COVID-19 Public Health Response Amendment Bill

Thank you, Madam Speaker. A pleasure to pick up on my contribution to the COVID-19 Public Health Response Amendment Bill. The bill aims to provide a framework which is about recouping the costs of managed isolation and quarantine facilities for New Zealanders coming back home, returning home. Before I go on, I would like to acknowledge all the personnel, the staff, who are working at the various isolation facilities—health personnel, hospitality workers, the cleaners, security, the army and police personnel. Thank you for all that you do.

As I was listening to some of the earlier contributions to this bill, there was a lot of talk about fairness—that we needed to be fair to the New Zealanders who are returning home, that this is their home country. This bill is actually about fairness. In fact, the National Party introduced, absolutely, this concept that New Zealanders returning should make a contribution to the cost of the quarantining and managed isolation.

COVID-19 and the period of lockdown for us as a country has just been one big wrecking ball through this country, and nothing has been fair about it. We know many families and businesses have been hit so hard, and some businesses will not come back from this. We know that we’ve got 200,000 people on the unemployment benefit. We know that business confidence is down. Nothing has been fair. The debt is mounting, too—another $150 billion.

So in terms of fairness, of course it hasn’t been fair, and we have to acknowledge the thousands of New Zealanders who’ve been impacted in so many ways. It hasn’t been fair to those who’ve lost their jobs. It hasn’t been fair to those businesses who have faced complete ruin. It hasn’t been fair to people who are struggling to make ends meet, people that perhaps may be losing their homes. It hasn’t been fair to those who have missed out on seeing their loved ones in their last days, attending those family events, funerals. It hasn’t been fair to people who’ve had to cancel wedding plans or have missed attending the birth of a grandchild.

It absolutely hasn’t been fair, and under normal circumstances we would never think to charge New Zealanders who want to return home. But this is not normal circumstances. It’s extraordinary times. Most New Zealanders are feeling it, and they do feel that they want some fairness in terms of the costs, the burden that we as a country are facing currently, but also the cost to taxpayers for New Zealanders returning home. As we’ve heard, the cost to New Zealanders per stay is $5,700. That is a lot, at this time—to ask taxpayers to shoulder that full cost of New Zealanders returning home.

We support this bill. We support a framework to recoup the costs. We don’t believe that the bill goes far enough, and we will provide some Supplementary Order Papers in the name of the Hon Gerry Brownlee to that effect. Ultimately, as Minister Woods has announced, the Government expects to spend $479 million by the end of the year on managed quarantine, and the amount that is expected to be recouped under this bill is about $10 million, or just under $10 million, which is—that’s just 2 percent, 2 percent of what it would cost to fund the managed quarantine facilities. I don’t think that’s fair to taxpayers, to New Zealanders who are already shouldering so much of the cost of this post-COVID period. I think it’s very reasonable—and, actually, New Zealanders have stated quite clearly that they don’t believe it’s fair and they do want New Zealanders who are returning home to shoulder and to wear some of that cost as well.

There will be some exemptions set out in this bill in terms of personnel that may have to go out and come back in, but there is an expectation that if you are going away on holiday, you will be on the understanding that you will pay for the cost of your managed isolation on return.

So the other thing is that we don’t know how long we’re going to be in this position of having these facilities, so we do need a solution that is practical and fair. As I said, everybody will say, “We’ve got to be fair to the New Zealanders coming back.” We also have to be fair to the taxpayers that are here that are already shouldering the cost of the debt that’s rising, the job losses, and the impacts on families. Madam Speaker, thank you very much.

The following call is a split call.

I’m delighted to have a call on this COVID-19 Public Health Response Amendment Bill. We’re in extraordinary times and we know that, and there is no playbook for these times. So there’s a lot of work that we’re having to do, that any Government in the world is having to do, as we go through and face these extraordinary circumstances. But what we do know is that our managed quarantine and isolation facilities are working. They are keeping COVID-19 at the border and they are stopping community transmission.

What we also know is that this bill strikes a fair balance for what must happen. It allows New Zealanders the right to come home, and we don’t know the circumstances—until that hits them overseas—of why that hasn’t happened before; whether there have been no planes or their jobs have suddenly disappeared. They have a right to come home. This bill strikes the balance between those people and not paying for people who want to take their overseas holidays as the world opens up.

I am delighted to commend this bill to the House.

My apologies, Madam Speaker. I was just looking at the Hansard record of your fine speech in the House last evening and got quite engrossed in it, so I was momentarily delayed—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Ruth Dyson): I thought it was a more generalised apology.

