COVID-19 Public Health Response Amendment Bill

I move, That the COVID-19 Public Health Response Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

This bill makes an important contribution to our public health response to COVID19. New Zealand is one of the few countries where we have stopped the spread of COVID-19 in our community. It has now been over 90 days since there was a case of community transmission in New Zealand. We are in a unique position because we went hard and early to eliminate COVID-19, but we must be vigilant. We are continuing to detect cases at our border.

An integral part of our public health response is a requirement that people arriving in the country go into managed isolation or quarantine for at least 14 days. Managed isolation and quarantine helps protect our people’s health and wellbeing and allows our economy and communities to operate without restrictions in place as they are in many other countries when we look around the world. It allows people to safely travel to New Zealand. Since 26 March, over 30,000 people have been through managed isolation and quarantine. Without managed isolation facilities, we would either need stricter border measures or see a return to alert levels 3 or 4.

The proposed charging system seeks to strike the right balance between being fair to arrivals and not preventing New Zealanders from wanting to return home, to come back to the safety of their own home. I think each and every one of us want to know that wherever we are in the world, there will not be impediments for us returning to the safety of Aotearoa New Zealand, our home.

The Government cannot start charging for managed isolation and quarantine before regulations are put in place. I intend to seek approval for the regulations soon so that the charging system can be implemented as soon as possible. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’m very pleased to take a call on the COVID-19 Public Health Response Amendment Bill, a bill that sets up a framework for cost recovery of the quarantining system that we have in place. And if we are so lucky to be in Government after 19 September, then we would be using this Act, once it’s passed today, which I’m sure it will be, to implement a regime in which we recover some of the costs of that quarantine regime.

Now, it’s been said before, and I’ll say it again, that it is disappointing that we are doing this under such urgency. It has been known for a number of months that this was coming. The National Party have been indicating for a number of weeks, if not months, that some kind of cost recovery mechanism was going to be required. The figures that are coming through are eye-watering, and I think they’ve certainly exceeded the Government’s expectations. They’ve exceeded the expectations of New Zealanders. And when we extrapolate out what we’re spending at the moment to next year, we are looking at a billion dollars in terms of our quarantining of Kiwis returning home.

The reality in all of this is that that is a cost that we cannot continue to bear. There needs to be some form of regime where we claim some of that back from the people who are returning to New Zealand. It is a position of the National Party that everyone returning to New Zealand, regardless of whether they’re coming to stay for good, coming to visit their mum, or going on a business trip, should all contribute to the cost of quarantine. Of course, there are going to be situations, and that’s why it is an important part of this bill to have an exemption regime. There will be people who are in circumstances where they’re unable to pay. There will be people who are coming back for reasons for which they should not have to pay. This bill lays out a good framework to make regulation, to create classes of people who would be exempt from paying this, and that’s a very good thing in our opinion.

Obviously, the debate on this will come down to what those regulations will be. They’re not in the bill. The detail is not in the bill about who will pay, how much they’ll pay, what kind of recovery there’ll be, how it will be policed, how it will be managed, how you will pay, and can you pay after. None of that is in the bill for now. We can only go on what the Government have said in press releases and said in the media about what they assume they will do. We’ve obviously heard differing opinions from Mr Peters and his party about they’re more on the side that we’re on, which is everyone should be charged. And then we’ve got the Greens on the other side, who don’t believe that anybody should be charged. So I presume that if these guys are back in Government after September 19, it will fall somewhere in the middle.

We’ve had indications that this may only recover a very small part of the overall cost, and we’re looking at it in the range of under $10 million. We heard from the Minister in the chair, the Hon Megan Woods, during the committee of the whole House stage, that the costs of recovery that she’s been told might be incurred are upwards of $600,000. She admitted—or she didn’t bring into account any of the cost recovery of the people who didn’t pay, so there’s a significant amount of cost there as well. Potentially, we will be looking at well over a million dollars in just having this regime in place. So to then recover somewhere between $2 million and $8 million or potentially $10 million—it’s not a lot of cost recovery for a fair amount of cost that we’ll be incurring.

