COVID-19 Public Health Response Amendment Bill (No 2)

I present a legislative statement on the COVID-19 Public Health Response Amendment Bill (No 2).

💬 SPEAKER: That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

I move, That the COVID-19 Public Health Response Amendment Bill (No 2) be now read a first time. I nominate the Health Committee to consider the bill. At the appropriate time, I intend to move that the bill be reported to the House by 11 November 2021, and that the committee have the authority to meet at any time while the House is sitting (except during oral questions), during any evening on a day on which there has been a sitting of the House, and on Friday in a week in which there has been a sitting of the House and outside the Wellington area, despite Standing Orders 193, 195, and 196.

The COVID-19 Public Health Response Act, first drafted in April 2020, is a very significant piece of legislation in our COVID-19 response. At the time that particular Act was put into place, we did not know how long we would be dealing with the pandemic, and there were a lot of things that we didn’t still know—at that point—about the pandemic. As the year has evolved—or the year and a bit—since that was passed, we have, of course, found out a lot more about COVID-19, about the sorts of measures that we need to take in order to be able to respond to it, the sorts of risks that we are dealing with, and the sorts of measures that we might need to have in place to be successful in our future response to COVID-19.

It is fair to say, as we head towards a more highly vaccinated population, that we are entering a new phase in our COVID-19 response. Some of the tools that we need in that new phase are going to be different to some of the tools that we needed previously. The stakes will also be quite high, though, for decisions that are taken not just by Government but by individuals.

So if I highlight one of the aspects of this bill, in particular, the increase in fees and infringements for those who break rules. At the moment, the consequences for someone who knowingly breaks the rules, it can be relatively trivial, yet the consequences of that decision can be very, very high. For example, what we call the border averters: someone who—as part of the trans-Tasman travel arrangement—travelled from a place where they were not allowed to travel to New Zealand to a place that did have travel to New Zealand, in order to get around border restrictions, and brought COVID-19 into the country with them would be subject to a relatively insignificant fine in relation to the overall cost of what they had done. So this bill provides the opportunity to increase those infringements and those fines for that type of activity, more in keeping with the scale of the potential offending that could be taking place.

It still reserves the ability to impose a fee at a lower level than having to through the courts to impose a fine at a higher level, but even then, the fee itself is increased; the ability to impose a fee of up to $300, as it was under the current legislation—which I think most members of the House would agree is a relatively small amount of money, given the potential severity of some of the things we’re talking about—that increases to $4,000, and again, I want to note that that’s in keeping with the potential severity and the potential consequences of people knowingly breaking the rules.

There are a number of other provisions in the bill that draw on the lessons that we have learnt from our response. The current outbreak that we’re dealing with is a reminder of the significant social and economic impacts that COVID-19 can have on New Zealand and the strain that it can place on our health system, the potential consequences of not being able to stamp out cases where they emerge, and not being able to continue to suppress the virus.

So to run through a few of the key provisions in the bill, it does extend the term of the Act from May 2022 to May 2023. At the moment, I think it is likely that we will need to be able to use the provisions in this legislation beyond the middle of next year, and so therefore, we’re extending the time frame for it. I’ve been on record many, many times in this House already, saying that I think that the New Zealand Parliament should only have on the statute book a piece of legislation of this nature for as long as is absolutely necessary. That is why we’re only extending for one further year, at this point, because I think it should be subject to regular review. I’d also point out that we are continuing the requirement for it to be regularly confirmed by Parliament—this piece of legislation. So the Parliament will continue to have opportunities to debate and to hold the Government to account on its use of what are extraordinary powers, and I don’t underestimate that.

The bill will help to futureproof the legislation, making changes that are necessary today, by ensuring that we’ve got sufficient flexibility to adapt to the ever-changing environment that we face. The primary Act enables the Minister to make orders to aid in the dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, including, for example, the ability to impose alert level restrictions. The alert level framework itself does not exist in law; the alert level framework is a guide that is set up by the Government that guides the decisions that we take in issuing orders under the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act.

So whenever we make an alert level decision—people might be interested to know this particular piece of the process—Cabinet will agree to the parameters of whatever the alert level decision is. There’s typically then a notice period, depending on what the nature of the change is. Before that comes into force, Parliamentary Counsel Office will draft the legal instrument to give effect to those decisions. That then comes to me to read, to scrutinise, to sign; once I’ve signed it, it’s then gazetted, and at that point it becomes a legally enforceable order. Those orders are often arriving quite late in the piece. So when we bring areas either up or down the alert levels, often, we might be giving a period of—if we’re going up the alert levels, less than 24 hours, and the order sometimes is arriving not long before midnight, to take effect at 11.59 p.m. So the turnaround time frames are quite brief. That is one of the reasons why we do sometimes see that there’s a need to amend the orders that are put in place, because they are often put together very quickly, and while the Parliamentary Counsel Office do have a series of templates that they have worked up, there is a need in order for us to continue to adapt and evolve those.

This bill includes improved flexibility for the making of COVID-19 orders; the effective management of the laboratory testing regime and systems; the strengthening of the infringement regime, which I’ve already referred to; improved delegated decision-making—there are issues and there have been issues highlighted, in part, by the Regulations Review Committee, sometimes, about some of the things that I have delegated under the Act, where the Regulations Review Committee have argued that it could be inconsistent with the way the delegation framework in the Act operates, and so we’ve taken that on board and tried to fix those and amend those. Most of the delegations are pragmatic ones to allow decisions to be taken faster, where they concern individual people without them having to go through a ministerial decision-making process. But we want to make sure that that is transparent and that that is tidy, and so we’ve made some changes there. Some further changes to support the effective operation of our existing managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) facilities, and some other technical amendment.

The specific legislative provisions for the operation of managed isolation and quarantine facilities—I just want to talk about those briefly. MIQ had been up and running for about five weeks at the time the primary Act was put in place, and things have changed quite a lot since then. So a number of the policies included in this bill, particularly those related to MIQ facilities, have been enabled already through COVID-19 orders, but are more appropriately put in place through primary legislation, and so that is what we’re endeavouring to do in this legislation.