Well, in the spirit of your valedictory statement, take it any way you like.

This bill does not strike a fair balance between the cost being borne by the taxpayer and those who are returning to New Zealand. We need to be very, very clear that there is no impediment to a New Zealand citizen or resident returning to their home country other than physical barriers that might be put up by way of airline availability, etc. But there is no reason for the team of 5 million, who have sacrificed, to pick up all of the costs or even a substantial part of the costs of the many who will choose to return to this country.

It’s very hard for many to understand how we can charge our students a big portion of their education and think that there is no rights issue around that, that we can charge for things like visas or passports, or anything else that could be seen as an impediment to returning into this country or coming to this country. But when someone comes back to New Zealand and needs to go through managed isolation, knowing they have to go through managed isolation to show that they are not a carrier of COVID-19, then why would we not have a regime that enables them to contribute to the huge costs that are being borne by taxpaying New Zealanders at the moment? $479 million has been budgeted out to 31 December this year. But I’m quite sure that figure was calculated on the $4,000 per head price that was quoted in the House earlier in the month.

Since then, it’s been revealed that the real cost is about $5,700 per head. So the idea that the National Party had of charging people $3,000 for the first family applicant, $1,000 for the second, and $500 for children after that is incredibly reasonable given that that unit is going to cost the taxpayer in excess of $22,000.

💬 Hon James Shaw: They are taxpayers.

Now, I can see the Green Party over there muttering and saying it’s only money—and that’s the problem with the Government.

💬 Hon James Shaw: They are taxpayers.

That’s the problem with the Government—like that person on the other side of the House. Last week, the Minister was asked, “Well, why are you having such a low amount of recovery?” Why only the $2.2 million to $8.8 million—as she quoted—recovery on $479 million? That’s a derisory 2 percent recovery. And the answer was, “Well, at best, we calculated it could be somewhere between $93 million and $125 million and we didn’t think it was worth it.” Well, go and tell that to the 212,000 New Zealanders who are out of work. It may be a bigger number in about an hour’s time. Tell it to the hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders who are on reduced incomes or the hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders who’ve lost part-time work and casual work, because they are the people, Mr Shaw, who are taxpayers and who are paying for these people to come back into the country. The head shakes again. “No, no. We shouldn’t charge them. We just want them all to come back. We want them all to be contributing here.” Well, I hope they are. I really hope they are. But at some point, that dries up and there’s a bigger economic question that the Government has to answer.

So while the National Party will support this bill, we do so because it provides schedules that enable the Government of the day to set the recovery price, to set the parameters for who pays and how much they pay. And we think the proposals that are out there by the Government at the moment are incredibly light—saying to family returning to New Zealand after perhaps years and years of being away from this country that they are up for a $22,000 or $23,000 cost to the taxpayer and the Government is only going to be recovering around about, oh, what, a very small amount of that if they fall into the very narrow band of people who the Government intends to place a charge on. We think that’s unreasonable. It’s unfair to the taxpayer, but the structure of the bill is something that we will use in Government. Therefore we support it.

The following call is a split call.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I think I may end up being the only person in the House who plans to vote against this COVID-19 Public Health Response Amendment Bill. I voted against the principal Act. I notice the National Party did too, but they’ve changed their view now on this amendment bill. I think the powers in this bill are equally as Draconian as those in the primary legislation. If anything, they are worse in this particular piece of legislation. I will be consistent and I’ll vote against this bill.

Mr Brownlee’s actually wrong. There are now restrictions being put in this legislation, restrictions on New Zealanders returning home. Whilst we’ve talked a lot about the charging regime and what will be allowed for under this legislation regarding charging people in managed isolation facilities, there’s a new power being inserted in the section 11 orders; the section 11 orders, of course, being those orders which pretty much give the Minister or the director-general power to do pretty much anything if it’s in the name of COVID-19. Now the Government is giving themselves the power to ensure that any person returning to New Zealand, whether it’s a New Zealander or a non - New Zealander, has to satisfy any specified criteria before entering New Zealand. That means, if a Government—if a National or a Labour Government—wants to seek restrictions even on New Zealanders returning home, they can do so under these orders.

Now, I’m sure people will say, “Yeah, but the bill of rights—you know, they can’t restrict people under the bill of rights.” Well, now there’s an override of the bill of rights in here as well. The Minister has to be satisfied that orders don’t limit the bill of rights or that there is a justified limit. But who makes the decision? It’s the Minister. Parliament usually is the only body that can override the bill of rights, by passing a piece of legislation. Now we’re here passing a law which will give the Minister the ability to make a determination around the bill of rights, and I think that’s absolutely wrong.

