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 found on the Parliament website.

I move, That the COVID-19 Public Health Response Amendment Bill (No 2) be now read a second time.

The bill makes amendments to the COVID-9 Public Health Response Act, a piece of legislation we’ve already just had a bit of a debate about in the House in terms of the orders that have been made underneath it. The overall goal of this is to ensure that we can continue to respond to the pandemic in a flexible and agile way as our response to COVID-19 continues to evolve in the coming months. I would like to thank the chair and the members of the Health Committee for their diligent consideration of the bill. I’d also like to thank those who made submissions on the bill.

I want to comment on some of the substantive issues that were raised, and I think it would be fair to say that one of the things that generated the most debate about this particular legislation was the changes to fines and infringement notices and the potential maximum level of fines and infringements. When this legislation was first established, it wasn’t entirely clear exactly what the sorts of orders that we may need to make under it would be. And so the level of fines and infringements that were provided for in the original Act that we’re now amending were relatively low. What became clear as we were heading through operationalising different orders that were made under the Act is that those levels of fines and infringements could be regarded as somewhat trivial relative to the consequences of people deliberately and knowingly trying to get around those rules.

So, for example, if we rewind back to when we had to reimpose restrictions on those coming trans-Tasman from Australia to New Zealand, in order to try and prevent COVID19, Delta in particular, getting into New Zealand—recognising that our current Delta outbreak that we’re dealing with now in multiple parts of the country actually originated in Australia—in our attempts to try and stop that, we had to reimpose travel restrictions. The reality is for people deliberately breaching those restrictions, the infringements available to us were trivial: $300 or a maximum of $1,000. Given the consequences that could be generated by people who brought Delta into New Zealand, which we’ve now seen what those consequences are—although in this particular case, that person was not at fault; they were a person who went through managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ)—but someone who was what we’d describe as a border averter: so someone who travelled from an Australian state that they weren’t allowed to travel from, to an Australian state that they were allowed to travel from, and did not tell the truth about their travel history. That person could have been creating a world of pain for New Zealand, and the ability to impose a proportionate fine or infringement upon them did not exist under the legislation. And so that’s why we reviewed that, and I have brought this bill before the House to increase the maximum levels of fines and infringements.

I want to be clear here that the Government’s intention from this point onwards is, effectively, to create a sliding scale of potential fines and infringements under this law that will allow for low-level risk to be dealt with by the existing kind of low-level fines and infringements that are available now. It would only be those where the consequences of the offending of the people breaking the rules was at the sort of more extreme end that we would impose the maximum fines and infringements.

The second issue that was raised, and I know that it’s one that generated a debate amongst members of the select committee, was regarding the potential to make orders relating to medical testing laboratories. The bill allows for orders to be made for a variety of purposes in relation to testing labs, but particularly would allow for the Government to make the best use of the national COVID-19 testing capacity in the event of a severe outbreak of COVID-19, including by requisitioning testing consumables or requiring that testing laboratories undertake testing solely for the public health response.

The Government does recognise that these are substantial powers and they would have a particular impact on the owners of testing laboratories. It’s for that reason that the bill provides for compensation or payment for those services should those powers be used. I would note that these powers are not unprecedented—these powers are not unprecedented. There are already provisions in the Health Act of 1956 that make similar kinds of provisions. These ones, however, are tied specifically to our COVID-19 response. They were in a piece of legislation that has to be consistently and regularly renewed by Parliament and that will expire. So by tying them to the COVID-19 response—yes, it is an infringement on the freedom of those businesses, if you like, potentially, but it would be a very high threshold to use that. The reason for it is simply this: if we’re dealing with a severe outbreak, testing is critical, and we have to make sure that we can make the best use of all of the testing available in the environment where supplies around testing are very constrained internationally—so our ability to get testing supplies on a large scale into the country continues to be constrained internationally, so we’ve got to make the best use of the ones that we have available.

💬 David Seymour: What about legalising rapid antigen testing?

I’ll just pick up a couple of other things. In terms of—the member asks about legislating for rapid antigen testing. That is allowed for under the orders that have already been made under this legislation. In terms of the other issues that were raised during the debate on this—

💬 David Seymour: Can I go to the shop and buy one?

Oh, the member wants to be able to buy rapid antigen tests. It is still—and I think we may well get to that point in the future, but it is important that, actually, rapid antigen tests are understood for their strengths and weaknesses, and, actually—

💬 David Seymour: Testing’s so important, but you can’t buy it at the shop.

Well, no, actually, reliable diagnostic testing—and everybody around rapid antigen tests would agree that they are not a diagnostic test. They are a surveillance test, not a diagnostic test. So the provisions in this bill deal with the provisions around diagnostic testing, which is critical in a severe outbreak. The issues around rapid antigen testing are different, and it does have a significant role to play in reducing the pressure on our diagnostic tests, because if we are using rapid antigen tests to do some of the surveillance testing—which we are moving to doing more and more of them; that’s already happening—that means that it frees up our PCR labs, effectively, to make sure that they’re being used in the best way possible.

Other issues that were raised during the select committee debate on this were around the role of MIQ and whether we need to have a more developed framework for our managed isolation and quarantine facilities, which the bill allows for. I would note that there are some in the House who believe MIQ’s time is done and we should simply stop isolating or quarantining anybody at the border. That is not the position of the Government and, therefore, we do still need a robust arrangement for MIQ in place at the border, and we’re likely to need that for some time for those who are higher-risk people, those who are unvaccinated, and to make sure that we don’t end up in a situation where we get hundreds of additional cases coming into New Zealand across the border, seeding in the community and therefore triggering a very large-scale outbreak.