I only have a few minutes left, so I won’t go through all of the other provisions of the bill in great detail, but what I will say is that, yes, we are intending to introduce this legislation and have it passed as quickly as we possibly can. That means that, again, this is a bill that is subject to a shortened select committee timetable—although I notice the select committee timetable that the members opposite were proposing for the last bill that the House just dealt with—but it is important that we have this in place. Particularly as we start to make changes at the border, it’s important that we have the new infringement regime up and running and enacted into law, because the consequences of people not following the rules, as we look to make changes at the border, are very significant, and there should be penalties for those who knowingly and deliberately break the rules.

So I do look forward to engaging with the select committee on what will be quite a tight time frame. I am sure that they will hear from members of the public on this bill. It will be a truncated process, but I look forward to continuing the debate when the bill returns to the House in November.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. I want to signal that the National Party appreciates the reasons for the bill, but we will oppose this legislation, and there are a few reasons for that. That’s not to say that there’s not some useful things in the bill. There are—it’s definitely true—and there are, particularly, improvements to the rule of law, actually, because, as the Minister has highlighted, some of the operational protocols of managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ), as the legislative framework document prepared by the ministry notes, create a lack of transparency and a lack of accountability, and this produces benefits.

But the reason we will oppose it is primarily one of philosophy and principle, which is that the bill locks in the status quo, which is a highly restrictive regime in which New Zealand is locked away in splendid isolation at the bottom of the world. Some have called it the hermit kingdom, metaphorically, I think—although various commentators actually regard it as a literal description; I think it was a metaphor—but splendid isolation is not something we can continue for ever.

I want to signal up front that the Opposition has concerns around the time frame in relation to the bill. This is a bill that the Minister should have introduced earlier than now. I think I know what happened in the Cabinet Office legislative drafting process, which is the Minister, quite rightly, said, probably, earlier this year, “We’re going to have to update the Act because there’s a variety of sensible and useful amendments we need to do.”, and then all the agencies involved in the COVID response—the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE), the Ministry of Defence, and everyone—all inputted into the process. Then every time they thought they’d sort of finalised a draft, somebody would say something like “Oh, what about this? We just need to add a little bit extra.”, and the time lines kept getting pushed out, and so we’ve ended up with quite a chunky piece of legislation.

Maybe you can make an argument that that was the right thing to do, but I think it would have been better to have seen it earlier, because the committee is going to have quite a compressed time frame. I think the Minister signalled a flag for 11 November, and the Health Committee chair here, Dr Craig—she knows we’re a pretty busy committee. We really are—we’ve got a lot on. We’ve managed to send the abortion safe areas bill back to the House, or we soon will, but we’re a pretty busy committee. So it’s going to be tight. It’s going to be tight, but we will get on with it because we’re a hard-working committee.

Some of the amendments in the bill are very sensible. I’ve already signalled some of the clarity around the operational practice of MIQ. That’s a good thing to put that into primary legislation, because if you actually read between the lines of the officials’ advice, it’s been a bit unclear the legal basis of some of what’s been going on in MIQ. I don’t make a big deal about that, but I’d just note that, because we had to stand it up really quickly, and everyone acknowledges that we do need MIQ. But it’s better to have that stuff as clear law.

I think one area the committee is going to want to get into is the issue of fines. Now, the Minister made a bit of a song and a dance in the media around saying he’s massively increasing the fines. It’s really interesting to read the regulatory impact statement (RIS) because it goes through, quite rightly, the range of options the Government considered to increase the maximum penalties, and I think everyone acknowledges that the penalties should be higher than what they are.

The officials recommended a 25 percent increase, so an infringement fee of $1,250 and a court-imposed fine of $3,750—that was option A—and they said that anything else would have “equity, proportionality, and consistency implications,”. Option C was 100 percent higher than the level in the bill, which is an infringement fee of $2,000 and a court-imposed fine of $6,000. It notes here, “The Minister’s decision to propose an increase in penalties beyond what is set out in the draft bill was not the preferred option recommended by the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet.”, and so what they’ve actually gone for is $4,000. It’s currently $300. The draft bill that was produced proposed increasing it to $1,000, and now we’ve ended up with $4,000. So this is a real increase in fines, and it may well be warranted. But it’s really interesting that it’s gone well beyond what the officials recommended was proportionate and equitable, and I think that is an area we’re going to want to get into at the select committee.

I mean, I’m all in favour of tough penalties for MIQ rule breaches. I mean, we’ve been on the record saying that—absolutely. But let’s get into exactly the reason for why they’re so vast and why there are proportionality implications.

The other really interesting thing just in relation the operation of MIQ is this little nugget, which I notice the Minister didn’t mention, which is the bill will allow—in fact, the bill will propose a requirement in the Act—for people undertaking MIQ to provide MBIE with contact information so that MBIE will be able to contact them once they’ve left MIQ for invoicing purposes. Now, what does that say? I think what it says, in the very austere language of the officials, is that up till now, or up till the bill passes, which will be some point later on in this calendar year—up until that point, officials haven’t had the ability to require people to supply their contact information. Because of that, they haven’t been able to invoice, and now I know why there’s $25 million, at last count, of MIQ fees that are outstanding.

Now, the Minister keeps saying, “Oh, the IT system’s problematic and we’ve had to have all these different databases and they have to correlate, and MBIE does one thing and Health does another thing and the exemptions are really hard.” There’s been a variety of different excuses given over the months as the overdue numbers keep racking up, but, actually, it turns out, when you read the RIS, it turns out that the major reason is that no one has been actually asking on a legal basis for the names and email addresses for people in MIQ so that we can send them an invoice. I don’t know if people have wised up to this, but it may well be that people just have not bothered to do it and because there’s no legal requirement to do it, there’s no ability to follow up, so, presumably, people have just been not supplying their names and email addresses and not supplying their addresses, and you can’t invoice people.

