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).

💬 DEPUTY 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 third time.

This bill makes amendments to the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act to better support the Government’s continued response to the COVID-19 pandemic in a flexible and agile way as it continues to evolve over the coming months. The bill was developed—and it is important to acknowledge this—during a period in which COVID-19 was contained at New Zealand’s air and maritime borders, and it was expressly prepared in anticipation of a future shift away from the elimination strategy.

I’ll summarise the key provisions of the bill, but, first of all, a little bit about the Act that it amends. The COVID-19 Public Health Response Act was passed shortly after the global pandemic. The global pandemic—which still continues, I might add—began last year. It allows for the Government to make orders in order to contain, to control, and to manage the effects of the global pandemic.

The bill that we are now amending extends the term of the Act from May 2022 until May 2023. That’s not an unconditional extension. It will still need to be endorsed regularly by a majority vote in the House of Representatives, or it will expire. Again, that is important. I acknowledge, as I always have, that the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act does provide the Government with an unusual and quite comprehensive set of powers, and that is not a piece of legislation that we should have on the statute book any longer than we absolutely need to have it. So regular re-approval by Parliament is absolutely appropriate.

I do, however, consider the legislation is likely to be needed over the next 18 months or so, even as we step down our COVID-19 response—which I think everybody in the House is hoping we will be able to do—because we’ll still need some transitional measures. For example, only through this Act are we able to impose the requirement for people to have a negative pre-departure test before they travel to New Zealand, and only through this Act are we able to ensure that those coming into the country who aren’t New Zealand citizens have been fully vaccinated. For those reasons, to ensure that we still have access to those sorts of provisions, we want to continue the legislation that allows us to have those in place.

The bill broadens the purpose through which a COVID-19 order can be made, and it is for the reasons that I’ve just mentioned. We’re entering into a new phase in the pandemic.

Borders are currently limited in scope to only those that limit the risk of an outbreak or the spread of COVID-19. We’re expanding this scope so that orders can be made to prevent, contain, reduce, control, manage, eliminate, or limit the risk of outbreaks or the spread of COVID-19 for the purpose of avoiding, mitigating, or remedying the actual or potential adverse public health effects of the COVID-19 outbreak. This shift means we can move from a focus only on elimination to include a wider focus on minimisation and protection, which is the era that we’re now going into.

It’s important to ensure that the Act remains enforceable. As such, the maximum penalties associated with breaching the Act or breaching the order are being increased. It’s important to note that when this Act was first brought before the House and passed by the House, the level of penalties available in the original legislation were very low. It’s now clear that given the consequences of deliberate and wilful breaches of the order and the potential consequences that that has for the health and wellbeing of all New Zealanders, including for the New Zealand economy, it is appropriate that we increase the overall penalties that are provided for in the legislation.

The bill makes several improvements to the legal framework for managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) that helps to improve the transparency and accountability of that system. I do note that that is likely to change significantly in the next few months. The way we use MIQ is likely to change significantly, but there is still likely to be some form of MIQ. Even if it is not for everyone arriving in the country—which it is very unlikely to be in the medium to longer term—for those who are going into MIQ, either because there’s a particular public health risk that we’re trying to manage, because they are unvaccinated, because they have nowhere else to isolate, or because of some of those other, additional factors, we still need to make sure that that system is robust, and that is what this bill clarifies and allows us to continue to do.

So I want to thank the 15,000-odd submitters who engaged in the process, and members of the Health Committee for their work in considering the bill.

I do want to end where I began and note that the global pandemic is not yet over, much as we might all wish that to be the case, and I certainly look forward to the day when that is the case and I no longer have to wake up every morning wondering how many cases we’re going to deal with or what challenges the virus is going to throw at us on a given day. I’m very much looking forward to the day when COVID-19 is but a memory for all of us. We are not at that point yet, and we do still have to be prepared for the fact that there will continue to be public health impacts of the global pandemic, that it will continue to be unpredictable, and that we will continue to need to adapt and evolve. The changes proposed in this legislation allow for that.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. The National Party opposes this bill wholeheartedly. I want to start with a comment made to me by a bar owner in Auckland on Sunday, because I think it summarises accurately the feeling of a lot of people who live in Auckland right now. She said to me, “It feels like we’re collateral damage in the Prime Minister’s personal legacy project.”—it feels like we’re collateral damage in Jacinda Ardern’s personal legacy project.