So we want to manage the reopening of the border in a careful way so that we are continuing to suppress COVID-19 in the New Zealand community, so we don’t have massive, flaming outbreaks of COVID-19 that cannot be controlled. There is a balance to reach here. And, yes, we will see more movement across the international border in the coming months, but we’ll be doing that in a way that is careful so that we don’t end up being overrun by COVID-19. Because, bear in mind, as we do start to liberate settings at the border, many, many more people will come into the country. So it’s not fair to look only at the positivity rate of those who are being tested in MIQ, because we potentially would be multiplying the number of people coming in by many, many fold, and that does create additional risk of COVID-19 taking off in parts of the country where it would be very difficult to control and to contain.

So, ultimately, these amendments are ones that I think are sensible. I do just want to mention one further amendment that’s been made by the committee, with the full support of the Government, and that is to provide additional privacy protections for people’s QR code data and for data that they share as part of the COVID-19 response to our contact tracers. I’ve always been confident that the systems in place to protect that information are very robust. There has been some concern, though, that there could be additional measures put in place. Some of the amendments made by the committee do further strengthen the level of reassurance around the protection of people’s data, and, therefore, I think that they are welcome.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. On Sunday, I visited Auckland for the first time in 13 or 14 weeks, and it was not a decision that I took lightly. But I had had a number of people reach out to me in the preceding days, saying, “You’ve got to come up here and see for yourself the scale of the devastation and the anguish, and talk to people face to face.” So I visited Auckland and, unlike another prominent political leader who also went to Auckland the week before, I actually went and talked to people on the ground whose businesses were affected by the COVID restrictions.

I’ve got to tell you that what I discovered was actually really heartbreaking: hospitality owners who are just thinking about the Christmas period, knowing that Aucklanders will probably leave Auckland over Christmas and that that time of year in January, when it’s a bit of a slow period, will be even slower. They’re trying to make money now and they can’t open. When they hear that they can’t open right now because the vaccine certificates aren’t ready because the Government only signed the contract with the IT provider a month ago, there is going to be outrage, and rightly so.

I talked to people who are mortgaging their homes, who are selling their cars, and who are just doing what they can to get by, and what they don’t want is platitudes and they don’t want this bill—which does nothing to make life better for them—they just want some certainty. They want a date and they want to know what the rules are and they want to get back to business so that they can start employing people again and start making some money to try and get through the next few months, and this bill does nothing—it does nothing for them. It does nothing for Auckland hospitality, it does nothing for Auckland small business, it does nothing for Wellington small business, and it does nothing for Christchurch business.

What it does is continue and perpetuate the Fortress New Zealand mentality that underpins this Government’s COVID response. Even despite the changes in terms of vaccination, it continues the idea that we can be locked away in splendid isolation for ever. It reflects a world in which the Government cannot move on from elimination, which failed. It reflects a world in which the Government is psychologically incapable of acknowledging that elimination failed, they didn’t have a back-up plan, and we have to move to suppression, and it reflects a world that’s actually quite scary.

💬 Shanan Halbert: Welcome to Delta.

Oh well, the member says “Delta”. Yeah, exactly—exactly. The member says “Delta”. Yeah, Delta turned up in April. Delta turned up in April. What did the Government do?

The Prime Minister thinks it arrived in June. It arrived in managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) in April. When did the Government establish a COVID-19 testing group to tell them about rapid antigen tests? Did they do that in February, March, April, May, June? No. They did it in August—August. When did the Government authorise vaccine certificates? Did they think about vaccine certificates in February, March, April, May, June—like every other country was doing? No. The Government authorised vaccine certificates to be developed in July, and they signed the contract with the IT company on 13 October.

So everyone listening out there needs to know, if you’re in Auckland and you want to leave the “Auckland Prison”, you want to go back to work, or you want to go and have a beer outside on Ponsonby Road in a courtyard and you can’t, the reason you can’t is because there’s no such thing as a vaccine certificate in New Zealand yet, and the reason there isn’t a vaccine certificate is because the Government was lazy and incompetent and didn’t do the work earlier this year. That’s the reason.

Vaccine certificates could be in place right now. If we had vaccine certificates in place right now, Aucklanders could leave, they could go to the pub, they could go outside and go for a meal, they could go shopping, and they could go back to work. They can’t, because this lazy, useless Government assumed that elimination would work, and they had no back-up plan whatsoever.

So we’ll oppose this bill for three reasons: one, it’s predicated on the wrong assumption, Fortress New Zealand; two, it reflects a world in which elimination is the mentality, not suppression; and, thirdly—this was the point I was coming to before the soon to be former member for Northcote interrupted me and made the point—it reflects a world in which the Government thinks that confiscation of private property for no reason is acceptable. The member—

💬 Terisa Ngobi: You’re angry, eh?

Yeah, I am angry. The member who’s soon to be the former member for Ōtaki interrupts from way down the back of the House and says that I’m angry. Yeah, I am angry. I am angry. I am angry, and there’s a reason I’m angry, because, unlike that member, I have visited the people in Auckland, who are locked down and who have been in one of the longest lockdowns in the developed world, and I’m angry because I stare at a Government—an arrogant Government—that pretends that the developed world’s slowest vaccine roll-out is acceptable and, frankly, it’s not.

This Government is overseeing a public policy disaster of epic proportions, and it’s not good enough for the Government to say, “Oh well, Mr Bishop’s angry.” Yeah, I am angry. This side’s angry. We are angry, and I’ll tell you what: if the Prime Minister were to visit Auckland and not just go to a manufacturer that never had to close, but if the Prime Minister walked down Ponsonby Road and went into the Longroom or went down to the Viaduct or went over to Takapuna, like I did on Sunday, she would discover anger and despair and venom, because people are furious. They have mortgaged their livelihoods just to get by, and they stare at a Government that has overseen the developed world’s slowest vaccine roll-out, that was slow to order boosters, and now they’re slow on vaccine certificates. The reason why Auckland remains the “Auckland Prison” is because of this Government’s incompetence.