One of the issues with the rush in this bill is that although the Minister said she has seen evidence, the fact is there was no regulatory impact statement for us to see any evidence as to whether or not this would impact the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. We will have to, obviously, take her at her word that it doesn’t. But it just highlights the fact that this was done in such a rush in the last couple of days of this Parliament. And given that we’ve known since April that we’re going to be incurring these costs and people would be coming home, there is no excuse for us to be doing this now. We could have done this a number of weeks, if not months, ago. It just shows the lack of attention to detail by this Government that not only are they not on the ball with implementing this regime but also the fact that we didn’t even really understand or comprehend exactly how much this is even costing us. A few months ago, we were talking about $3,000, the $4,000, and now, today, we find out that it’s upwards of $5,500 heading up towards $6,000 per person. So it’s a significant cost that, when extrapolated out to next year, is potentially going to cost this country a billion dollars.

When you look at that in terms of opportunity cost, I mean, we’ve seen just recently, for example, on the news the girl who had cystic fibrosis and the drugs that would save her life—$250 million, I think it was, to fund that for all sufferers in this country. So when you take that into consideration, over the billion dollars that we’re going to be potentially spending next year, it really highlights the opportunity cost of funding other things: hospitals, classrooms, drugs that should be funded by Pharmac.

I want to go back to that statement that I made in my second and first reading speeches where Grant Robertson said himself that this is not actually about fairness. It’s never been about fairness, because we had, right from the start, decisions around who could open, who couldn’t open. And he said this is not about fairness. Well, it would be wonderful if we could afford to bring everyone home and pay for it all. But the fact is that a billion dollars a year is not something that is sustainable, given we don’t know how long this is going to go on for. It is reasonable that we expect New Zealanders who are coming home, whether that’s for 90 days, for a year, for good, for a visit, for a business trip, for a holiday—all of those people—to contribute in some way to the cost of the isolation. They are part of the team. They are part of that team of 6 million, when you include everyone who’s overseas. And when you consider what’s happening in Australia with what’s happening in Victoria and Melbourne with that explosion of cases and you think about the number of New Zealanders that are in just Australia alone who could potentially want to come home to escape what’s going on there—the cost of delivering that service of quarantine and isolation facilities is eye-watering. There’s a huge opportunity cost. It is reasonable and it’s really the only option that we have to recover that cost, not just $10 million dollars of that cost but a significant chunk of that billion dollars that we will be spending next year, and who knows how long for?

This is, as I mentioned, a piece of legislation that the National Party will use, should we be in Government after 19 September, to implement what we have described as the regime that we would want in place. With that being said, I commend the bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to rise on behalf of New Zealand First in support of the COVID-19 Public Health Response Amendment Bill. It has fallen to me to take this very short call in support, as this bill will establish the enabling framework that will allow the Government to charge a small subset of those entering the mandatory managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) system upon entering into New Zealand.

We know that people are wanting to come home. People are wanting to resume their life, whether that’s travelling out for business or a small holiday, but coming back in and ensuring that that managed isolation and quarantine continues, and this bill is establishing that enabling framework that we absolutely support.

The bill provides the framework that will require prescribed charges for managed isolation and quarantine facilities to be paid by certain people who are required to be, or elect to be, isolated or quarantined at a Government-designated facility unless, of course, they’re exempt or the charges are waived. There is a small caveat, though. New Zealand First has acknowledged that we are in support of this bill. However, in the passage enabling this COVID-19 Public Health Response Amendment Bill, we have invoked our “agree to disagree” provision of the coalition, and I just needed to state that in response. In the view of the leader of New Zealand First, the right honourable Deputy Prime Minister, the Rt Hon Winston Peters, and in New Zealand First’s view, it would have been preferable for all returnees to be charged partial MIQ costs via IRD in a similar arrangement to the student loan scheme. However, that said, New Zealand First does support the COVID-19 Public Health Response Amendment bill. I commend it to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to rise in support of this bill and to deliver some good news to New Zealanders overseas living with all of the anxiety and stress that they’ve let us know, over the past few months, they’re living with, whether it’s unexpected job losses, whether it’s visa losses, or whether it’s the stress of even finding their way home, and at the foreground and the backdrop to all of that is a once-in-a-generation health crisis across the globe that is creeping closer and closer to them as they battle their way home.