So that explains why the millions of dollars that people who have gone through MIQ owe to the New Zealand taxpayer have not been paid. The last time I looked, which was, to be fair, a couple of weeks ago, it was up over the $20 million mark, and there are people who have stayed in MIQ in August last year—August 2020; so a year ago—and who owe money to the Crown who haven’t paid.

Now, the amounts are 2,000 bucks, or something, for the August amount, and I’m not saying that the Crown should go after them, because they’d spend $2,000 drafting up the enforcement action to go after them. So that would be a waste of money, and I’m a fiscally prudent guy. I don’t want to waste Crown money, but when you’re talking about $25 million, then we’d get the debt collectors in, and one thing we will be interested to do is to see whether or not the bill allows for that to happen, because every now and then, when there’s a media story around the debt owed to the Crown, the Minister says, “Oh, we’re going to get tough.”, etc., etc. There’s been talk of debt collectors—and, in fact, I think even the Prime Minister said they were going to use debt collectors—and we’ll wait and see whether or not the bill that we’re passing allows for that to happen. So let’s wait and see.

The other couple of things I wanted to mention were what’s not in the bill, and that goes back to where I started, which is the philosophy behind it—so rapid testing, for example. In a world in which New Zealand begins to open, we’re going to need rapid testing, and I know the Government has got the technical group looking at it, but I think it’s tolerably clear that we’re going to need some form of rapid antigen tests in a new world in 2022, when the borders begin to reopen, because let’s remember that that’s ostensibly Government policy as well. The Government wants to reopen the borders as well, so with all the heat and light about National’s plan to gradually, very safely allow double-vaccinated travellers to come back—you know, all the heat and light today of “National wants to kill people!”—it’s actually Government policy to reopen the borders. Let’s not forget that, and that means COVID in the community, so let’s remember that. We are going to need rapid testing.

One good use of it right now would be at the Auckland level 3 boundary, and, look, it’s just ludicrous. These truckies are coming and going once a week, they get tested once a week, they could have COVID for six days in the meantime and spread it to literally thousands of people, and no one would know until they do a nasal test. So we should be doing rapid testing, and I accept that they’re not as accurate as the nasal test, of course. But when you do it on a daily basis, as Shaun Hendy and various other experts say, that makes up for it. So the bill says nothing about that. We should legalise them.

Through primary legislation, the bill should legalise rapid testing. It’s currently banned by dint of an order pursuant to the current Act. The bill should legalise it.

The second thing is that the bill should make provision for purpose-built managed isolation and quarantine. That’s been something that we’ve been talking about for a long time, and that goes to the philosophy underlying the bill.

So there are some good things in it. There are some good things in it, and we’ll consider it with due alacrity at the Health Committee, but we object to the time frame and we object to the philosophy. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. So just looking back to when all of us rapidly entered alert level 4 early last year, I think none of us knew what to expect, and yet when you actually look at what happened in the months that have followed, we’ve been incredibly successful at preventing the spread of COVID-19. I think a lot of that is due to the fact that we had a really good, consistent framework—a framework that included our very clear four-level alert level system, which we’ve all become incredibly familiar with—and also just very clear requirements about entering managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) for anybody coming into New Zealand. Underpinning all of that has been the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act. That Act has worked by allowing for the creation of orders which then result in the development of many of our public health responses that have influenced so much of our day-to-day life over the past few months.

I think the issue we’ve got is one of things this bill does is extends the life of that bill, because that bill is due to be repealed in May 2020, and so what this bill is going to be doing is extending that out till May 2023. As the Minister has already mentioned, there is a range of other things that this bill is going to be doing in terms of increasing some of the fines and fees relating to offences and non-compliance with these orders, also looking at a whole lot of changes around MIQ. So there is a range of things that this bill does, but the bottom line is it is going to make sure that we can continue to have an effective COVID-19 response into the future. So I commend this bill to the House.

The thing with this bill is—

💬 SPEAKER: You’re allowed to take the mask off to speak, if you wish.

Thank you. I will take up that opportunity. The thing with this bill is that it is a public health bill which corrects a number of measures that were put in place a year ago, when we first started responding to COVID-19. The question I think we all have to ask ourselves is: why is it now, within the heightened alert levels, that the Government’s finally getting around to doing the tidying up that, presumably, it could have done some months ago? Because a number of these measures relate to measures in the earlier bill that have been found to be inadequate, that have been found in practice to require tightening, or they are additional measures which the Government believes are needed to strengthen its response to COVID-19. And here we are, several weeks into a lockdown, and the Government is only now tidying things up.

National’s view is that, actually, a good Government that is genuinely dedicated to maximising its COVID-19 response would have come up with these sorts of proposals not in the heat of lockdown, but would have done it in an orderly fashion at an earlier date. The problem with the approach that the Government has taken here, in which it’s only now introducing these measures, is that it does mean that people will scrutinise and be sceptical about the rights that are being stepped on, because you do have to say to yourself, we do have to say, “Well, how long is it that the Government expects to have to use Draconian powers for?”

We are all, I believe, in this House, very hopeful that it is quite within New Zealand’s capabilities to vaccinate more of our population. In fact, here on this side of the House, we think that, actually, that opportunity should have been made available to more New Zealanders many months ago. As the Prime Minister and the Minister for COVID-19 Response have told us, when vaccination comes, we won’t have the need for these restricted freedoms any more; we won’t have the need for Draconian measures anymore. That need will phase out, if only we get our vaccination high enough. So in many ways this is a pessimistic bill we are debating, because what it says is, actually, we need to have even more measures for the future, we need to tidy up what we’ve done in the past because who knows how long the Government might need to resort to this sort of thing for. I am disappointed that we are not in a position where, in fact, this Parliament can be debating measures that show more freedom for New Zealanders rather than less.