Let me talk about MIQ, because this bill is littered with the re-erection—in fact, the reinforcement—of the MIQ regime. Here are the facts. There are 4,000 people isolating at home right now in the North Island: 2,000 of them have COVID and the rest of them are close contacts. These are the numbers. There are 35 people in MIQ with COVID: 4,000 of them are in the community and three people have died in home isolation—at home—and yet this Government oversees a regime in which, when fully vaccinated travellers with no COVID arrive in New Zealand, do they go into home isolation? No, they go into MIQ.

So we have this perverse system where, if you come in without COVID, you take up a space in MIQ with the doctors and with the nurses and with the public health protection, and if you do have COVID and you need that support and you need the testing and you need the support of the nurses and the doctors, you’re stuck at home. “Good luck to you,” says the Government. “Don’t go into MIQ. We’re reserving the MIQ space for fully vaccinated people without COVID.” How ludicrous is that? How bizarre, how perverse is that scenario? Fully vaccinated, no COVID: “Good luck in your 14 days”—or now seven, but—“your seven days plus your three in MIQ.” But if you’ve got COVID: “Good luck in the community.”

It is bizarre and it doesn’t make any sense, and it’s not lined up with the science, because Professor Michael Baker, who’s the architect of the elimination strategy—he agrees with us. He says that it doesn’t make any sense and that those spaces would be better used for people who actually have COVID. We need to end MIQ right now, end the lottery of human misery and allow fully vaccinated Kiwis to come home.

Finally, on private sector testing capability, the Minister says very blandly, “Well, yeah, the bill allows us to requisition private sector capability and make use of all the capacity.” Here’s an idea: don’t just give yourself the power as a Government to steal their property. Why don’t you just negotiate and contract, which is what most normal Governments do? You’ve got a contract with Asia Pacific Healthcare Group for nasal PCR testing. Do the same thing with Rako Science and the other testing providers. Rako can do 10,000 tests a day. I got one on the weekend. It took nine hours.

Here’s a point: while Aucklanders were waiting 10 hours to even get a test at the start of this most recent outbreak, Rako Science was saying to the Government, “We’re prepared to help.”, and the ministry told them, “Sod off. Don’t requisition your testing capacity. We don’t want you.” What a disgrace—just like this bill and just like this Government.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. So, since the bill was passed in May last year, the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act has provided the framework for reducing the spread of COVID-19 in the community. But, moving forward, it’s going to be important that we have the flexibility that we can adapt our approach, and what this bill does is allow us to do that. But what I’d like to do is just talk to a couple of the changes that we’ve made as a select committee, because we did receive some feedback and we have made some recommendations about changes to the bill. I think, as already spoken about, what the bill did was significantly increase the maximum infringement fees for those breaching orders, and, basically, they rose from $300, which wasn’t seen as particularly a disincentive, up to $4,000 for individuals, and $12,000 for other persons.

But what the bill also allows for is, what the Minister has referred to as, a sliding scale. It’s, basically, regulations to be made which allow different penalties for different infringement offences, because it was never actually intended that that maximum level for the fee would apply to all offences, but to only those that cause the maximum amount of harm in the community. But what we heard were some concerns that, basically, what that high level of fees might do is entrench some inequities that were currently in the justice system. So what we’ve done as a committee is looked at some extra protections that we could put in place. One of them is making sure that the Minister recommends the regulations be made, but also to specify in the bill some of those things that the Minister might need to do to consider before doing so. One of them is to make sure the Minister considers the severity and impact of those breaches, but also, basically, thinking about the appropriateness of the penalties for some of those particular groups that might be impacted—and then, finally, also thinking about what comparable offences there might be when you’re looking at other legislation. So it’s really important to have those protections there.

We’ve also added some changes that would, basically, make it quite clear around the use of contact tracing information and that it shouldn’t be used for other purposes than what it was intended for, which is a public health response. We’ve recommended some penalties in that area. But this is, really, an important bill that allows us to have that flexibility and to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in the community. I commend this bill to the House.

I rise on behalf of National as the MP for North Shore to talk on the COVID-19 Public Health Response Amendment Bill (No 2), second reading. Obviously, as we’ve heard just before from my colleague Christopher Bishop, National opposes this bill. I was part of the select committee team that has reviewed this bill, and what is clear is that this bill deals with the past and not the future. As a member of the select committee, along with my colleague Penny Simmonds as well, and I acknowledge the other members of the committee from the other side of the House and the chair, we went through a number of aspects of this bill. National also, obviously, opposed the bill and provided a minority report, which outlined the key reasons why we felt that this bill was simply unnecessary. I’ll cover that in a little bit of detail in my speech.

I want to go back a little bit in terms of time, in terms of when this bill was presented, and that was on 21 September. I must say, a lot has changed in the way in which COVID is being managed within our communities across this country since this date. That is the reality of dealing with COVID. It is no surprise. We simply need to look overseas for the way in which this disease is changing and this virus is being managed. But the way in which this bill is being drafted is a bill that is drafted in a world that was in that past. A huge amount of things, significant aspects, in terms of the way in which we are managing this and the way in which we will manage this going forward, are not reflected in this bill.

That is a great shame, because, as my colleague Christopher Bishop mentioned, in terms of the impact of this bill, this bill impacts our communities, and it is a grave shame that we are going to be pushing through some legislation that does not actually put a positive aspect in terms of what we could be doing at the moment—seizing the opportunity that we have in front of us.

