Nations help other nations out. NZ has certainly helped Britain out a time or two. What goes around, comes around. It's a two way street. Which is not to say that when one nation helps another out, it shouldn't be acknowledged and appreciated. I'm very sure that if Britain had been in a position to do the same as NZ, Britons in NZ would have been helped in the same manner. As Britons who were stranded in NZ were helped by New Zealanders, as I understand it.
I think perhaps one of the reasons why more NZers are prepared to go along with restrictions and mitigating factors, is because they perceive less reason to mistrust the reasoning and motivations behind the Government's rules and guidelines. Perhaps because there is less reson to mistrust. NZ has not seen the same issues of cronyisom, attempts to profit, populist flip flopping, undermining of the scientists and the medical professionals. Nor the same flagrant disregard by the powers that be of the rules that they themselves imposed upon us. They haven't been treated like fools, being told that a jolly to Barnard Castle constituted a perfectly legitimate eye test. They haven't been told that the PM actually stated that he was prepared to 'let the bodies pile high'.
There is still a sizable and possibly growing minority that is increasingly questioning the rules and guidelines, the pressure to vaccinate. They are widely and vociferously demonstrating, with very little hindrance, albeit with the exception of a couple of Trevor Mallard's dimmer ideas - deploying the grass sprinklers and Barry Manilow.
Perhaps a reason why there is quite a holler of anti-vaccination, is because due to the measures NZ has put in place, they have largely been spared the trauma and damage Covid has visited upon other nations.
To call NZ a totalitarian state is nonsense. It has one of the lesser terms of Government in the world, being three years. It was rated last year as the least corrupt country in the world, unchanged from 2019. Ardern has won two terms fair and square. I think it's unlikely she will win a third, not because she has performed poorly, but because people have had a gutsful of Covid, and being used to quick fixes, are likely to vote for a change. I hope I'm wrong, because National and Chris Luxon are a whole other ball game.
Ardern is no saint. She is an extremely savvy politician. I do believe, however, that her motivations have been the correct ones, to limit loss of life and damage to the economy to what is her paramount concern - the population within NZ.
NZ has moved on from zero covid. They know covid is coming, that covid is there, that there will be deaths. NZ has a very limited ICU capacity, which it needs to try and manage the disease within the capacity. So it makes sense to continue to try and limit transmission by vaccination, and by other measures, such as mask wearing and social distancing.