Section 3 of the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act concerns the repeal. Currently, the Act is repealed in May 2021, if not repealed sooner, and clause 4 of the bill extends that sunset provision to 13 May 2023. And there’s something interesting in that, isn’t it? Because what it tells you is when we first used these sorts of measures in 2020, when we first as a Parliament debated putting in place these sorts of things, Parliament’s view and the Minister for COVID-19 Response’s view at the time, when he introduced the legislation, was that that Act should only be in force until 2021—so quite a short period of time. But now, here we are 18 months later, and the Minister takes a more pessimistic view about how long this legislation may be needed for: out to 13 May 2023, a much longer period of time.

I may be wrong to read between the lines and read into that repeal a pessimism from the Government, but I would invite speakers opposite to explain to me why we need legislation of this sort in place until 13 May 2023. Because, surely, by then, New Zealand will have vaccinated enough New Zealanders and will have ensured that we have enough public health measures in place, we have strong enough ICU capacity, we have enough trained health professionals, we have good enough contact tracing, we have world-class testing. And so we won’t need the sorts of Draconian provisions relating to mandatory isolation, mandatory quarantine, and lockdowns that this bill provides for. I think that that is something very important for members to consider in the debating of this legislation.

I want also to highlight the issue that my colleague Chris Bishop talked about in relation to managed isolation and quarantine being able to get people’s contact details in order to invoice them. I would say that this is a classic case of where the practical hasn’t necessarily been thought of, because, actually, that should have been in place some time ago. Why are we only now getting to that?

The bill, of course, also increases the offences and infringement offences for people who intentionally fail to comply with COVID-19 orders, which I think is just a reminder to all of us how serious the measures are in here: that we are, in fact, ensuring that people who don’t comply with State restrictions are liable for significant fines. It also creates offences relating to the exercise of enforcement powers, so that offences relating to the exercise of enforcement powers—in section 27 of the principal Act, “A person commits an offence if the person obstructs or intentionally threatens, assaults, or hinders an enforcement officer”. Again, I look at that and I think to myself, “Well, shouldn’t that have been the case already? Why are we only now working this out?”

So, in short, National is very concerned that this bill speaks to a pessimism on the Government benches about the ability of the Government to manage COVID-19 in a way that means that we don’t need significant restrictions and Draconian public health measures into the future, that they envisage a future till 2023 in which the sorts of lockdowns and restrictions that New Zealanders have been experiencing will be perpetuated. We put to this House that, actually, this sort of legislation is very serious. It should be as time-limited as possible; actually, it should be put in place thoughtfully, in a timely fashion, not just in the middle of a lockdown. We also are of the view that it would be very good if the members opposite could put as much energy into actually getting vaccinations up and to ensuring that we are making sure we had the best testing regime, the best contact tracing in the world. We’ve had many months to do that, but, actually, in the months ahead, we should be more focused on that than on Draconian measures. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Kia ora, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure of mine to speak today on the COVID-19 Public Health Response Amendment Bill (No 2). I want to start by thanking and congratulating this Government for, first of all, setting up a Minister for COVID-19. It is unprecedented to have a Minister responsible for a pandemic. Not a lot of countries have done something like this. And I want to thank the Minister for his COVID response in the last two years. I say this not only as a citizen of New Zealand, where I haven’t been infected by COVID, but also as a front-line healthcare worker when I was swabbing patients last year. I say this as a member of Parliament for 64,000 people in my electorate, and I say this as a member of the Health Committee, which this bill will go through.

Looking back at all the bills that have come through this Parliament over the last few years, I would say this has been one of the most significant to come through the Parliament. What’s happened now is, based on the feedback that has been received by the Government on the ground, there have been certain changes that have been made in this No. 2 bill. That’s what this Government is all about—listening to the people and reacting, compared to the Opposition where I can’t tell what their idea is because they’re saying the bill’s too late coming in, yet they don’t want to support it. If anything, I would have thought it would have helped to keep the bill deferred for a few more weeks because by that time the Leader of the Opposition might have changed and they might have a new strategy on this.

Somebody from the Opposition just talked about how a good Government would have had a bill like this earlier on. Well, you’ve just released your policy on vaccination—

💬 SPEAKER: Order! Order! I haven’t released any policies.

Sorry—I mean the Opposition. So I would like to say this is one of the most important bills to come through the House and the changes in the No. 2 bill only build up on the first bill which was a great piece of legislation needed to keep this country safe, and I would like to recommend this bill to the House. Thank you.

Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. Tēnā koutou e te Whare. The Green Party has largely supported the Government’s response to COVID-19, and I just want to again acknowledge how incredibly successful it has been—and all of the different public servants who’ve been working so hard, particularly in recent weeks, people working in regional public health who’ve had to do all the contact tracing, which has been incredibly difficult given the surge in cases and some of the complications around the cases. So I know this response has taken a huge effort, not just the Ministers and the Government officials that we see but also hundreds if not thousands of people behind the scenes working, the front-line workers.

It’s interesting, the debate in recent weeks where there are some prominent media commentators who’ve been arguing that we cannot continue like this, that somehow New Zealand’s out of step with the rest of the world, where, when we look at the other countries they’re talking about, you know, “It’s opening up”. That just means living at a kind of level 2 that has much greater restrictions than the vast majority of New Zealand has had for over the past year. We’ve had far more freedom because of the approach that we’ve taken to eliminate COVID-19 in the community.

That’s why the Green Party continues to support that approach that the Government has outlined, and then, even when we have a high percentage of people over the age of 12 vaccinated, that leaves a substantial portion of our citizens still unable to be vaccinated and still at risk of the virus. Personally, I think that we need to, at every step of the way, be considering how this affects the most vulnerable in our society, because, ultimately, that affects our entire society and that affects all of us. Just like early on last year, it was argued that somehow this lockdown was going to be bad for the economy. What it showed was taking a swift approach, taking an elimination approach actually was better for people’s ability to trade once we were able to eliminate COVID-19 in the community.

So this bill amends the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act 2020, which was passed in May 2020. The amendments largely make sense and we are supportive of them. We are only supporting this bill to select committee, because we have one significant concern, which I will come to. I realise that it’s not just a concern in this bill; it’s a concern with infringement fees generally and how they affect people quite differently based on people’s financial means. But I would like to just note that the delegation of roading enforcement powers to Māori and Pasifika wardens and iwi nominees is a positive step, very consistent with our previous Green Party support for iwi checkpoints. But the increase in infringement fees raises a concern, whether it’s to do with COVID-19 infringements or traffic infringements, or other types of infringements.

