dollars of propaganda about the ease of the rollout," he said.
Peters also said the Government was "behind the eight ball" on vaccinating other vulnerable groups.
"We began way back at the very beginning knowing in our first Cabinet meetings in 2020 that old people, Māori and Pasifika were seriously the most vulnerable and that we were going to do something about them as a priority," he said.
"And I don't know how it was but when we got into 2021 and the vaccine rollout it showed demonstrably that we were behind the eight ball so-to-speak and that we'd lost so much time.
"We've got all these buses being used and things like that, and all these utilities being used, when they were available five months ago."
Peters added that a Covid-19 elimination strategy is "not going to succeed" and that New Zealand now needed vaccination rates of 85 to 90 per cent to get the economy back on track. He said we should have those rates of a vaccinated population already.
As of Saturday's Covid-19 update, there has been more than 4.63 million Covid-19 vaccine doses administered in New Zealand to date.
"The Prime Minister's been great in formulating the concern, but the back up, the hard work on the ground and all the details seems to have shown some serious lapses," Peters said.
SHARE ME