The Green Party has said from the start that we stand with them, that we won’t leave New Zealanders overseas stranded if they wish to move home to live, that it is a fundamental right of their citizenship and residency, and that if they are in the situation where they are finding their circumstances have changed and they’re finding that they now do need to move home to live, they won’t be slapped with a shock $3,000 per person fee. We know from their very human stories that have been pouring out—I think all of us across this House have probably been receiving those stories—that these are families with children, that they are New Zealanders who are now in very precarious situations, that they weren’t expecting this fee, and that it’s adding exponentially to their stress. Some of them would not be able to afford to come home, or, at least, as quickly as they would like to, as they try and save desperately for this fee.

Now, leaving them stranded in a situation where that could mean becoming vulnerable to a deadly virus was just something that the Green Party was not willing to do, and we’re so proud to have worked with our Government partner, the Labour Party, to come up with a scheme that the Minister has outlined, where we think fairness is struck. So New Zealanders who wish to move home—back to Aotearoa to live—will not be charged for the public health response of quarantine, and we need to remember that that is the lesson of this pandemic for us.

There have been a few lessons, and I hope that we will hold tight to them. One has been to follow the science, and the other has been to put people first. We know that unless all of us are taken care of in our public health response, none of us will actually be safe and well in facing this virus, and that is something to remember.

We want the quarantine regime to work and we want to apply it for all of us, not just for those who are now in a position of moving back. It’s not a privilege; it is part of our public health response.

I’ve heard members from across the aisle talk about, you know, “This money could be invested in Pharmac or in other types of public health good.”, but this is all the same thing. We all pay for our hospitals and our medicine and all of the things that we need when those of us who are sick need it. We don’t put the cost on the individual who needs it, because we want to live in a nation that takes care of everyone when they need it and where our fundamental rights are upheld when we need them. It’s not a user-pays system, and $3,000 per person is a high fee that would, in fact, leave people stranded. It would leave them stateless for those who have lost their visas.

The other thing that’s been puzzling me has been hearing from members across the aisle talk about how the Green Party doesn’t want anyone to pay, when we’ve been very clear from the start that we do accept that for those who are coming home for short trips, business or tourism, the cost of this will be built into their visit, and that is fair.

Hon Member: Why—why is that fair?

GOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN: Those who go overseas from now on and who decide to take on that travel cost now will also pay, and that is fair because it’s not an unexpected fee that has then been slapped on them that will mean that they will be stranded overseas.

But we also accept and acknowledge—and it is incredibly important, and Minister Woods has outlined this as well—that for some, it will mean that even for the temporary visits, they may need to access a payment plan or the compassionate dispensation, and that will include tangi, it may include funerals, it may include other health issues that people may have, or family issues. It is absolutely right that there is a dispensation mechanism, as well, which we will apply.

So, as with our entire Government COVID response, this is about fairness and it’s about compassion, and we are so proud, as the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand, to have stood for those values. We do commend the bill to the House.

That was a good speech from Golriz Ghahraman, and I respect that’s her view, but that’s not what the bill actually says or does. The bill that the Green Party and the rest of the Government—and, in fact, the National Party—are voting for is completely different to the speech she just gave and the speech from Jenny Marcroft and others.

This bill doesn’t contain the current Government’s policy around how they’d like to charge. It sets up a regime that they could put their policy in. It equally sets up a regime in which the National Party could put their policy. In fact, Gerry Brownlee said they’re voting for it because the $3,000-odd charge that the National Party supports could fit within this regime. So when the Green Party says, “We’ve stood up and we’ve protected you and we’re going to make sure that your human rights are protected.”, they’re actually voting for a law that allows the National Party to do whatever it wants if it’s in Government. You’re enabling, actually, what they call “breaches of human rights”.

Most of the debate around this bill has been around the charging regime, but I actually think the more egregious parts of this legislation are the changes to the section 11 orders. Now, half the House—well, just under half the House—voted against the primary legislation, because it felt the section 11 orders and other infringements on people’s human rights under the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act were going too far. It felt some of the warrantless entry powers were going too far. It felt some of the orders that could be made under section 11 were going too far.