I completely understand the desire to have an infringement regime, to not always have to pursue everything through the courts-based system, but, unfortunately, financial inequality, income inequality, wealth inequality are quite significant in Aotearoa New Zealand, as much as we would like it not to be the case, and there are a whole number of policies that we could pursue to have a more equal society, which would be better for all of us. But the state that we’re in right now is that for some people a $100 infringement fine is catastrophic for them. And then there’s other people for whom a $10,000 fine would be nothing at all—you know, people who have tens of millions in wealth who really, for them, they could take a calculated risk and think, “Oh, if I have to pay an infringement fee, it’s worth it, because I really want to go to Wānaka to go skiing.”, or whatever it is. There are people of enormous financial means in this country and, for them, an infringement fee of hundreds of dollars means nothing at all.

So this was something that actually I found quite challenging when I was associate transport Minister, because I totally understood the desire to increase penalties for things like driving while using a cellphone, which pretty much one out of three drivers is doing at any point, especially at peak-hour traffic in the middle of the city, which is incredibly dangerous and potentially life-threatening to people outside the vehicle. But on the other hand, it’s simply not fair and can exacerbate inequality to simply put up infringement fines.

There are other jurisdictions that take an approach to infringement fees that it’s a percentage of your income or they use a proportional approach that makes it more fair so that it genuinely is an appropriate deterrent for people, no matter what their income or level of wealth. I think that is something that we really should be pursuing. I don’t think there’s any branch of Government that has got the capacity to take this on; that’s a different problem.

I note that when we often hear criticism of the Government’s COVID-19 response or their response on housing and other things, Opposition parties like National and ACT blame Government inability or lack of capacity, which is absolutely due to philosophical political choices made by National Governments—and sometimes in conjunction with ACT—to underfund and undermine the Public Service, because they don’t believe in Government. In the case of a global pandemic, it absolutely proves the need for a really well-resourced public health system. Even today, when people were talking about ICU capacity, yeah, we absolutely need additional ICU capacity—

💬 SPEAKER: Order! Order! I—

—and that could be part of this bill.

💬 SPEAKER: It’s not, and I think I was a little bit liberal earlier with Mr Bishop in letting people discuss things which were not in the bill and maybe should have been. In the second reading you can do that; you can do it in passing. But it’s been a while since the member’s been focused on the specifics of this bill rather than general issues related to it, or matters to do with COVID that are not in the bill.

Well, most of what I’ve been talking about, Mr Speaker, was in fact the proposal to—

💬 SPEAKER: Order! Order! The member will resume her seat. When I’ve ruled, you don’t tell me why I’m wrong. All right? You just get on with debating.

We have significant concerns about the infringement fees. And if other parties in this House would like to see increased ICU capacity, they would probably have to support increased taxation, which would help pay for a public health system that would actually respond to having more COVID in the community.

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of ACT in opposition to this COVID-19 Public Health Response Amendment Bill (No 2). This is a bill that refines and extends the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act. That is the law passed by this Parliament, I think it was last May, or maybe a little later in the year that allows the Government to do things like set alert level restrictions. It allows the Government to require people to be tested at borders, it allows people to be fined, it allows the Government to operate managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ), and a range of other policies that it’s put in place as part of the COVID response to date. The reason that we oppose it is that at this point, 18 months into the COVID-19 pandemic, you would hope that the Government would have a bit more ambition than continuing the status quo. It’s a status quo that can best be described as a policy of eradication of COVID-19 by lockdown, with the dividends of being able to enjoy relative freedom with our oceans protecting us and allowing there to be no COVID-19 in New Zealand. There’s only a couple of problems with that strategy, and those are the reasons why we oppose this bill extending the length of the status quo.

The first problem with that strategy is that it requires New Zealand to be almost completely isolated. The restrictions on entering New Zealand, the requirements to have managed isolation and quarantine, have meant a 99 percent reduction in the number of people that come through the New Zealand border at airports and seaports. In normal times it’s about 20,000 people each and every day. MIQ, when you average it out, barely manages to process 200 people a day—that’s about 3,000 spots, 14 days of stay, gets you a bit over 200 people.

Now, that reduction in people entering New Zealand is something that cannot be sustained. In so many ways it is dividing families. It is preventing people coming home to say goodbye to dying loved ones. It exposes us to what has been termed “the hunger games”, where 26,000 people try to get in an electronic queue for 3,000 MIQ spots. It means people who need to renew and build additional commercial relationships by meeting people offshore don’t have the possibility of doing that. It means that our industries that depend on people coming—I mean, forget tourism, even just something as simple as export education—are unable to function. Those are the costs of a status quo that relies upon New Zealand’s isolation from the rest of the world.

But then there’s the strategy of using lockdowns. Lockdowns have been effective in an Alpha variant environment. New Zealand managed to eradicate COVID-19 from its shores, actually have no COVID in the country, three times: first in February of last year; again in August of last year; and then with a Valentine’s outbreak again in February of this year. But things have changed and that’s why it is wrong to have this bill that continues the same strategy, not just into 2022 but into 2023. What’s changed is that against a Delta variant we see a long tail of infections that have kept Auckland locked down now for seven weeks and counting. With 45 cases on the 43rd day it is clearly time to change the strategy. I looked, 43 days into the original 2020 lockdown there were zero cases. In fact, they actually reclassified one case, there were negative one cases 43 days into that lockdown. Today—

💬 Chris Bishop: Negative?

Yeah, that’s right, Mr Bishop. They reclassified a case as not being a case, so therefore, there was actually negative one cases that day, 43 days into the March, April, May lockdown. This year, today with this lockdown, a lockdown aimed at beating Delta, 43 days in, 45 new cases and no end in sight. That’s why the strategy has to change, and that’s why putting in place a law to lock in the status quo is fundamentally wrong.

