New Zealand’s recent decision to reject the latest amendments to the World Health Organization’s International Health Regulations (IHR) made news largely due to the lack of a clear explanation from the government rather than what the rules actually say.

Health Minister Simeon Brown and Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters made the decision without seeking cabinet approval, but offered different reasons.

Brown’s position was that New Zealand had not completed the necessary domestic processes to be in a position to accept them. This is despite having had two years to review the amendments.

Meanwhile, as leader of NZ First, Peters posted on social media:

We have fought on your behalf for these IHR amendments to be fully rejected, we made a promise to put the national interests of New Zealanders first, to maintain our sovereign decision making, and to push back on globalist bureaucrats …

We have fought on your behalf for these IHR amendments to be fully rejected, we made a promise to put the national interests of New Zealanders first, to maintain our sovereign decision making, and to push back on globalist bureaucrats …

Technical and administrative or politically motivated? Either way, the confusion obscured what the amendments really involve. And the decision placed New Zealand in a small group of countries that have rejected the amendments, including the United States, which later left the WHO entirely.

Former prime minister Helen Clark warned that New Zealand “will be seen as a........

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