Jacinda Ardern intervenes after a British family whose son was killed in a speedboat are denied entry to New Zealand

Jacinda Ardern asked for a review of the decision to refuse a UK family from entering New Zealand on humanitarian grounds after her son was killed at sea by a speedboat.

On Saturday, the Weekend Herald reported that the Ministry of Health (MOH) had denied Barbara Genda and Harry Jarman an exemption to enter the New Zealand maritime border.

His 14-year-old son Eddie died on August 9 after he was struck by a speedboat on the island of Moorea, near Tahiti, while he was checking an anchor.

The accident is the subject of a homicide investigation.

The family is now being held indefinitely in French Polynesia, trying to sell their yacht and return home to the UK before cyclone season hits.

On Monday, the Prime Minister raised the plight of the UK family while discussing the maritime border waiver with Mike Hosking of Newstalk ZB.

“I saw a case recently that I thought was actually on humanitarian grounds, you know, I thought a reasonable case had been made,” Ardern said.

“I’m going to go back and look at that one, that was the case of a family that had a death on their yacht.”

The Health Ministry later told the Herald that they were reviewing the family’s case “urgently.”

The Health Ministry said they were still finalizing what options, if any, might be available to the family to enter New Zealand via the maritime border with their yacht.

However, the Health Ministry said they had not yet been able to contact Genda, Jarman and their 13-year-old daughter Amelie.

Genda said yesterday that “it is a surprise” that the prime minister intervened on his behalf, but that at the moment they had no regular Internet connection and had not heard from the government.

The family is trying to sell their $ 1 million yacht, the only house they have, to return home to the UK and buy a house.

Genda said it was almost impossible to sell his 17-meter yacht, September AM, in French Polynesia.

Auckland 36 degree yacht brokers had urged the family to “do their best” to get their boat to New Zealand because there were potential buyers here, but none could fly to Tahiti to see their yacht.

The family also obtained a letter of support from the British High Commissioner assuring the Health Ministry that Genda and her daughter would be able to return to the UK within days of arriving in New Zealand.

However, the Health Ministry rejected the West Sussex family’s request on 2 October.

The family had been on the sailing trip around the world since January 2019, after selling their house to buy on the morning of September.

Genda says the family needs the capital from the sale of the yacht to return home to the UK, buy a house and try to restart their lives.

“In all the uncertainty of our life ahead without Eddie, at least one certainty was that we could go to New Zealand and most likely sell the boat and move on,” Genda said last week.

“Because of that rejection we will live in that uncertainty, and we live in a boat that reminds us of him every day.

“Every time I go out into the cabin and look, I remember the scene, seeing my son floating in the water unconscious and probably dead by that time, being dragged away by a woman who recovered him.

The Health Ministry’s letter of rejection of the family’s request to enter the border said that Health Director General Ashley Bloomfield took into consideration the fact that they had already managed to repatriate Eddie’s body to the UK.

The family flew back to Sussex to bury Eddie in August, but had to return to their yacht, September morning, with their daughter to navigate the cyclone season and try to sell it.

The Health Ministry expressed its condolences to the family for their loss, saying that “due attention was paid to their circumstances.”

“The request did not meet the high threshold of a humanitarian exemption,” the Health Ministry told the Herald.

“For clarity, humanitarian reasons or other pressing needs are unlikely to include situations related solely to financial losses or to vessels traveling primarily for pleasure or convenience.”

However, it appears that the Prime Minister’s intervention in the UK family situation has caused the Health Ministry to have a sudden reassessment.

The Ministry of Health can grant an exemption for a vessel with foreign nationals to enter the New Zealand maritime border under four criteria: refueling or refueling, humanitarian reasons, handing over the vessel to a company, and performing overhaul or repair work which costs more than $ 50,000.

It is this overhaul and repair criteria that has particularly frustrated Genda and his family, as they have seen at least eight superyachts and large vessels receive exemptions under the overhaul and repair criteria.

Most of these superyachts are undergoing refit work at New Zealand marinas that cost millions of dollars.

“I feel like it’s a rule for them and a rule for us. Why have all the superyachts been approved and none of the yachts? It’s for economic reasons,” Genda said.