Because that’s the situation Aucklanders find themselves in right now. Stuck in the Auckland prison—90 days and counting—and still no clarity as to when they can leave. Still no clarity as to when they can go and have a beer outside in a hospitality venue with their friends over Christmas. People who work in hospitality, in fact, people who work in many businesses across Auckland—and, in fact, it’s not just Auckland; it’s Canterbury and other parts of the country—look at our Government and they say, “Yup, they did pretty well last year, actually. But now we find ourselves miles behind the rest of the world and we are the damage. We are the collateral damage. We’re the people mortgaging our houses, selling our cars, dipping into our personal savings, putting money on the credit card—just to keep paying the bills, keep paying the staff that we haven’t laid off yet. Worried about summer. Worried about the start of 2022.” Worried about how they’re going to get through the next week and actually be able to pay the bills. And worried about the tax bill that’s coming, the provisional tax, in the first quarter next year.

They don’t want a lot, actually. What they want is hope. What they want is some certainty, and they want a pathway. I’ll tell you what they don’t want: they don’t want continuous platitudes from the podium. Because that’s what they get every week. And they don’t want a Government that clearly is just making it up as they go.

So what did we learn yesterday from the Government? Well, the 90 percent target doesn’t exist any more. So the thing that was the “pathway to freedom”, to use the Prime Minister’s words three weeks ago, that’s been unceremoniously dumped; no longer the target. Righty-o. Got that. On 29 November, there’ll be another announcement. Actually, yesterday we got “Cabinet will decide.”, presupposing that they will, but, you know, I assume that’s the case. On 29 November, we’ll get another announcement about something that will happen later—date unknown—when we all enter the traffic light system. So no idea of the date. No idea of exactly when this will happen. And the traffic light framework will start some time, and Auckland will go to red straight away.

Now, the thing about red is, if you’re a hospitality venue, you can have 100 people seated, even if you’re vaccinated—even if you’re vaccinated. So Auckland will start in red. So is that a step forward? I suppose, in the most marginal sense possible, it’s a step forward. But it’s hardly progress.

In every other place, totally unclear. So, Wellington? Ninety percent double vaccination, probably be higher by the time we roll around to 7 December or whenever it is. Do they enter in green? No idea. Is it orange? No idea. Is it red? I don’t know. What about the Southern DHB? Are they orange? I think they’re 87 percent double dosed—Penny Simmonds tells me I’m broadly right. Double dosed—they’ll be 90 percent double dosed by 5 December. Are they going to enter in green? I don’t know. Is it orange? I’ve got no idea.

My colleague here Nicola Grigg, the MP for Selwyn—

💬 Nicola Grigg: 100 percent.

Well, I doubt it’s 100 percent, but it wouldn’t be too far off 100 percent double dosed. Do they start in the green traffic light system? I don’t know; they probably do but let’s have some clarity. How are the good people of Selwyn or East Coast Bays or West Coast - Tasman or Invercargill—how do they make plans for December? They can’t, because they don’t know, because we’ve got no certainty about the date and no idea what system people will enter at. And so Christmas is coming down the line very quickly and people are trying to make plans and they’ve got no idea.

What’s very clear from this bill—and the Minister even accepted that the bill was drafted at a different time, when we were running on elimination strategy. What’s very clear is that the Government’s had no plan for the circumstances we find ourselves in. They literally started the plan for Delta when it turned up. It’s not just me who says that; that’s Government documents say that. There’s been articles about it. Government documents, official advice to the Minister for COVID-19 Response from the start of August saying, “We’re now starting to plan for Delta.” Well, Delta turned up in managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) in April. What were they doing for three months? What were they doing for the first six months of the year?

I’ll tell you what they were doing. They were sitting there with self-satisfied smirks on their face thinking, “Oh, we’ve nailed COVID. We eliminated it last year. We’re the best in the world, and we’re on the front cover of Time and Bloomberg and all the rest of it. Aren’t we awesome?”

Well, actually, reality caught up with them, and it turns out that that’s not the case. They started the work on the certificates in July; they only signed the contract in October. We had the world’s slowest vaccination roll-out for most of this year. Rapid tests are still banned. I can walk into a supermarket in Melbourne and buy a rapid COVID test; here I can’t and we’ve never had an explanation from the Government as to why that’s the case. They didn’t invest in ICU; they wasted the COVID response fund.

A smart Government would have taken all the borrowed money and not just spent the COVID fund on things like art therapy and three waters and food in schools and all the other things the Government spent the money on; they’d actually spend it on ICU. I mean, how is it the case, 18 months after the pandemic started, we have fewer ICU beds now than we did in April 2020? How is that the case? Literally, when you explain it to people, it’s impossible to explain or understand. Eighteen months after the pandemic, we have fewer ICU beds now than we did in April 2020—fewer. It’s just ridiculous.

This bill is a disgrace, and in the time I’ve got remaining I want to comment on three things. Firstly, it’s ridiculous and obnoxious. The first bit is the ridiculous bit. The ridiculous bit: new section 32T requires a person liable for the cost of managed isolation to provide contact details. Well, that sounds reasonable. Hang on a minute—why has there not been a power before now for people who go to MIQ to provide their contact details? Government doesn’t like to mention this, but they’re quietly slipping this through, and here’s a clue. Now we know why $36 million is owed to taxpayers through MIQ before March this year. Fourteen thousand people haven’t been invoiced yet. Seven thousand people, they don’t know if they have to pay, and, if they do have to pay, how much they have to pay—7,000 people—because the Government didn’t pass a law to collect the contact details.