The key aspect that has changed, obviously, since 21 September, is the introduction of, obviously, the traffic light system, which wasn’t envisaged previously. I think that in itself has created a huge amount of confusion in terms of whether it’s red, yellow, or green, or just flashing orange all the time. The fundamental changes around managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ)—we heard the Minister, you know, just quite flippantly, I think, refer to the fact that MIQ is potentially going to be changed in the future. But, I think, 99.9 percent of Kiwis would look at the MIQ system for travellers that are coming in from overseas, that are double-vaccinated, that tested negative on departure—99.9 percent of sensible people would look at that and go, “Why the hell are we doing MIQ for those individuals?” There is not any logic to that, and that is the frustration that is built into this bill and across a number of areas. I must say, as part of the process which we are going through, it is hugely frustrating to see a Government that is out of touch with the people. I want to cover a little bit more around that.

National opposes this bill for two specific reasons. One is in regards to clause 7 of the bill, and the introduction of new section 11, which relates to the COVID orders being able to be applied and require owners of businesses, and in particular laboratories, to, in effect, provide their services under Government directions. It also includes, in effect, the ability for the Government to nationalise, in effect, private businesses. And what we heard from the Minister before is that the circumstances in which these rules would ever be envisaged to be deployed are in extreme or severe circumstances. Well, I’m sorry, the purpose of this House is not to simply introduce legislation for that one-in-a-thousand-day event that we may or may not see. It is actually to try and restrain the amount of legislation that we are putting in place, that allows our communities to get on and live their lives.

We seem to forget that for 91 days, members of our communities in Auckland, and until recently the Waikato, have been in lockdown. I recognise that the impact of that lockdown is much wider than Auckland and the Waikato. It impacts people in the Coromandel. It impacts people in Selwyn, in the Bay of Plenty, in Whangārei, around this country and here in Wellington as well. But this Government has simply ignored that fact in this bill, and what we are now paying for is the consequences of that inaction.

I am worried about the mental health of our business owners across our country but particularly in my electorate of the North Shore. On Sunday afternoon, we met with numbers of hospitality business owners. And I hear the member from Northcote laughing across the other side. He has the audacity to laugh about such a serious topic. But members of that community, the hospitality community—hairdressers and hair salons—who have not had income for 91 days are paying the price of this Government’s inaction.

This bill provides those people with no certainty. This bill provides those businesses with no hope. This bill provides those businesses, those real people, those human beings that are living in our biggest cities with families, with children, with obligations around mortgages, with financial commitments, with anxiety and stress that is growing and growing by the day, with no plan to move forward. That is the great irony and sadness about this bill. It fails to address the reality of what we face in the future, and it simply deals with a past that we are no longer part of.

The other aspect of this bill that I wanted to raise is in regards to the MIQ facility, and I referred before to clause 22 of this bill in particular. We talked about the fact that the bill refers to changes in terms of MIQ and other aspects. The MIQ system for those international travellers that are double-vaccinated, that have a negative test, should be abolished today. It has no place in this country. And, as we’ve heard, 4,000 people are isolating at home at the moment—2,000 of those with COVID, and only 35 have actually got COVID. What an absolute wasted opportunity. This Fortress New Zealand that we have—this bill simply reinforces that fortress at a time when we should be starting to dismantle this fortress and get on with our lives and get back to normal. Why is that important? Because it is important for our communities to be able to move on, to have a sense of hope, and that is what’s missing again from this bill.

I want to refer also to clause 23 of the bill, which puts in place regulations for the Minister to set infringements. We had a lot of discussion in select committee around this point. Why are we trying to introduce more infringements, more fines, that may be appropriate in a highly restrictive environment, but, again, that is in the past; it is not the future. We are starting to relax those environments, relax some of those restrictions. Heck, the Minister and the Prime Minister can’t even articulate when Aucklanders can actually get out of the city, when I can get down to the Waikato and see my mother and father, who I haven’t seen for 91 days; my grandchildren to see their grandparents. There will be stories across this country and across Auckland of that, and that is real. The border element is completely unnecessary in regards to that, and the element around infringements, which have been increased in that, is a stick-stick-stick approach, which works well in the past but not in the future.

I want to finish off by just acknowledging those members of my community in hospitality, and here and the businesses that have had no income. We in this House are thinking of you at the moment, and we are doing our damnedest to support and get you out of where you are and to where you need to be, and that’s back into business. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. As a member of the Health Committee, we considered several issues in relation to this bill, and I think there’s two points that are worth highlighting.

The first point is the bill increases the maximum penalties that can be imposed for a breach, and I think it is worth highlighting, because I don’t think that we can overestimate that a breach of a COVID-19 order can cause huge harm and put all of our hard work at risk. And, to date, despite some of the protestations across the room, we have had one of the most successful responses to COVID-19 in the world by whichever metric you choose to define that—certainly, by mortality rates, certainly by the low number of cases, let alone the buoyant economy, and let alone the low unemployment rate, and they all prove this. So there should be significant infringement fees and fines for those willing to purposely or repeatedly breach those very measures that enable our success.

Secondly, the issue is about suitable precaution and preparedness. Should we face a severe outbreak, and a significant resurgence of the virus, one that threatens to overwhelm our public resources, then, I’m sorry, it is all hands to the pump and people very rightly expect the Government to do everything possible to keep them safe, as we’ve done to date. This bill allows the Government to use all of our testing, diagnostic testing capacity, by, yes, requisitioning some consumables, or, yes, requiring that private testing labs focus solely on COVID testing, bearing in mind that the bill also provides for suitable compensation and payment for service. Furthermore, these particular orders, as the Minister said, are not routinely used, and the threshold is incredibly high. It’s for very serious risk for a limited time. People do expect that we’re prepared if we need to be, and testing remains one of our most important tools. I commend this bill to the House.

Kia ora. I rise on behalf of the Greens to support his bill, the COVID-19 Public Health Response Amendment Bill (No 2). We initially only supported it to select committee because of the concerns we had about the infringement fees and that system. And so, as a member of the Health Committee, we were fine with the place that we got to with it. I agree that I hope that we do not need to use them for much longer, and we are strong proponents of restorative practices and other ways of dealing with people not wanting to take part in a certain thing and behave in a certain way. We believe in incentives and calling to peoples’ best values and interests.