The bill then goes on to extend the penalties that people pay if they transgress the rules. Now, that in and of itself is probably not an entirely bad thing. The penalties for breaking the rules should be sufficient to deter people from breaching them. I think it’s reasonable to say that some of the penalties in the low hundreds of dollars for a lot of people haven’t been a reasonable consideration for taking risks that would have a widespread community impact. But, of course, you only need to do that if the intention is to double down on a strategy based on isolation and lockdowns. Locking down and locking out, isolating New Zealand from the world, that has become completely unsustainable. There’s got to be a better way.

Then there’s the question, as we’ve heard in previous contributions, of what’s not in the bill. If we were to have a progressive approach to COVID-19, we might, instead of extending the status quo and toughening the restrictions and giving the Government more power, be asking where are there things we could do to liberalise and improve the flexibility that all of the team of 5 million have to fight COVID? Well, actually, it should be the team of 6 million because we seem to have forgotten a million citizens currently not in New Zealand. Some of the things that a better policy might include is the simple idea of allowing rapid antigen testing. Not only has the Government not included rapid antigen testing in its response it’s actually prohibited New Zealand citizens from importing even the materials for any kind of testing technology that would allow New Zealanders to better respond to COVID, to more rapidly detect it, to more rapidly isolate if they had it, and to be reassured that we are not in danger of widespread transmission and widespread hospitalisation or, worst of all, death. But that’s the contrast.

We’ve got a piece of legislation where a Government that’s been completely caught off guard by Delta, not knowing what to do, has decided to rush legislation through the House because it doesn’t know what else it could possibly be doing. It was simply unprepared. We heard it today in the tetchiness of the Prime Minister when she was asked why she wasn’t prepared, why her Government’s response was not prepared for Delta. She asked you, “Do I even have to answer the question?” That is one of the central problems with this legislation. It’s not just the contents of it, it’s not just the extension of the status quo that it brings about it is also the nature of it, the timing of it, the way that it’s been introduced. The Government is essentially saying “We don’t really have another plan. We don’t know what else to do, but we anticipate that we could have the status quo of locking down and locking out for another year or more. So we’re going to give ourselves some insurance by putting in place the tools of central control of orders of what New Zealand citizens can do inside and if they’re outside the country, and we’re going to increase the penalties that we apply to people if they transgress them.” It’s the lack of imagination, the lack of preparedness and forward thinking that is so depressing for New Zealanders who are stuck suffering under the strategy of locking down and locking out, that are running out of money to keep their business afloat, that see no certainty. What this legislation says to them is, “You know what? We’ve got a long, long way to go, no light at the end of the tunnel, and no ideas for a better tomorrow.” That is why the ACT party opposes this legislation. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Thank you. I rise to speak with pleasure to the COVID-19 Public Health Response Amendment Bill (No 2). This bill obviously has much to commend it, but I was particularly interested to see the interest shown in the increase in court determined fines for the most serious intentional breaches, which are those which create the most risk to our communities. I was really interested to hear the views of Mr Bishop and Ms Genter, obviously coming from different points on the spectrum and obviously in disagreement on many points. I have to say I was somewhat surprised to note that National appeared to be soft on crime, which is not a position I’d thought to see them take this year.

But I really look forward to discussing this further in the Health Committee, one of the hardest-working select committees in this Government. Thank you so much. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you very much for allowing me to take this call, Mr Speaker. As you’ve probably realised during the day, I’ve been quite keen to get up and say something. So now is my opportunity. What I want to say is: how good was National’s plan today for the COVID-19 response? I just want to acknowledge our leader, the Hon Judith Collins; Chris Bishop, as our COVID recovery spokesperson; and our deputy leader, Dr Shane Reti; who, I think, did the work of a thousand officials and they published a very detailed plan. Their plan was about evolving and opening up to the rest of the world. It was also about dealing with COVID and this pandemic. Clearly, with this Government, it is all about lockdown, it is all about the control—

💬 SPEAKER: Order! Order! The member’s now used 20 percent of his speech. He will get on to the bill.

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. It was interesting that one of the Labour callers said tonight that they were very proud of this bill because this bill showed that they had been listening and the changes in this bill were from listening. It is interesting because in the regulatory impact statement (RIS) around external consultation it said that time frames did not allow for external consultation. So I am not sure who they were listening to. In fact, they told key stakeholders that the way that they could become involved was to submit in the select committee process, which we find out today is only going to go for about six weeks. So here we have a bill that there has been no external consultation on and the ability for stakeholders to make a submission for what is going to be a rushed select committee process. On this side of the House, we don’t think that is going to be the way for making good law.

It is really interesting when you carry on looking at the RIS, and you look at the language and the proposition of why we need this bill. Of course, when you look at this Government, when it is about the failure of their plan, it is not their fault—it is not about the failure of the roll-out of vaccines; it is about the individual’s fault, isn’t it? Remember the KFC worker?

💬 Hon Member: Yes.

Yeah, all their fault! So how do you give the public a kick? Well, let’s increase the infringement penalties. That’ll do it, because the risk to the country is the public not doing what they are told by the Government!

I think what is really interesting is when I’ve spoken on previous bills and the amount of times I’ve heard from the Government that just increasing the financial penalty doesn’t change behaviour. Yet let’s have a look at some of these increases. I mean, the infringement fee from an individual has grown from $300 to $4,000. Because, of course, when you look at the language being used it is that the failure of our elimination strategy won’t be about the Government’s performance; it will be about the public and their behaviour and are they responding to an ever-encroachment on their freedoms by this Government? One thing that we are hearing is the tension out in New Zealand of “When did we agree to have a Government in our life every day?” That is going to be the flashpoint going forward.