Obnoxious point of this bill: MIQ. It’s a lottery of human misery. It is not kind or compassionate or fair; it is cruel, inequitable, and callous. Greg Murphy couldn’t go over to Bathurst because of MIQ. Today, we learnt the news of the New Zealand Under-19 men’s cricket team can’t go to the Under-19 Cricket World Cup in 2022. They are just the high profile examples of the misery that this stupid system causes. Five thousand people isolating in Auckland right now with COVID, or close contacts. Five thousand people. New record. Thirty-four people in MIQ with COVID.

Here’s how stupid the situation is. If you test positive in Auckland, for the most part, you isolate at home. You don’t go to MIQ where there are nurses and doctors and regular tests. If you’re fully vaccinated with no COVID you don’t go home, where you could look after yourself, you take up the space in MIQ that should be being occupied by someone with COVID. How perverse is that? How bizarre is that situation? It’s not just me who says this; Michael Baker says it, Lucy Barnard says it, and Nick Wilson says it. It’s ridiculous. Fully vaccinated Kiwis should have freedom returned to them under the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. The team of 5 million is not just a team of 5 million; it’s a team of 6 million.

And finally, the other obnoxious part of this bill is the Rako Science confiscation provision, because that’s what I call it. Rako Science came to the MOH—the Ministry of Health—at the start of the most recent outbreak and said, “We can do 10,000 tests a day. You’ve got people lining up for 10 to 12 hours at a time; we can do 10,000 tests a day. Let us at them.” You know what the Government said to them? They gave them the middle finger. They said, “No, no, we don’t need your help. We’ve got it under control, thanks.” Well, people lined up for 12 hours and gave up being tested. At the start of the most recent outbreak, the Government said to Rako Science, “We don’t want your help.”, and now what are they going to do? They’re going to give themselves the power to steal their property instead.

💬 Hon Member: Disgusting.

This is disgusting. It is abhorrent. It is an obnoxious piece of legislation, and we oppose it.

Order!

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Speaking of ridiculous and obnoxious, I love the fact that Chris Bishop and I can hear the same information in select committee, via officials, and he manages to come up with a whole other spin on it, but never mind!

This bill makes amendments to the COVID Public Health Response Act to allow the Government to simply continue to improve its response to this pandemic, as things evolve, because they do over time, and as we move more and more closely towards what needs to be a careful reopening, one that’s been afforded to us, one that we’ve actually all earned, because of our world-leading response to this global pandemic—whereas it’s just been described as some sort of legacy project. And, as far as I can see, of all the legacy projects that you might like to choose in this world, keeping our mortality rates as low as they have been and our economy as healthy as it is is a pretty damned good one. There should be a significant infringement fee and fine in place for people who are willing to purposefully and repeatedly jeopardise our safety and breach these orders.

This bill also takes seriously the need for contingency planning. Should we face a severe outbreak, one that actually threatens to overwhelm our public resources, the bill allows for the Government to make the most of—to harness—the testing capacity that we have in this country by allowing those labs to simply pitch in and focus on COVID testing, and also it allows for suitable compensation for those services. It’s temporary, it’s worst-case scenario, but testing remains one of our most important tools, and it’s too important to not make these very serious but very necessary sort of contingency plans for.

As the Minister for COVID-19 Response said just earlier, even as the border restrictions loosen over the coming months, which they will do, managed isolation and quarantine still plays a role in our response, and particularly for those who can’t safely isolate at home. So, whether they’re entering New Zealand or whether they’ve tested positive in the community, this bill also makes changes to accommodate, so to speak, that continued reality, and on that basis I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’d just like to take a moment to respond to the member who just took her seat, Tracey McLellan, who’s praising Jacinda Ardern for her world-leading response and the fact that we have such a healthy economy. Chris Bishop and I visited, on Sunday, 25 hospo and personal service businesses in Auckland. The woman who made the comments that she did has lost everything. She’s built her business up over 25 years—a business, I should say, she wanted to leave to her staff but now is so debt ridden that nobody wants it. She was in tears telling us that she’s been robbed, that she’s been lied to, and that she will never vote for this party again. That is the legacy that this Prime Minister has left for these people who have nothing left, who’ve built these businesses over their entire lifetimes, have spent all of their savings, and have lost everything.