I wanted to speak briefly about the importance of a framework: that we have to balance between what we dealt with just prior to this, which is a whole lot of orders and details which have already occurred, already in effect, and we are retrospectively approving them, to being flexible enough to change with what’s happening, because it’s moving so, so fast. We look at the things that are written here now and we’ve moved so far beyond some of it. That framework needs to allow that agility while still holding our Government to account in this place here.

So, for managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ), we absolutely understand the frustration. I have so many family members trying to get home who’ve had tickets, who’ve had bookings, and then they get cancelled. So that lack of surety—and this bill covers people’s behaviour in that place. We’re suggesting that all those things that lead into why people behave in a certain way also need to be taken into account. We support more recent decisions to make that stay shorter. I believe that alone will improve the morale of people inside MIQ facilities no end. We very much want to get to the point where people who are fully vaccinated and have negative tests can go home as soon as possible, and all of our whānau—all of the New Zealanders who are wanting to come here—should be able to do so.

We see that this law also allows the Minister the discretion to prioritise between different classes of people coming in. This now, surely, is the opportunity to reunite split families. For a very, very long time, we’ve had people coming to us and saying, “What is the rationale? We cannot understand why this is still happening.” And so we want to make sure, if the Minister is going to prioritise that, to unite split families, and we want to advocate for the health and education workers who have been approved to come here and are still waiting to get a place. Our hospital and our health system was already overloaded before COVID hit us, and with all of the gaps and vacancies now that are going to happen across many sectors because of people refusing the mandate to get vaccinated. So we want to make sure that, as soon as we can, we can get our people home and we can create spaces for the people that we need to come and work here.

We’re very happy to see the delegation of our roading enforcement powers that’s going to allow Māori wardens and other iwi representatives to have roles in helping protect their community. In the Tai Rāwhiti and, I’m sure, many others areas where there are low vaccination rates, we are really, really worried about the commitment that Aucklanders can all travel by Christmas. We’re worried that many people will slip through, and they’re all coming to the holiday destinations—the Tai Rāwhiti amongst them. So we see that this allows for us to have iwi checkpoints, which the Greens have always supported, and the right of whānau to protect their members while our vaccinations continue to rise, albeit slowly.

And the last thing is we did have the opportunity to talk about these penalties, and we will always go for lower penalties, greater incentives. This was discussed at length. We did bring in the officials and sent them away a few times to get more information for us, but we did agree in the end that where we got to was workable. We are concerned. We will be watching for any profiling that happens, because, in other parts of our justice system where there are fines, penalties, convictions, Māori are disproportionately affected by that. So we will absolutely be keeping a watch on that in this case. But, nō reira, we commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of ACT in opposition to this COVID-19 Public Health Response Amendment Bill (No 2). This bill is a really sad day for the evolution of New Zealand’s COVID-19 response. It has to be seen in that wider context. Let me give you a Cook’s tour of how we got here, where we need to go, and where this bill is taking us.

No country had greater natural advantages in dealing with a pandemic than New Zealand. You don’t have to take my word for it. I’ve asked the Minister for COVID-19 Response to name a country that had more advantages than New Zealand, and he couldn’t think of one. If he can’t think of one, then I don’t think anyone can, because no country has New Zealand’s combination of isolation, of low population density, a young population, a population that has high social capital, where, if the Prime Minister says, “Oh look, it’s pretty bad; just go home for seven weeks, put a teddy bear in your window, and we’ll call you.”, people actually do it. Now, you try doing that in France or Italy! We have a country that is wealthy compared with most countries. Our country was prepared and in a better place to respond to COVID than any other country, and we were the 63rd country to get a case; so we actually had time to prepare. But even then, the Government didn’t.

Let me take you back to the days of 21 March, 23 March, and 25 March of 2020. Those were the days that the Government announced the alert level system—1, 2, 3, 4—put New Zealand on Monday the 21st into alert level 3 and on Wednesday put New Zealand into alert level 4. And in those days, when the rest of the country was already dealing with it, and we’d been lucky so far, this Government said, “We think we have to flatten the curve.” Even the elimination strategy was not deliberate; they actually stumbled into it. A few weeks in, the Prime Minister thought, “Oh, I think we could completely eradicate it.”, and we did. And we, as a country, enjoyed a long summer, both metaphorically and literally, with very little COVID, afforded by our ocean fortress, with the Tasman, the Southern, and the Pacific Oceans protecting us from COVID. Three times we managed to beat back outbreaks, in August, in February, and again later in 2021. We managed to have an outbreak and eradicate it, and that was a good thing, helped by our natural advantages.

But the Government, at that point, like a lot of people who are lucky, started to think it must be all us and they got a bit complacent. They didn’t increase the number of ICU beds. They didn’t think, “Gee, we should order some of those vaccines everyone else is ordering.” And, when they did order them, they didn’t think, “Hmm, everybody’s got a QR code scanning app on their phone. Maybe there should be a QR code in the vaccine booths so that people can make an electronic record that might come in handy a bit later if we want vaccine certificates.” They didn’t think of any of those sorts of things, and suddenly something else came along: Delta. And, when we were hit by Delta, the Government was helter-skelter. They did not make the preparations for this new paradigm.

The Prime Minister, in question time today, was saying, “We don’t have Alpha anymore; we have Delta.” It was like she was shell-shocked, like she’d just figured it out now. I mean, it was quite extraordinary. I think it takes a while for things to sink in with our Prime Minister. That is the sad truth, charismatic as she may be. The problem was that the Government got a bit complacent and they thought they were going to hit a perfect home run. Here’s what they thought, and I know this to be true because I had a special briefing from the Minister for COVID-19 with my good friend and colleague Chris Bishop, and Ayesha Verrall, who I really like because she’s very honest and probably shouldn’t be in politics, said in that briefing, “Doesn’t matter. We’re going to have the vaccine.”