So I’m not sure how bringing in legislation like this that is going to be rushed—the responsible Minister hardly was able to explain it in his first reading speech. Maybe we will get the answers in the select committee process that will allow National to support this bill. But there is a lot in this bill that gives us concern, because what does it actually mean? What does it mean when you will withhold people’s personal possessions in managed isolation and quarantine? What does it mean when you cause an offence with an infringement officer who perceives you likely to contravene a rule—not contravene the rule, but likely to—and what is going to be the test of that? This’ll be interesting. This Government will rush it through in six weeks, and let’s see what happens at the second reading. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Debbie Ngarewa-Packer—a five-minute call.

Kia ora. Tēnā tātou e te Whare. I rise to speak on behalf of Te Paati Māori to the first reading of the COVID-19 Public Health Response Amendment Bill (No 2). Te Paati Māori will not be supporting this bill in its current form. This bill represents a failure of inclusive leadership and a missed opportunity. It is a failure of inclusive leadership because the bill, and the original Act it amends, fails to provide a pandemic response that works for all, for all peoples of all cultures and socio-economic circumstances. It entrenches rather than eliminates inequities and disparities.

It’s a missed opportunity because the bill was the Government’s chance to put right some of their previous mistakes. It makes a number of reasonable amendments to the Act, particularly around managed isolation and quarantine, that we would have been happy to support. However, this bill also deals with the enforcement of the Act and associated regulations. Therefore, this should have been the Government’s opportunity to amend section 20, which enables warrantless entry of marae by officers of the State. The provision could easily have been aligned with the wording that was recently agreed to by a select committee on the Water Services Bill. That wording made it explicitly clear that entry on to marae and other private property can occur with consent or with a warrant. Currently, this Act still singles out marae, the cultural, economic, and spiritual centre of Māori life. This is despite the victory laps made by Labour last year when they announced the change of the provision. They tried to fool our people and pretend that the unwarranted search of marae was no longer there, when, really, all they have done was required a report which must be sent out to the relevant marae committee. That is sent out after they’ve done the search of our marae. Seriously, this is misleading.

The Government has a fetish for unwarranted search of our marae. What is with these fetishes? I have no problem kink-shaming this Government and their fetish with our marae. That is our last bastion of our mana motuhake.

💬 David Seymour: This is great writing.

These are decisions—thanks, David—by people who have no connect to keeping their marae warm. They don’t hold the keys of responsibility to ensure our kawa are respected. They wouldn’t know where to turn the power on. This is absolutely a breach of our tapu, coming on to our marae uninvited. This makes the Government an invader. The Government has not made a case for why warrantless searches should apply in our COVID response, let alone warrantless searches of marae, which is a clear Te Tiriti breach.

Today, on behalf of Te Paati Māori, I’m putting a wero to this House. That wero is to politicians from across the House and to officials from across the Public Service. Tangata w’enua will no longer tolerate these disgraceful attacks on our mana motuhake, on our marae. We will not allow the Crown to continue to breach Te Tiriti through this assertion of power over our people, over our w’enua, and our institutions. We will not accept that State invasions of our marae is a standard provision in legislation, as it seemed to have become in recent years. Both this Act and the Water Services Bill explicitly target marae. The counter-terrorism bill, which is being considered by the House this week, also allows for warrantless entry on to private properties.

Warrantless searches of any private premises is a clear example of State overreach, plain and simple. We have these basic legal and human rights protections for a reason. But specifically targeting Māori dwellings and institutions takes it a step further and is nothing more than colonisation and racism enshrined in legislation. I’m calling on the Minister for COVID-19 Response to amend the legislation and adopt the wording used in the reported-back Water Services Bill. There’s simply no excuse for failing to act. We will not sit idly by and allow the passage of this bill. We’ll be doing everything we can to scrap this backward, racist provision and make sure our whānau are aware of what you’re attempting to do again.

I look forward to the select committee consideration ensuring it is amended, while also taking the time to go through the bill in detail and examine the various provisions, including the other enforcement provisions. This House must ensure that enforcement is applied equitably rather than the double standards and racism that we consistently see targeted at our marae. Nō reira, tēnā tātou, tēnā koutou katoa.

Kia ora, Madam Speaker, thank you for allowing me to take a call on the COVID-19 Public Health Response Amendment Bill (No 2). Not sure how to respond, really, after the previous speaker, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer, but I know that I’m part of a Labour Party that has a strong Māori caucus, committed to putting Māori to the front, ensuring that it’s not a fetish, but it’s a Te Tiriti responsibility to engage and walk alongside. As a proud member of the Labour Party, as an ally, as a tangata Tiriti, I am proud to stand in support of this piece of legislation. Really simply, the bill enables the public health response to COVID-19 to continue to function as it has, in a coordinated and orderly way.

Now, I’m really glad to be in a nation that is coordinated and orderly, and in my electorate of New Plymouth I’m really proud to see people adhering to the COVID-19 rules, people willing to do the right thing, not for themselves, but generally for the people around them—those at risk, those who are vulnerable. So I wanted to ensure that this is passed, to enable that public health response to continue in a coordinated and orderly way, and I support this bill.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. I rise to speak in opposition to the COVID-19 Public Health Response Amendment Bill (No 2) which amends the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act 2020. I feel like I’ve seen more of these pieces of legislation than most people should in their lives. I’ve been in the Regulations Review Committee and I wonder what that committee did before COVID! However, this bill is to bring about better reflection of the knowledge, supposedly, that this Government has of how long the public health response may be necessary. Now, that should put fear into most of our hearts, I would think. My colleague Nicola Willis said it shows how pessimistic this Government is, because, essentially, this bill allows the Minister to make orders to deal with COVID, for things like lockdowns and managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) for a further 18 months, extending out to May 2023. That really should be alerting all New Zealanders to the possibility of how crippling this Government’s inaction could be for us.

Now, I think that’s particularly pertinent when some of the things that are happening around the world show where we could be, and I note today that New Zealand has fallen by 37 spots on the global ranking for best places to be amid a pandemic. I know that the Government were very proud of when they were number one, but they have fallen from number one to number 38 out of 53 on a global ranking. We’ve fallen behind nations in Europe, in North America, in the Middle East, in Africa, in Asia, and in the Pacific, and sitting at the number one spot now is Ireland, with a similar population to New Zealand. They have claimed the number one spot with 90 percent of their population over 18 vaccinated. In fact, they are considered to be the vaccine poster child.