Now, the Prime Minister came to Auckland. She visited a business that had never shut down, then she went on a casual visit to her local cafe, which is a social enterprise that’s not even required to make money. Chris Bishop and I visited 25 businesses in a day to show what can be done when you actually care about what Auckland businesses are going through, and I can tell you the anger is palpable. They are furious because they can see that there is no plan from this Government, that they are making up things as they go along, and this bill is evidence of that, as Chris Bishop said. It was drafted at a time when we probably may still have needed managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ), but things have moved on, things have changed, and here we are embedding a system that is no longer required.

Now, to answer Mr Bishop’s question—I think it was rhetorical, but I’m going to answer it. How is it possible that we have fewer ICU beds now than we did at the beginning of the pandemic? How is that possible? Well, we can see through official Government documents that we get through information requests the answer to that question, because in a briefing to the health Minister his Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment officials, in an October briefing, say, “Planning is under way to ensure that the entire health system is in a position to support the Delta outbreak within New Zealand.”—planning is under way, in October. That’s why we don’t have more ICU beds, because we haven’t been able to bring in the ICU workers to man them. The evidence is in the documents, that this Government is incapable of planning and has been incapable of planning for this Delta outbreak.

We oppose this bill wholeheartedly, and I want to talk about MIQ, because there was an opportunity here in this bill today to move with the times. Now, the members opposite can say, till they’re blue in the face, “Well, things in the future will move and shift.” The time to move and shift is now. There are Kiwis, a million of them overseas, many of whom desperately need to come home. They’re either in an emergency situation where their visa’s run out or they’ve got health problems or they’ve got dying loved ones in New Zealand or they just want to come home and see the family they haven’t seen in three years. They’re COVID free, they’re double vaccinated. They are not the ones who should be taking up space in MIQ.

But here we have a bill that is perpetuating a system that might’ve been good a year ago but now needs to move with the times—now; not by the end of quarter one next year but now, because now we have people in Auckland, over 2,000 of them, with COVID who are alone at home. Maybe they get an email to check if they’re OK. Maybe they get contacted after a few days of being at home. Some of them are in situations that are not fit to be isolating in, in garages or cars or tents, and some of them are dying horrible deaths at home when they should be in either the hospital or an MIQ hotel being looked after by healthcare workers, by nurses and doctors. We had the ability in this bill for the MIQ system to be changed and shifted to look after those people, not to take fully vaccinated Kiwis who pose very little risk to us, even the cumulative risk that this Minister talks about—the cumulative risk we have is the outbreak in Auckland and around the rest of the country, because we’re not testing people properly, and I’ll get into that in a little bit.

But there is a totally perverse effect by having fully vaccinated people who do not have COVID sitting in a place where they could possibly receive healthcare when we need COVID-positive Kiwis in those facilities. It is an absolutely ridiculous thing that we are passing a bill that perpetuates the same MIQ system that we’ve had, when we need to be nimble, we need to move, we need to look at the science and the evidence, which this Government always say that they need to do but are refusing to do in this case.

We also had the opportunity in this bill to bring in things like rapid antigen testing, which is still for the most part illegal in this country. One of the best things we can do to have a mass surveillance of our country to see where COVID is popping up, and we know from tweets by the Associate Minister of Health, Ayesha Verrall, that she’s vehemently opposed it for months. I know there are some sensible Ministers across the other side of the House who know that rapid antigen testing is good, but they have listened to her, and we are now in a situation where every other country in the world has a system where you can go to your local pharmacy and, in some cases, pick up for free a box of rapid antigen tests, which you can take every day before you go somewhere, which is a wonderful tool of mass surveillance of a population to check where COVID is possibly popping up. Yet here in New Zealand, we don’t have it. We had an opportunity in this bill to allow this to happen, but nothing. We’re perpetuating a ridiculous MIQ system. We’re not allowing MIQ to change with the times.

Then the last thing I want to talk about is the stealing of laboratories, of equipment, and, actually, of staff of private businesses. The reason for this—well, members opposite will say it’s for the contingency planning. There is no reason why this Government in that contingency planning couldn’t be working with business, sitting down with them and saying, “Hey, Delta’s upon us, it’s coming. We need to employ your services. We need to rapidly push out 10,000 tests a day.”—thank you very much, Rako Science—“Can you work with us?” This Government is so estranged from business, is so offside with business, that that’s not possible any more, and I’m not surprised by the reception that we had in Auckland when we were talking to Auckland businesses. They’re so offside with businesses that that’s not possible.

So we get a bill today that says because we can’t sit down with business, we’re going to forcefully, in part of our contingency plans, give ourselves the ability to take your laboratory, to take your equipment, and to take your stuff and centralise it and use it ourselves. Well, let’s see how that goes. We wholeheartedly oppose this bill. It had the opportunity to move with the times, but, unfortunately, it was drafted such a long time ago that it is wedded to something that was required a long time ago. We opposed it first and second reading, and we will oppose it again today. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Thank you, Madam Speaker; I appreciate it. I’m not entirely sure where to start here, so I think probably what I’ll do is I’d like to, actually, in the consideration of this bill, basically present a short review of the presentation and questions that the Health Committee had with the COVID19 Testing Technical Advisory Group, which was led by Professor Murdoch, from memory—forgive me if I have the name incorrect.