Dr Duncan Webb: Conspiracy.

JAMI-LEE ROSS: And now it’s going even further with this particular piece of legislation. It’s not a conspiracy, Duncan Webb. Your own Minister, the Hon Dr Megan Woods, stood there in the chair and said that part of the considerations around this were around the evolving medical situation and what we know around vaccination. Goodness me! The good people in Botany that I represent—many of them have said to me that if there’s a requirement around taking a vaccination that’s rushed through, that hasn’t been looked at properly, that hasn’t gone through the normal checks and balances, they would be concerned about having that forced on them. And yep, sure, other parties say we’re never going to force that type of thing on them, but actually here in clause 7(3) it says, “After section 11(a)(ix), insert: (x) satisfy any specified criteria before entering New Zealand from a place outside New Zealand,”.

The Minister herself said, in response to a question from another member, that that’s one of the very things that is being considered. New Zealanders that want to return home can have Government Ministers, under this law, place restrictions on them wanting to come to their own home. Sure, you say you might not do it, you might not want to do it, it might not be your policy, but a law is being passed that allows that to happen—that is what’s happening, that’s what they’re voting for: these huge powers that are being given to Ministers and bureaucrats under section 11 orders, whereby the Minister gets to determine whether they’re breaching the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act or not; it’s not the Parliament. It’s Parliament usually that determines to override the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, but no—

Dr Duncan Webb: Thank God it’s the last two days!

JAMI-LEE ROSS: Well, Duncan Webb, you call yourself a lawyer. Go and look at what the changes are in clause 6. If you can’t see what’s happening in clause 6, you should hand back your LLB or whatever else you’ve got—oh, you’ve got a doctorate, sorry. He’s a doctor of law—can’t read legislation. So I think that we should be taking very seriously the particular clauses in here which are doing what I believe is going too far in overriding the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act.

The other change that’s in here that I think hasn’t been discussed enough in this Chamber is the way in which the section 11 orders are changing with regards to medical examination. See, there are some new words that are being inserted in here. Previously, it just said people had to “report for” a medical examination or testing. Now it goes further and says “report for and undergo” a medical examination. No longer is there the ability to conscientiously object to some sort of medical procedure or medical examination—that ability is being taken away and it can override people’s rights, and it’s absolutely wrong.

I’m also of the view that when it comes to the charging regime, the proposal put forward by the Government will collect very little money in terms of the overall costs of doing so. Why are they even bothering? They’re doing so because this is just before an election and they’ve been embarrassed into doing that by the Opposition. Is the Opposition policy right? No, I’d say it’s not. I think they’re going too far. I think they’re going too far also in saying—and this might be policy they want to implement later on—that if you abscond from isolation, you should be charged for the cost of that. That’s like saying to people who run away from prison that they should pay for the cost of recovering them. It’s actually a public good for the country, and if there’s something that’s determined to be a public good, then we pay for that through our normal taxation.

I’m also of the view that where people—I’m not suggesting people should be leaving managed isolation or they should be trying to get around the restrictions, but the charging regime places financial penalties on people if they are unhappy or don’t want to undertake a medical examination or they don’t want to undertake the testing. There are now coercive mechanisms by way of financial penalties because there will be charges in place if they end up staying in managed isolation longer because they, for some reason, don’t want to undertake the testing regime. That’s going too far. That is a huge overriding of human rights in this country. We’re doing so under legislation where Ministers get to make all of these decisions without the real scrutiny of the Parliament.

These laws go too far. I voted against the primary legislation and I’ll be voting against this amendment bill here too.

Well, the member who’s just resumed his seat, Jami-Lee Ross, is not a lawyer, and that showed because he clearly didn’t know what the legislation said about vaccinations and testing. But I have to say to the member that there aren’t enough anti-vaxxers in Botany to save him in six weeks’ time. He’s going to have to get a much broader constituency if he wants to still be here in a couple of months, and I know that won’t be the case.