💬 Chris Bishop: Yeah.

You see, this Government thought—oh, and the great thing is, I say to Chris Bishop, the Prime Minister offered me another briefing. So I went along to Chris’s briefing, and I think that I should take him along to the briefing the Prime Minister’s promised me. So we’re looking forward to that new briefing. But, nevertheless, I digress. You see, they thought they were going to hit this home run. The vaccine was going to give population immunity and the managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) would keep the virus out, so we would be able to go all the way through with no problems, and the Labour Government, with the Midas touch, would sail through and say, “We had almost no outbreak, almost no deaths, almost no impact. It was all good.”

But, unfortunately, two things went wrong. One was the Delta variant that broke through MIQ. And the second was the vaccines weren’t quite perfect. Now, Madam Speaker, I know you probably read ACT’s COVID 2.0 paper back in March that said there are mega trends driving this pandemic now. One is vaccines, the other is variants, and the other ones were technologies and fatigue. Well, hasn’t come true. We have a problem now where the variant meant Delta got through the border and the vaccines haven’t been done in time, and we don’t have the vaccine passports; so we’re actually stuck, unable to move to the traffic light system, and New Zealanders are now paying and paying and paying.

I could give you story after story, having visited Auckland a couple of weeks ago and walked around and visited real shops—not staged photo ops like the Prime Minister—just walking up to people and saying, “How are you going?” and hearing what real people had to say. I heard, for example, someone who was an accountant, and he said, “I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but I’ve got a hairdresser who, on my books at the start of this outbreak on the 18th of August, had 100 grand in the bank, cash, ready to handle anything. Now they’re in debt. They’ve burnt all their cash reserves, keeping their staff in some level of wages, and paying their rent and their insurance and their bills. And now they are broke and they don’t even know when they’re going to be able to open.” That’s the effect of a Government that just was not prepared to deal with Delta.

Along comes this bill, and this bill—here’s what it could do. It could be saying that COVID is going to be endemic, everyone in New Zealand will get it, and the question is how safely we transition, how able we are to protect lives, how long it takes, and how much costs we stack on to Government and business and future taxpayers in the meantime. Those are the only things that matter. This bill could be taking us on a pathway to get vaccination rates up in those final few percentage points with incentives and partnerships. It could be about using new technology. But it’s not about any of that. It is about reinforcing the command and control approach of locking down and locking out—party like it’s March 2020. That’s where this Government’s mind-set is still at.

We heard from the Minister—I mean, one of the most extraordinary things in this bill is that it, basically, allows the Government to take people’s property if they are a testing lab. It’s a little bit like, if you wanted there to be lots of generators—I heard Eric Crampton say—if you wanted lots of generators in your community in case there was a power cut, imagine if the Government passed a law saying: if there is a power cut, we’ll confiscate your generator. What’s that going to do to investment in generators? What do you think it’s going to do to people investing in lab technology in New Zealand if you live in a country where the Government can just take it?

And the Minister—I mean, one of the Labour members—I sometimes find they’re interchangeable. But one of them said, “Look, there’s compensation.” Well, it says compensation at the market rate. What’s the market rate, Shanan Halbert, in the middle of a crisis? How do you set that market rate? Oh, and once that rate’s been set, there’s no court of appeal. Now, I think Shanan Halbert is a lawyer, I think. Now, he should surely know that usually you’re allowed to appeal. This legislation means you can’t appeal beyond the District Court. Taking that property is totally outrageous, and the Government says it’s because testing is so important. Well, here’s the question: if I’m in New South Wales, I can go to the pharmacy and buy a rapid antigen test; I can’t do that here, and yet this Government says testing is so important. This bill could be legalising rapid antigen testing for everybody, but it’s not.

Sadly, we have a Government that is stuck in 2020, lets people pay and pay, putting forward legislation that kicks the can down the road while people keep suffering. That’s why ACT cannot support this bill. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Sarah Pallett.

💬 David Seymour: Oh, this’ll be good

I’m glad you’re looking forward to it, Mr Seymour! Thank you, Madam Speaker. I was going to rise and go through the finer points of one of the amendments that the select committee had suggested, but I thought, before I did, it would be a really good idea to a little teeny bit of the “why?”, because I think, when you’re looking at legislation, why you’re doing it in the first place is a really good idea.

So what I think is that any Government’s primary responsibility is to keep their people safe. That’s their primary job, is to maybe stop them dying. So let’s look at the facts: in the UK, 165,534 people have died with COVID-19 as the cause of death. If we do a little bit of basic maths and adjusting for population that would mean 12,353 New Zealanders would have COVID-19 on their death certificate as a cause of death. Now, the 35 that we’ve lost is a complete tragedy, and I’m never ever going to minimise the effect on their whānau or of the people who love them.

And, Mr Watts, I’m sorry to hear that you haven’t been able to see your family for 91 days; it’s very sad, and I appreciate that the sacrifice is really huge. I haven’t seen my dad for two years, and it’s going to be some time before I do; so I really do understand the frustrations—I understand the frustrations. My heart goes out to those businesses who’ve been affected. But those 12,300 people, those are the reason, they are the reason why this Government has been taking the action it has, and why it has been so successful, and I’m proud to stand here today in support of this bill and commend it to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Pleasure to take a split call on this bill, which, fundamentally, in the legislative statement, says this bill amends the COVID-19 Act to incorporate what has been learned about the COVID-19 pandemic to date. I want to talk about what hasn’t been learned. We have not been a learning enterprise during this whole COVID-19 response.