So to address the diatribe of the member opposite about rapid antigen testing, I’d just like to point out that Professor Murdoch highlighted that rapid antigen testing does indeed have its place, but the reason why it’s not been rolled out in New Zealand so far is that it has a 30 percent sensitivity rate, and what that means is that we can miss seven out of 10 positive tests—that’s what’s called a false negative; so, basically, 30 percent sensitivity. So when you’re in a period of time where it’s absolutely critical, with low case numbers, to pick up every single positive test, rapid antigen testing is not the way forward. However, I do argue that it has its place—its place, Professor Murdoch said, if you can hear me over the barracking from the other side of the House, is in a community where we have high levels of cases. And we are hoping not to be there, but we may, and we are reviewing this constantly.

The speaker opposite also seems unaware of a thing called incubation period, a time where somebody may actually be incubating a virus, not actually showing a positive test, and that’s why we’ve had the requirement for people to stay in isolation even though they may be fully vaccinated, because although it’s unusual, it happens occasionally that we do have people become infected even though they are fully immunised.

According to my calculation, 12,353 New Zealanders, from adjusted population figures, are alive today because of this Government, and I commend this bill to the House.

Kia ora. I rise on behalf of the Greens to support this bill at its final reading. In the Health Committee we were keen to maintain the health focus of the COVID response and reiterate that the Director-General of Health ensures that COVID orders are consistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. Delta has taught us that the old way of doing things is not cutting it now. So we accept that the new approach requires new orders, new laws, and new systems. We have to try and keep up with that. I suspect there will be many, many more orders, many more such amendments to legislation.

In terms of managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) facilities, I’ve come to look at this as an issue of manaaki manuhiri. It is a tikanga of looking after your guest but also how those guests behave. That this tikanga plays not just at marae but at any time someone is looking after someone else speaks of generosity, thoughtfulness, and care. Thousands and thousands of New Zealanders and other visitors have come through those MIQ facilities. We want to acknowledge the border workers that are still there doing that hard work on behalf of all of us to protect that border. We, with many other people in this country, look forward to the time when those stays are much, much shorter and when we get to a point when we don’t need those facilities at all. However, for as long as they are there, however people may chafe at the restrictions they represent, that is the current way of doing this and there are certain rules associated with this. We hope that with this bill we enable the staff there to do their job properly, always with the intention that, hopefully, we will be able to phase this out sooner rather than later.

I’m willing to speak on the issue about Māori, Pasifika, iwi, and community wardens. This has been a hot topic this morning in the committee of the whole House and at question time. The nature of supervision by police of people doing those roles has been questioned at length. We note that the Minister responded to that by saying that the police have often called in other support to do their work, including the army and a range of these wardens. We’re not sure how it operates in other areas, but our wardens work very, very closely with Gisborne police. In fact, they’ve had an office in the police station for many, many years. They’re valued members of the community because they provide a really valuable service. I acknowledge all of the wardens who have given up their time over many years. They are at all of our main events. They’re often at our tangi, and just knowing they’re there helps us feel safer.

As I understand supervision, it’s not about having a police officer looking over your shoulder while you’re doing everything; it’s that the police can get on with their other work because those wardens have been trained and have been proven to be reliable. They have earned the trust of the police, and the police realise that in some cases it’s much, much better to send in the wardens, because sometimes, actually, having the police there inflames the situation and escalates the tension, and the wardens, who are part of the community and represent the community, will often calm things down. The fact is that once the border around Auckland is relaxed, and we understand that the wish is that only people who are vaccinated or who have got proof of a negative result will be travelling, we know that there’s not going to be a check of every single car leaving the region. We absolutely support people being able to catch up with their family and go out and do the things they’ve not been able to do for a long, long time. But we are very, very conscious that in places like Tai Rāwhiti, which has low vaccination rates, we are in great danger of all the other people who will be on the road and are not vaccinated, some of whom will be anti-vaxxers and will take great pleasure in exercising their ability to travel. It’s entirely possible that there will be iwi check points around Tai Rāwhiti and other parts of this country, and that’s actually a good place for the wardens to be. With these delegated authorities they can help keep things calm, make sure that things are done properly, and people can just get on with things.

As we stated in this House, the main issue for the Greens around this legislation was the imposition of greater penalties. We discussed this at length and we thank the officials who kept going back and forward to get extra information for us to make decisions around this. We support a graduated penalty setting so that the scale of the penalty is based on the scale of the breach. The justice system is, of course, quite famous for sentencing processes that disadvantage Māori and we would certainly hope that this does not happen in this case.

