It doesn’t take a genius to see that giving nosey government officials access to bank statements and personal information has nothing to do with Covid-19. Sadly the power to snoop didn’t get us out of lockdown any faster.
Also, you don’t need to be a political strategist to know that lumping the snooping powers into a bill with the introduction of a new tax bracket is the perfect smoke screen. While everyone was looking over there, Nosey Parker was drilling holes in Kiwis’ privacy rights.
But even if you had known about this at the time, Nosey Parker wasn’t interested in hearing your opinion. No public consultation, no expert submissions, no scrutiny.