I want to start with the Government’s own independent Roche report on 1 June, where they asked independent advisers to advise—and remember COVID Part II hadn’t arrived yet; Delta hadn’t arrived—and here’s what they were told. They were told that the classification system that says “close contact” and “close contact plus”, and “casual contact” and “casual contact plus” was far too complex; it needed to change—immediately was the time frame—to close and casual. Did that happen? Has it happened? No, it has not. In fact, what happened was another category was created called “high risk”. So it completely ignored the recommendations from the independent committee.

They were told that ARPHS—Auckland Regional Public Health Service—which is the responsible body for managing the COVID-19 response in Auckland, needed to increase by 25 FTEs within three months’ time. They were even told what sort of classifications were required, what sort of job descriptions. What I can tell from written questions to the Minister is clearly that did not happen before the 17 August outbreak was announced. They were understaffed, so understaffed that, if I look at the action report—so the outbreak started on 17 August—if I look at the action report No. 3, which is 3 September, it talks here about the welfare of staff. So this is 18 days into the current outbreak. Here’s what it says under “Welfare”: “Monitor staff wellbeing—ARPHS response staff are tired and stressed from the demands of dealing with COVID-affected cases and contacts. (Many are in a distressed state.)” That’s only 18 days into this outbreak. So I inquired a bit further of that with the Minister and asked him, in a written parliamentary question that I got back last week, “Is it correct that in the action report for 3 September 2021, less than 20 days into the current coronavirus outbreak, it is reported that many ARPHS staff are ‘in a distressed state’?”—“No, the phrase was referring to COVID-19 - affected cases and their contacts.”

You’ve got to be joking; you have to be joking. Let me just read that again from the action report 3 September, subsection “Welfare”: “Monitor staff wellbeing—ARPHS response staff are tired and stressed from the demands of dealing with COVID-affected cases and contacts. (Many are in a distressed state.)” To the Minister, “Were staff in a distressed state?”—no, they were talking about affected cases and contacts! That’s just not possible. What happened here was ARPHS were undermanned. They did not listen to the Roche report, 1 June. They did not take on the 25 full-time equivalents as they were requested to do within three months. A shout out to the really difficult work that ARPHS is doing. They were also told to build the infrastructure. This is clearly a story around ICU infrastructure for another time because there are other things we can talk to in this bill, which I do want to talk to.

This bill talks to laboratory testing, and we’ve already mentioned the abysmal case of saliva testing, and I have a real concern that rapid antigen testing is going the same way. But I want to talk to the laboratory tests for the two Northland women who started off the Northland outbreak. What I don’t understand is why the results were lost for 48 hours. For 48 hours, their lab tests disappeared from the laboratory system. What happened here? I asked the Minister and asked him to explain that and said, “Can you tell me what happened to those test results for those two women who first came into Northland?” He said, “I’m advised both cases were tested in the late evening on 20 October.” No, they weren’t. It was before lunchtime on 20 October—20 October was a Wednesday. The Minister is saying they were tested late on the Wednesday. No, they weren’t. I’ve got the date timestamp from the machine. At 11:58 that day, the lab tests were in the laboratory—not just being picked up; in the laboratory—and they disappeared for two days.

Now, maybe it’s just two days in Northland? No, it’s not. Because, on the Friday, they were able to do a lab test within 90 minutes. What happened to those two women’s lab tests for those two days? The lab machine has caught you out. The date timestamp has caught out the Minister. We need to know the truth. There needs to be sunlight on what is happening with laboratory testing in Northland, and you’ve been caught out with these two women. It’s another story for another time.

Before I call the next speaker, could he clarify whether he is seeking the call that the Māori Party didn’t take or whether he is seeking his 10-minute call.

💬 Tangi Utikere: My 10-minute call, Madam Speaker.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Thank you. I call Tangi Utikere.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Kia orana. I rise, as a member of the Health Committee, to speak in support of this bill. I want to reflect on the contribution of my colleague Sarah Pallett, because I think she put it rather succinctly and ideally spot on, and that is: what is the purpose of this bill? Fundamentally, when the Minister and when the Director-General of Health is looking to make orders, exercise discretion under the legislation, they are doing that in order to keep the community safe, to keep our community safe. And, fundamentally, that’s what this bill is about.

The select committee spent some time looking at this bill, and there are a number of changes that have been selected, and aspects of clarity as well. One is around the restrictions on the movement of people in managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) facilities and ensuring that what is captured there in new section 11, set out in clause 7, includes those in self-isolation; so it widens the definition. Another, when we look at the select committee report, is around the level of support available for those in self-isolation opportunities, because, while this bill provides an opportunity for an internal complaints process for those in MIQ, there is a different approach for those that are in self-isolation situations. So you’ll see, in the select committee’s report to the House, that there is an expectation that there would be timely responses for those who perhaps have a complaint to make, to ensure that that is considered in a timely fashion.

The other aspect that I want to briefly touch on is around clause 12, and it’s extending the power to stop motor vehicles and people at checkpoints and roadblocks. I just want to acknowledge the good work that our Māori wardens and our Pasifika wardens do in our community, because they are mentioned specifically in the bill. We’ve all had our experience in a positive light in that sense even more recently, and so it’s good to see and to hear at the select committee that there is a level of training so that there’s comfort there. So I’m delighted to be able to commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise to speak in opposition to the COVID-19 Public Health Response Amendment Bill (No 2) at the second reading.

The Health Committee, which I am a member of, heard a number of submissions in a very short space of time over the consultation period for this amendment bill. We heard a number of people speak very pessimistically about the signals given with the extension of the expiry date of the Act by a year, from May 2022 out to May 2023. The concerns that lockdowns, managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ), alert levels, etc. might extend through to May 2023 were certainly a very sobering thought for many. We also heard concerns about the strengthening of the infringement regime. We heard worries that the significant increases might impact on those who could least afford it. And we also heard concerns about the enforcement of stopping vehicles at checkpoints and how that might also continue on to 2023.