Finally, privacy is a key issue for the Greens. I’ve had many members of the public contact me concerned that their personal information that is being collected for contact tracing will be used for other purposes, especially by police and the justice system. The Minister has assured us it will only be used for this purpose and any breach will be an offence. I don’t know how many people were sentenced and convicted with the latest breach of the ACC information, but I’m not entirely confident that privacy is secure across all Government departments. So while we agree that anyone breaching that confidentiality should be held accountable in whatever form that is, we hope that every safeguard that is possible is in place to protect the personal information of our citizenry, because this is all of us and millions of bits of contact information are being collected every single day.

In conclusion, we support this bill and we commend it to the House. Kia ora.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of the ACT Party in opposition to the COVID-19 Public Health Response Amendment Bill (No 2), and I do so, on behalf of the ACT Party, because this bill is a sad indictment on the Government’s COVID response.

If we think of New Zealand and our position in the world, we have one of the best natural advantages against COVID-19: we’re a small island in the Pacific, but we also have low population density. We have people who, by and large, want to do the right thing and work together to stamp out COVID. We have everything working for us, but, unfortunately, the Government has been slow. It hasn’t taken a wellbeing approach to COVID, and it hasn’t tried to be forward-thinking, and it’s imposed a lot of costs on a lot of people and not taken that into consideration in wanting to progress and do the right thing.

Now, if we go back to the original bill, this is a continuation of that. Back in March last year, we had COVID come into our community, and we put in place lockdown restrictions—alert levels—to make sure that we could keep COVID out. And, by and large, most people were wanting to do the right thing, because that was the only thing we could do at the time. We had a long summer, we managed to stamp out COVID, a lot of people managed to get a lot of their freedom back and a lot of that livelihood that had been lost for many in months under a lockdown, but then, once again, we saw COVID come back into our community. And once again, everybody did the right thing. We locked down again, and we stamped it out, but the Government just got complacent. The people did the right thing and the Government didn’t.

We had about 18 months when we knew that Delta was circling us. We were hearing stories from overseas, from family members and friends living with Delta in their communities who told us that it was different to the COVID that we had initially experienced and that we needed to be ready for it. But the Government didn’t do anything. We saw no increase in ICU bed capacity. That’s a sad indictment on this Government. And, when the Government answered my written parliamentary question in October, when I asked “Has the Government heard of pulse oximeters or received any advice on them?”, the Minister said, “No, I haven’t had any advice on those.” And what’s happened now? It’s one of our greatest strategies for home care and self-isolation in the community, and it was only after this current lockdown started that the Government even started to receive advice about that. In Ontario, in Canada, they had this self-isolation method in their community for months. Other countries had picked up on that model months ago, and our Government just sat there complacently, thinking that the rules that were still in place from last year would be adequate this time round.

They didn’t think of getting vaccines in time. They thought, “Oh well, it’s all pretty lovely here. We haven’t had COVID for a while. Maybe this will just continue for us.” They didn’t actively plan, to think how they could help New Zealanders in the long term, and when vaccines finally did come, they never even thought, “Well, how can we make sure that people have access electronically to a record that says they’ve even had one?” They were so far behind the ball. But they didn’t even think of planning and preparing for the future: new technologies, rapid antigen testing. Unfortunately, Delta did get through our managed isolation and quarantine—it was only a matter of time; we couldn’t keep it out for ever—but the vaccines weren’t rolled out in time. And so what did we have to do? We had to lock down again. Businesses suffered. Families have suffered. It is a tragedy that we are still looking at that same piece of legislation and wanting to update it.

What the Government should have been doing is putting into this bill a better plan and a better way forward—things like how we incentivise people to make sure that we get our vaccine right up there. Incentives, partnerships, thinking about new ways to get those last few thousand New Zealanders vaccinated—there’s nothing about that in here. It could be about new technologies, but it’s not. There’s nothing here about rapid antigen testing and making sure that people can actually go about with a bit more freedom. This bill is about reinforcing the Government’s command and control over the people of New Zealand. And it’s extraordinary power. If you take one example, which is the ability for the Government to take over private property; I mean, that’s incredible. They’re saying that it’s important for New Zealand to be able to have testing. When you’ve got companies that have invested their time and their money and their energy, why would another company in the future decide that they want to invest their time, money, and energy in New Zealand when the Government can pass legislation to say that they’ll just take it? Where is the ambition there? Where is any faith in business? This is all about the Government commanding and controlling, and it’s outrageous. If testing is so important, then they would allow for rapid antigen testing to be in the community.

