COVID-19 Public Health Response (Validation of Managed Isolation and Quarantine Charges) Amendment Bill

On the face of it, we wouldn’t normally be debating clause 3. But in our discussions on both clause 3 and clause 4, I think the committee would benefit from an explanation about why we are amending primary legislation, and it may be necessary that the Minister could navigate the committee’s way through the relationship between the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act and the COVID-19 Public Health Response (Managed Isolation and Quarantine Charges) Regulations, because I have, in the very short time that we have been able to consider this bill, been trying to draw a nexus between the primary and secondary legislation, to satisfy myself that we even need to be here.

If one looks at the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act, it contains provisions for charging in managed isolation and quarantine—that’s understood—and it sets out the circumstances and the exceptions. But I can’t find in the primary legislation, which is related to clause 3, a place where we actually say that New Zealand citizens and residents are exempt from those charges in certain circumstances, and that’s the problem we’re trying to solve, because an Australian citizen becomes a New Zealand permanent resident on arrival.

But I can see it in the regulation, and, in particular, at clause 6 of that updated regulation, where it describes that a “specified person is anyone to whom 1 or more of the following applies:”, and therefore why don’t we just, by Order in Council, fix this up? If the Minister could point to the basis for the amendment being required inside the Act and not the regulation, I think the committee would be very grateful.

Just very briefly, having been in the House for a number of years myself, it’s not uncommon—in fact, it is standard and expected practice—that the Parliament has been asked to validate something that has happened where there may have been a technical question about whether there was a lawful authority to do that. It is common practice. It is standard practice for that to be done through legislation in the House.

So, if I might understand, what the Minister has told the committee is that indeed the definitions of who is eligible and required to pay the managed isolation and quarantine fees is actually in the regulation but that because this is a retrospective validation of a levy that’s been imposed, the Government felt it necessary to bring a bill to the House to enable that to occur. Is that what I heard the Minister say?

That is correct.

Right, so that’s very helpful. Well, it goes back to my question about the manner in which we’re doing that, because it seems rather superficial to be here on a Friday morning after Budget day, tidying up a technical error in primary legislation, but not giving anybody a say.

We’re hardly having a say, because the members on the other side want to shut down debate, and we represent good, constructive opposition and proposition when it comes to legislation, but I go back to the point of no taxation without representation. If the point was to change primary legislation so that the Government is not seen to be hiding—and I can understand that—well, then give it a week. Let’s have that conversation.

By their own general policy statement, they’re not even sure if it is unlawful—and I’ll come to that in the context of clause 4—but, surely, it undermines the Government’s efforts to be transparent about a mistake that was made if it then just rushes it through. It might as well have just rewritten the regulation, got the Governor-General to sign it, and we’d all move on. They could have issued a press release. They’d get accused of burying it after the Budget. They could’ve done that three weeks ago, actually, if the timeline by the Minister is correct.

So we now know we don’t have to be here. We’re only here so that the Government can appear transparent when they’re not transparent.

Clause 3 agreed to.

Clause 4 Schedule 1 amended