I think it’s quite interesting to have a look at the factors that are taken into account with these rankings. Well, obviously, virus containment is one of them. Healthcare quality—well, that certainly wouldn’t have been working out well for us. We know that we have one of the lowest numbers of ICU beds per thousand head of population in the OECD—so there’s our ranking slipping immediately. Another criteria is vaccination coverage. Well, that wouldn’t have worked out particularly well for us either. Another factor is the progress towards easing border restrictions and restarting travel. Well, clearly, that wasn’t going to work well for us either. In these criteria they also looked at who had the strictest lockdowns, and here New Zealand did shoot to the front. New Zealand along with Malaysia were judged to have the strictest lockdowns of all 53 economies on the list. So it is no wonder our businesses are hurting.

Perhaps you’d like to know, Madam Speaker, who the top 10 countries are: Ireland, sitting there shining at the top; Spain, the Netherlands, Finland, Denmark, UAE, France, Switzerland, Canada, and Norway. New Zealand is faltering in the era of vaccination. Now, Shakespeare had a term for this—being hoist by your own petard. And if I was a little less precious about it and more true to my rural roots, I might say that the chickens have come home to roost. This Government has had an ideology of centralisation and “Government knows best.” They’ve had that ideology for education, for three waters, for health, and for vaccination.

This morning at the Health Committee we had a number of Māori health experts talking about vaccination and about Māori inequity in COVID. These women had a wealth of experience, but their wealth of experience and expertise had not been listened to. I found it incredibly humbling listening to the work that two of these Māori GPs had been undertaking. But one of those Māori GPs said how incredibly difficult it had been to be able to get registered to be able to use the vaccine. They had had to be incredibly committed to their patients. They had had to jump through all sorts of hoops to be able to distribute the vaccine. I thought it was incredibly sad that this Government had not recognised the wealth of experience and knowledge and capability at grass-roots level for our Māori communities to be able to get that vaccine out when we should have.

We then listened to Pasifika health experts, and we wondered why in some of the Pacific Islands they had been able to get to vaccination rates of—

💬 Dr Duncan Webb: Point of order, Madam Speaker. I just seek your guidance on the topic. This isn’t about general proceedings before the Health Committee. It’s about a piece of legislation before the House, which doesn’t appear to be being addressed.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Thank you very much for that. I think the member should be aware of the provisions in the bill, and I’m looking forward to her sticking a little more closely to the subject of the bill. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’m very keen to stick to the matters around COVID and that this legislation will enable the Minister to be able to continue to make orders around COVID—that is lockdown levels, MIQ, vaccination, and those matters pertaining to COVID. I thought that vaccine was actually quite relevant to COVID, so I’ll continue on about the Pacific health experts who were able to tell us that a number of the Pacific Islands have been able to get to over 90 percent vaccination rates because they had used their community links. Then I look to what’s happening with the disabled community during COVID, and I despair over the vaccination rates for our disabled community. When it was sitting around 70 percent for the general population, it was 37 percent for the disabled community. I’m reading from one of the disabled advocates who said, “Most of the houses we are delivering food parcels to”—this is in lockdown, just to ensure that Dr Webb can see the relevance of it; lockdown from COVID—“have their curtains closed and are peeking through.”

💬 Dr Duncan Webb: Point of order. The member is yet to refer to a single provision of the bill.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Thank you. Thank you very much. The Speaker is the sole judge of relevance, and I’ve asked the member to come to order. I’m listening and watching very closely.

💬 David Seymour: Point of order. As you rightly said, the Speaker is the sole judge. The member is now trifling with you and undermining you. He’s done it twice. I think he should go.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Thank you very much for that advice.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’m now enlightened because if the Government don’t see COVID lockdowns and vaccination rates as to do with COVID and legislation that enables these things to happen, then we are in quite serious trouble.

So delivering food parcels—they “have their curtains closed and are peeking through, so we’re seeing a level of isolation and fear that we’ve not witnessed before.”, she said. “We have this cloak of fear amongst our disabled communities, who don’t understand what’s going on because the information out there isn’t accessible to them.”

So my concern is that this legislation allows the Minister to continue to be making these sorts of orders, to continue to put us in lockdown, to continue to have MIQ, and it extends the possibility of that out to May 2023, when we can clearly see across the rest of the world that they are opening up and we are falling behind. Therefore we should be very concerned if this is the rate that this Government thinks they are going to get COVID under control in New Zealand. For that reason, for that very pessimistic reason, for that very concerning reason of the impact that it will have on our communities such as our Māori population, our Pasifika population, our disabled population, and our businesses, then we should be opposing this legislation.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’m really proud to take a call on this piece of legislation. I just want to remind members opposite that we are actually in the midst of a pandemic, in case they had forgotten—a pandemic that we have not seen the likes of before. And in order to deal with a pandemic such as this, we need to be able to adapt and evolve our legislation to ensure that we can deal with this current pandemic.

Part of this piece of legislation talks about an increase in fees and infringements based on the type of rules that are potentially broken, and if they are broken on purpose, then people should have to pay accordingly. We’ve recently seen young people hiding in the boot of a car on their way to attend a tangi at their marae, and, as a result of that, that marae is now in lockdown. So they intentionally broke the rules. So, therefore, we do need to be able to have the ability to ensure that people are held accountable for those.

We had Mr Seymour talk about how the Government should be a bit more ambitious than sticking with the status quo. Well, I say the status quo has seen us have more freedoms than many other countries around the world. If I think about Ireland that Penny Simmonds talked about, they have had 387,000 cases of COVID, 5,209 deaths, 1,497 cases yesterday, in comparison to New Zealand—total of 4,248 cases and 27 deaths. No deaths are acceptable, but comparing ourselves to Ireland, there is no comparison, Ms Simmonds. So I am standing here very proudly to commend this bill to the House.