The ACT Party opposes this bill because the Government should be more ambitious. It should be more future focused, but instead it’s kind of happy with the status quo, and I think that’s heartbreaking. I’ve had people writing in to me who have been locked out of this country—people who are pregnant, who are so worried about the country that they are in that they’re beside themselves wondering when they’ll actually hear back from someone to know if they can get through the border, or will they just have to go this alone? It’s horrible. We’ve got pregnant women in New Zealand whose partners are locked out overseas, and it’s only until they take the Government to the High Court that the Government actually lets their partners through the border. I mean, that’s crazy. We have people who are missing the funerals of their family members, and they’ll never be able to get over that, because they haven’t been able to see their family members pass in peace, and I think that’s a tragedy. We have tourism businesses that are hurting. We have businesses up and down New Zealand that are hurting with COVID restrictions. We have businesses that are wanting to take on new staff and they can’t get the people that they’re wanting to recruit through the border. We have forgotten that we are a team of 6 million and not a team of 5 million, and we should allow our family members home.

This bill doesn’t allow for new technology, and we oppose the lack of planning and forward-thinking of this Government in general but, in particular, in this bill. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. Happy to take a call to follow on from what really are scare tactics and scaremongering coming from the other side of the House. This really is just an opportunity to signal to the rest of the country a continuation, in a positive sense, of the protection methods that have been put in place, because this, effectively, is a framework that will allow for things to continue to be put in place in what are clearly changing and dynamic circumstances.

This legislation before the House today authorises or gives ability to the relevant Minister to make the orders that many in this House will be familiar with: orders around border entry requirements, quarantine and isolation, testing, vaccination, and others. And so to suggest that members may not support this bill suggests that we should simply do away with any opportunity to have any of those orders, do away with any opportunity to put in place some support and some safety for our community.

I’ve noticed that often members opposite, they tend to pick and choose what it is that they want to talk about. So when I have a look at new section 32R—let’s take a look at that. If we were to look at this bill, which is, quite simply, that new section 32R seeks to remove the word “seize” in relation to possessions that are in places of managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) facilities. That means that there would be no power of search or surveillance. In not supporting this bill, one could think that members opposite actually are quite happy for people who are going about their business, who happen to be in MIQ facilities, to be simply not subject to the protections and freedoms that others might expect in other circumstances.

So we can all pick and choose particular aspects of bills and legislation. But when we look at this as one whole, I’m delighted to be able to support it and commend it to the House.

The next call is a split call.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I will actually begin by responding to the member who just took his seat, Tangi Utikere. Perhaps he should open his eyes and open his ears and listen to New Zealanders who are actually overseas who are stuck or can’t come back to New Zealand.

I’ll give you one example. Last year, when we went into lockdown, I had been contacted by a constituent who was actually doing business in Palau Island. He thought he would go to Palau, do exporting from New Zealand to Palau, develop businesses over there, and then COVID happened. He got stuck. Palau Island did not have any commercial flights out of Palau; he could not leave Palau. So he contacted me and I actually wrote to the Minister, thinking that, perhaps, there were some contingency plans for people, New Zealand citizens who were stuck overseas, to be able to come back to New Zealand.

Without a commercial flight out of a particular country, he could not even book a managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) slot. So the answer from that Minister, who really, obviously, cares about New Zealanders who are stuck, was “Oh, in July there are plenty of slots. He could just go and click ever single date and he could book.”! He could not get out of Palau Island, he could not go to New Zealand, for no MIQ slots were available to him. He eventually managed to get to the United States, and he’s been couch surfing at his relative’s house ever since. Every time the MIQ slot opens, he’s number 17,000, he’s number 20,000. He managed to get to the lowest number, which was actually number 8,000, I believe. I am really concerned about his mental health, his wellbeing. For the Government who apparently cares about people, New Zealanders, this Government is putting this bill—and I completely oppose it, because they have utterly shamed us all by failing in their duty to protect all New Zealanders. There should be 6 million New Zealanders, not just 5 million, and they claim to care.

I’d like to acknowledge Dr Elizabeth Kerekere, who has actually spoken about their concern, the Green Party’s concern, about data security. During the course of the committee stage, I have raised quite a lot of questions in this Chamber regarding that particular issue. There were many more questions, and I have to state that I was rather surprised and quite disappointed in the rush of the Government to shut down the debate. I was genuinely doing my bit. I wasn’t doing speeches; I was actually standing up and asking specific questions about data security, and things like: can the Minister actually explain why, when new digital vaccine certifications and past systems are actually coming up, he did not actually specifically include that in the legislation? I mean, you know, there is no forward-thinking. There is also another question: why are there no references to how the data collected is going to be destroyed? There are many questions that I wanted to ask but I didn’t get an opportunity, so I just wanted to get that on the Hansard.

I’d also like to thank my colleagues who actually stood up—the Hon Louise Upston, as well as the Hon Michael Woodhouse, who spoke in terms of the procedures, and they actually backed me up regarding my Supplementary Order Paper (SOP).