I also think that the people in this Parliament who have been talking about the managed isolation facility charging regime and the law being a balance between the rights of individuals or about the need for taxpayers to be let off the hook for some of these particular costs—this bill does not contain any restrictions. This bill does not contain any rights for individuals. All it does is outline a regime for the Government of the day to implement any particular regime they like. So when the Labour Party or Green Party say that they are opposed to those awful charges that the National Party want to put in, actually, the law here is the Government passing a regime which would allow the National Party to do what they want. So please don’t make videos for Facebook saying you’ve protected New Zealanders and you’ve come up with a great regime that’s good for returning Kiwis. Actually, the Government, they’re passing a law which allows the National Party, if they’re in Government, to do whatever they particularly want.

I also take exception to the expectation that people should have to pay for their managed isolation when there are also in here some new powers around requiring people to undertake medical examinations and testing. Now, these COVID-19 tests aren’t just some simple swab of the mouth. It’s a deep insertion of a swab right into someone’s head, which is very invasive. In fact, the original regulatory impact statement identified, by the lawyers, that that was akin to a medical procedure. We no longer, under law, have the ability for people to refuse medical procedures, because the section 11 orders make that almost impossible.

But we’ve also got the Prime Minister who’s on record saying that if you do not undertake a test, you can’t leave managed isolation. By putting in place on top of that a charging regime, we will be inserting financial penalties against people who refuse a medical procedure. Let’s just think about that for a second. The law will say you have to undertake a medical procedure. The law will also say the Government can charge you if you are in managed isolation. If you are someone who wants to conscientiously object to a medical procedure being performed on you, you won’t be allowed out of managed isolation and you’ll be charged for the privilege of that detention. If we as a country are saying that managed isolation is important, we’re saying that’s a public health response. We’re saying that’s a public good for New Zealanders. It’s not just a public good for those returning; it’s a public good for the whole country. Just as we don’t require people to pay for the public good of normal healthcare, we shouldn’t be requiring people to be charged in this particular circumstance.

For many months, we have said this is a public good and it should be funded by taxpayers. We should continue doing that and we shouldn’t be restricting New Zealanders returning home to their own country.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’m pleased to take a call on this bill, the COVID-19 Public Health Response Amendment Bill. Extremely proud to be part of a Government that had a very strong response to get in control and on top of this virus, but now we need to do, of course, everything possible to ensure that we keep on protecting the health and wellbeing of everyone in New Zealand. This bill, as has been mentioned, does strike a fair balance when it comes to the right of New Zealanders to return home, as well as the cost involved in that exercise, and I commend it to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’m quite pleased to take a call on the COVID-19 Public Health Response Amendment Bill. I keep hearing the words “it strikes a fair balance”. The bill doesn’t strike any balance. This bill is just a framework. It is the idea that we need to be recouping some of the costs of people returning to New Zealand. It is simply a framework, a method of receiving those costs—how we do it, who we exempt, how much we charge, how we collect it—and it’s all down to regulation. So there’s no detail in this bill to strike any kind of balance. The only way we can look to see whether or not it strikes a balance is to figure out which of the different parties’ press releases on what they would do would strike a balance, and I’ll come back to that. But as has been mentioned by my previous speakers, there are no details in this bill. We only can go on what the different parties have said.

The other issue that we have is that we’ve known since April. We’ve had, since April, people in isolation. That’s a relatively long amount of time to understand the issues around costs and recovery of those costs, yet here we are in the final couple of days of Parliament sitting here going, “Oh, crikey, this is a problem.” The only reason the Government are doing this under urgency in the last throes of this Government is because the National Party have been saying for some time that we need a cost recovery mechanism. We have to be able to recover costs because we can’t keep paying for billions of dollars’ worth of costs for ever. It pushed this Government into a position where they realise that, actually, we’re right, and here we are, in the final throes of this Government, setting up a regime to do exactly that. But what has happened in their lack of attention to detail over this issue is that there’s no real detail in this bill. There is no regulatory impact statement, so we have no idea about the impact of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act or any other detail before we start debating this bill. Under normal circumstances, we would have a regulatory impact statement that would give us that detail, and yet here we are having to rush this through in the last couple of days without that detail, and yet we have known since April that this is an issue.

Even this week, the final week, here we are finally starting to understand the actual real costs of that isolation. We’ve been told up until now that it’s $3,000, $4,000, and we find out this week that, actually, it’s closer to $6,000. So it seems that this Government have dropped the ball on this and are finally trying to fix it up because they’ve been under pressure from us and the rest of New Zealand, who are actually sitting up and going, “Actually, this is a huge problem. We can’t keep throwing billions of dollars at this. We need to be able to recoup the costs.” I think it was about 70 percent of New Zealanders that actually agree that some of these costs need to be recouped, and this Government have finally realised that.