National opposes this bill not only because of the things that were brought up in the submissions but also because, fundamentally, this bill is already out of date. It was out of date in September, when it was referred to the Health Committee. All throughout the bill was talk of the elimination strategy, which by that time was clearly out of date. Further matters that have come in since that time in terms of a new traffic-light system, changes in MIQ, and, hopefully, more fundamental changes than are in at the moment, a vaccine certificate regime—none of these things are being accounted for in the elimination strategy and in this amendment bill. What it shows is that this Government did not use the advantages that this country had in preparing for Delta and moving into this suppression phase. So the bill was written around a world in which elimination was the aim of the Government. We’ve been left scrambling in this country over the last few months, with rushed announcements, announcements about announcements, changes of systems, and general confusion for all involved.

The bill’s been predicated on a situation where we have to have highly restrictive border settings continuing through into the foreseeable future, all at a time when countries all across the world are opening up their borders. We only need to look across the Ditch at Australia and see opening up not only to Australians coming home but to international students who are able to come in without MIQ, if they are fully vaccinated. In the meantime, we are still looking at MIQ where our fully vaccinated returning New Zealanders are having to go into isolation, while out in the community those with COVID are at home isolating. National believes that we should now be looking at legislation which dismantles MIQ for fully vaccinated travellers. We should be looking at pulling down the borders, not legislation that is continuing on an outdated time in this COVID recovery.

We heard submissions particularly around clause 7, which enables COVID-19 orders—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Order! [Member in the Chamber not socially distancing] Thank you.

Sorry, Madam Speaker.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Penny Simmonds.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. We heard a considerable number of submissions around clause 7, which allows COVID-19 orders to be made which requisition testing consumables and resources from private labs. We also heard the situation in Australia, where, right from the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, there were private and public partnership meetings to ensure that the Government knew about the inventory that was held right across both public and private laboratories, they knew when there would be pinch points identified for resources, and they knew what alternatives could be considered for testing. But in New Zealand, that didn’t happen. So we didn’t have that sharing of information, that private-public partnership sharing, right from the start, and so now we see a clause which will enable the Government to take that testing equipment when they need it from private laboratories.

We also need to look at the Auckland situation and understand that the Auckland situation is entirely due to this Government’s handling of the pandemic over the last year. The slow vaccination roll-out and the slow process to get vaccination certificates are fairly and squarely in the hands of this Government. It must be heartbreaking for Auckland businesses and Auckland individuals to know that they are in this situation because this Government did not do its job. People are sick of it and they are angry.

I have heard people up and down the country—

💬 Hon Member: Ha, ha!

—and I see the member across the aisle laughing, and I suspect that there are many people in Auckland who find that incredibly disrespectful. People are angry because they are sick and tired of this Government telling them what to do, telling them that they can’t run their businesses, telling them that they can’t move out of their regions, when this Government didn’t do what it should have done, when this Government did not do its own job, but instead they want to tell other people how to do theirs.

I can understand why this Government doesn’t see the issues for businesses. They haven’t run businesses. They don’t know how difficult it is to deal with cash flow. They don’t know how difficult it is to pay wage bills or meet tax bills. And they simply don’t care. They sit across the other side and laugh when we bring that up. It is an insult to those people in Auckland who are risking and losing so much. We have heard of businesses where they have put all their reserves into trying to keep their businesses going, and they still know nothing about when they are going to be able to open. I hesitate to talk about businesses in the South, but I do it in the context of saying that even at level 2, hospitality and tourism businesses are struggling to make ends meet. So I fear for Auckland businesses that they are hoping they will get an incredible bump when they finally can start operating, but if it’s anything like what we have seen, it will be a very slow and hard crawl out of their situation.

I also want to touch on the lost health opportunities, or the costs to our other health services: the tens of thousands of operations that have been cancelled; the undiagnosed cancer that is still there, it just hasn’t been diagnosed yet. I think about our head of obstetrics at Invercargill hospital, and the ridiculous situation we were in with that person who was so critical to our maternity care in Southland, three times having to try to get his MIQ places to get back. The costs across our health sector—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): The member’s time has expired.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Sadly, can I open this week by saying there is nothing worse in this House than being “Invercargill-splained” by the member Penny Simmonds, or, in the first speech of the day from the Opposition, being “Bish-splained”, when we stand here, and I stand here this afternoon as an Aucklander and somebody that has sat in lockdown since 17 August. Can I acknowledge every other Aucklander that is in this House this afternoon.

What’s worse is that my fellow member from the North Shore, Simon Watts, also criticises this Government’s effort but has failed over those three months to even lift a finger to help lift vaccination rates on the North Shore, and lift testing rates. These are the things that a local MP does in order to help the efforts. This bill—[Interruption]

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Order! We’ll just calm things down a bit.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Speaking calmly, this bill is a public health response, and what we’ve forgotten in this discussion this afternoon is that in Auckland, for those of us who have been locked down since 17 August, there have been 6,000 cases of COVID-19. Can I remind the House that on 17 August, we had something called the Birkdale cluster. It all started with the Birkdale cluster, and we saw rapid growth of COVID-19 across Auckland’s North Shore and then out to Auckland, and particularly out to our most vulnerable communities in South Auckland. That is the reality that we have lived in.

What this bill does is adjust our laws, and our response, to ensure that the experiences that us Aucklanders have faced over the past three months—people protesting, can I remind us, laws that haven’t kept people staying home, which doesn’t support the public health effort that we’ve been trying to achieve. I’m very, very proud that we have continued to vaccinate—vaccinate, vaccinate, vaccinate; all of us. We are part of the effort to lift vaccinations as a part of Super Saturday. I didn’t see my North Shore colleagues at Super Saturday, can I just say, but now at Waitematā DHB, we are in a very, very good position—93 percent of first doses; 86 percent second doses. Without vaccination, as Aucklanders, we cannot move. I commend this bill to the House.