I don't think anyone wants another lockdown, especially the businesses at the brink of collapse who's viability potentially relies on tourists returning.

What I hope is that as a country we get our act together, we are often so far behind the rest of the world in preventative measures, that any outbreak seems to come as a surprise. We seem to have achieved our freedoms based on luck vs good management, and being a country at the bottom of the world, with a small population and surrounded by water has certainly helped.

Even the vaccine rollout, I see we are third from the bottom of a very long list. I think only the Ukraine and Guatemala are worse than us as a % of population vaccinated.

As a frequent traveller pre covid, many overseas airports I passed thru months before covid first arrived in NZ, were already well into mask wearing, and temperature checks for all arriving passengers. I don't even know that we are doing temperature checks now for arriving passengers. As a nation we had never experienced the likes of SARS like Asia had experienced, and it definitely took us a long time to wake up to what was happening in the rest of the world. You'd think the fact that we had months to prepare before covid arrived here, that we could have prevented the initial outbreak, much like Taiwan managed to achieve with a much larger population, and significant travel between Taiwan and mainland China. 

I was in Shanghai in December 2019, and all arriving passengers required a temperature check, and a completed health form. There were also additional temperature checks at hotels and they reported these to authorities. Yet on arrival back in NZ it was basically a free for all, no additional forms, no temperature checks, zilch. Just walk on thru.