I think this bill is actually a metaphor for the performance of the Government over the last two years and nine months. Let’s start with the Labour Party. This is a bill that is high on grand plans but low on detail. In fact, true to form, as the member who resumed his seat has said, there is very little detail about what we’re actually passing here. What we’re passing is a law that allows the Government to go and do something else of their own volition without returning back to this House, and we’ve had plenty of examples of that.

Then, the New Zealand First Party say that they want it to go further, but they’re going to support it anyway. I don’t know what Jenny Marcroft was thinking about when she said that there was a right within the coalition agreement to object and to disagree with the Labour Party, because they’re not disagreeing with the Labour Party. In fact, they had an opportunity to provide a belts-and-braces amendment to this bill in the support of Gerry Brownlee’s Supplementary Order Paper (SOP), and they didn’t take it—they did not take it. So lots of talk there by New Zealand First, and not a lot of action—that’s been consistent with the last two years and nine months.

I say to the Green members: we know that if they were not in Government, or the supporting Government, they wouldn’t be supporting this bill at all. They have a very strong objection to any charging whatsoever for returning New Zealanders—Golriz Ghahraman, effectively, said that. But because they are in a confidence and supply agreement with the Government, they’re going to roll over once again and support a bill that they would not do if they had the chance. But Ms Ghahraman was very interesting, reinforcing again, I think, this somehow money-grows-on-trees philosophy of the Green Party, because we’re talking about a billion dollars, and the merest smidgen of collection somewhere in the region of $10 million over the same period, and they don’t like that anyway. They’re holding their nose and supporting this bill.

But the reality is that someone has to pay. We are talking not only about those who are coming back for a short period of time but people who have potentially been away from New Zealand for years and years and years and not contributed to the tax base, possibly earning very good money in Australia or the United States or the UK, and when those countries have the sorts of problems that they have, they are seeking a safe haven back in the country of their birth or citizenship. That’s their prerogative as citizens of New Zealand, but it comes at a cost. It’s a cost that, presently under this Government, is going to be borne by the taxpayers who have been here and are going to be burdened with billions and billions of dollars. We believe, and the New Zealand public believe, that it is not unreasonable for people in those circumstances to pay more or to pay something towards the cost of their managed isolation or quarantine—more than this Government is putting in place.

Disappointingly, Mr Ross is not correct: the National Government, when it is returned in a couple of months’ time, won’t be able to do exactly what it needs to do and may need to amend this legislation in order to broaden the regime. So that’s disappointing because the Government had an opportunity to provide the sort of flexibility through Mr Brownlee’s SOPs that would have enabled that to happen.

So we are disappointed that the Government isn’t going to be bolder. It talks in grand, bold statements, but then actually passes pretty mousy legislation with little detail and leaves it to regulations—that’s lazy, in my view. We’ve had months to think about this, and the only reason that we’re actually here under urgency is because of the focus groups and the opinion polls that the Labour Party have seen, and they say, “Oh, actually, 75 percent or more of New Zealand taxpayers who are footing the bill for managed isolation don’t like it, so we’re going to have to look as if we’re doing something.”, and this is that something. So while we support it, it is insipid, it is weak, and it emblematic of this Government.

Kia orana, Madam Speaker. Look, just a very brief observation. It’s a little pernicious of the member for Botany to start speaking about human rights and the so-called infringements of medical testing. We all know, as set out in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, that any limitation that is proportionate and justifiable in a free and democratic society is legitimate and is legal, and when we’ve got a global pandemic which is ravaging nations around us, it’s entirely reasonable, entirely proportionate, and entirely appropriate that we have things like this piece of legislation, including medical testing.

I note section 6 of the bill actually sets out that any regulations made must be only as are appropriate as a justified limit on the rights and freedoms set out in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. And that’s because in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, in section 18(2), every New Zealander, every New Zealand citizen, has a right to be in New Zealand and to return to New Zealand. To have any global charging regime would be an unjustifiable fetter on that freedom, and we welcome home any New Zealand citizen who chooses to return here where we are safe, where we are well looked after, where we are well governed, and where we have a response to COVID-19 which has been timely, comprehensive, and appropriate. I commend this bill to the House.