As I said, the bill just sets up a framework. It doesn’t actually give the detail of what’s going to happen. The speaker, one speech ago, was actually quite right in the fact that there are no wins for any political party on the other side of the House. Winston Peters can’t win by saying, “Yes, we’re going to charge everyone.”, which he wants to do. The Greens aren’t winning by saying, “Well, everyone can come back in for free because that’s what we believe in, love and hugs and it’s all fine—it’s someone else’s money.” They can’t have a win either. The Government have, through this bill, basically got no detail. It is simply a regime for us to do something in the future, and if we have the privilege of being the Government after 19 September, we’ve made our intentions clear.

All we can take from the other side of the House is the few bits and pieces we’ve picked up from the media about what they would do, and they have made it clear that they will only charge people who are here and who are leaving the country for business or for a holiday. I don’t know who’s going on holiday at the moment—I can’t imagine anyone is—but if you decide to go on holiday, you have to pay when you come back, or if you go for a business trip or if you’re coming here for fewer than 90 days. The Prime Minister has said on multiple occasions that if you’re coming back to stay for good, then you shouldn’t have to pay, but the only time frame she’s talked about is more than 90 days, so in her mind—and we have to talk about this at committee stage, but coming for 91 days means that you don’t have to pay. You can leave again and come back in for another 91 days and not have to pay, because in the Prime Minister’s mind, if you come back for 90 days, well, that’s just coming for good. That’s something that we need to explore.

My colleague Agnes Loheni made some very good points before, and my thinking is much the same, when we talk about the price that we pay. We’ve heard from the other side of the House, especially from the Greens, that it’s very unfair to charge people who are coming back. There isn’t any fairness when it comes to COVID, and I’d actually like to reflect on Grant Robertson’s famous quote at a stand-up—I remember quite vividly when he said, “This is not about fairness.” when he was talking about which businesses are allowed to stay open and which businesses have to close during lockdown. It’s not about fairness—we just have to do what is practical and what is right. So you had businesses who weren’t allowed to open, who weren’t allowed to operate, who are now forced to close because of that time that they weren’t allowed to operate. Many people have lost their jobs. Many businesses have failed. Nothing is fair when it comes to COVID, and charging Kiwis coming back is just part of the unfairness of COVID. Everyone in this country, the team of 5 million—and, if you take into account the people overseas, the team of 6 million—it’s going to cost us, if you look at it, about a billion dollars next year to bring people home, if you extrapolate out what we’ve spent already. We cannot continue to keep doing this. It’s just a fact. We can’t keep paying to bring people home if it’s going to cost us over a billion dollars a year. We’ve seen what’s happened in Australia: we’ve got 600,000 Kiwis there that, you know, may want to start coming home, and we want them to come home, but it’s only fair that they, like everyone else, have to pay a price, like we all did.

Now, obviously, these details aren’t in the bill—that’s just a framework, as I said—but those are our intentions. The intentions of this Government we will explore further at committee stage, but we will be supporting this bill because it’s a tool that we will use, and for the reasons I’ve mentioned. But I think that the thought that I will leave on—and I mentioned this at a public meeting that I had in my electorate the other day, and people seemed to agree—is that the cost of bringing people home, that billion dollars a year, when you take that and look at the opportunity cost of what we could be spending that money on, is huge. We can’t keep spending billions of dollars to bring people home. It’s only reasonable that they pay some of those costs, with, of course, exemptions for compassionate reasons. With that, I commend the bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. We are one of the few countries in the world that’s fortunate enough to be able to pursue a strategy of community elimination, and what that relies on is strong borders. I think our approach has been very effective to date. Over 30,000 people have gone through managed isolation, and at the moment we are very fortunate that there’s no evidence of community transmission. However, with the borders going to be closed for the foreseeable future, we need to make sure that this system is also sustainable. In this, we need to make sure we balance the needs of those who are returning home permanently and often have had difficult circumstances where they’ve lost their jobs, they’ve paid a lot of money to come with expensive airfares, and have struggled to get through with limited flights, versus those who may choose to leave the country again to pursue either a holiday or some business travel.

So what this bill does is it allows us to create a framework where we can recoup fair costs for the costs of their managed isolation while at the same time making sure that those going through undue hardship are not unduly penalised. This is a really important bill, and I commend this bill to the House.