I’d also like to thank my staff. Officials get thanked, but often people in our offices don’t get thanked, and I just want to thank my assistant, who has helped me tremendously, my digital policy specialist, Matthew Stephens, who helped me draft the SOP, and I just want to say thank you to him, because he’s worked really, really hard to make sure that we actually plug the gap that the Government isn’t doing. The legislation does not go far enough to protect the digital data that is available through the COVID-19 tracer app, and I am afraid that when we look back and actually see what the Government has done, we’ll probably have to come back and fix the problem that they’re creating with this legislation.

There are many, many more examples, and, you know, one of the things that I would actually like to raise is that a young woman came up to me on the street—came up to some of us who were doing visits. She was diagnosed with cancer, she was going through chemo, and when the lockdown hit, her treatment was actually postponed. This is a cancer patient. How cruel can people actually be, and, you know, priority for people who have COVID-19 is actually prioritised over a young woman who has got cancer and was going through treatment, but she was postponed because COVID took precedence. I think that is a really, really cruel indictment of how this Government prioritises health. I completely and utterly reject this bill.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. A couple of months ago, the president of the UN General Assembly opened the annual general debate reflecting on the darkest days of the pandemic. He spoke of when cities were shuttered and vaccines still a dream, and how the world’s people came together as never before. These have been entirely unprecedented times, and here in New Zealand, we have come together. While our COVID response has its foundations in law—the Act, and soon the amendments—what we’ve achieved is something New Zealanders have done together, demonstrating the strength of our social contract. These are unusual powers being legislated for in unusual times, and they are entirely in sync with the duty of a responsible Government to weave into legislation time-bound laws of exception, to address unprecedented circumstances.

The last speaker, Melissa Lee, referred to the committee stage, where several questions were asked, and the Minister provided robust responses to those questions. He explained the overarching authority of the police in terms of the power to stop. He spoke about the existing Privacy Act protections that apply, but also the provisions of the bill, which make it clear that the data collected for contact tracing is only used for contact tracing.

He also highlighted the fact that our response hasn’t been a static one; it’s an evolving one that actively looks to what are reasonable limitations, to ensure a proportionate response as the circumstances evolve. It is why there have been changes to the managed isolation and quarantine requirements. I’m proud of our continued collective COVID response, and I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Well, I think it’s an incredibly sad day that we are here debating this COVID-19 Public Health Response Amendment Bill (No 2). It’s a sad day for New Zealand that we should be looking at an extension of extraordinary powers of control which enable this Government to control people, to control businesses, to impact on our lives, to impact on the economy, and to create divisiveness in our community.

We are debating a bill that when we got it at the select committee it was out of date. It is a bill based on an elimination strategy; an extension that will carry the powers for this Government out for a further 18 months. The pessimism of that thinking is, without doubt, of enormous concern to people. There is the extension of the managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) requirements, when we should be looking at how we can have less MIQ and the ability for this Government, having not wanted to get into any partnership discussions with private laboratories, to now be able to requisition private property from those same laboratories that they ignored when they offered help.

A lot has been said by my colleagues about the MIQ situation, about there being thousands of people with COVID now isolating at home, while at the same time in MIQ we have 34 people with COVID. We have thousands of people wanting to use our MIQ facilities and not being able to. Some of the speakers have talked about the opinions from professors on these MIQ facilities, but actually, I just want to talk about ordinary people like me who judge things on common sense and reasonableness and logic. I want to look at three examples that I have talked about previously, but they are really important examples.

In August this year, our head of obstetrics at Invercargill hospital had to return to the States, because his mother had sadly died and his father was very terminally ill. So the district health board allowed him leave to go home, thinking that, as a talented senior clinician who was absolutely critical to the care of our expectant mothers, he would be allowed back in through the critical worker MIQ allocations. It took three applications and Joseph Mooney and myself embarrassing the Minister publicly with an open letter in the media for him to get a place to be able to return to his work after gaining an MIQ place.

I look at our GPs, our rural GPs and our wonderful nurse practitioners out trying to keep rural practices going, looking after and caring for our people out in the rural areas who cannot get a locum to come in and support their work because they cannot get them through the MIQ process.

I look at an ICU nurse in Invercargill, a recent migrant, who we were very keen to keep in Invercargill. Her partner was an engineer in Sydney and was keen to come over and join her, so we were going to get two for the price of one: a wonderfully valuable ICU nurse and a much-needed engineer. He couldn’t get through the MIQ system, so she has gone to Sydney to join him.

Now, I want to apply the common sense and reasonableness and logic situation there. Let’s look: that incredibly talented, incredibly important senior clinician who runs the head of obstetrics in Invercargill, was he capable of being able to self-isolate at home? Let’s compare him to the gang member with COVID self-isolating at home. The senior clinician who was double-vaccinated, who had tested negative—weigh him up against the member who may not have always followed the rules and regulations of New Zealand society. He was enabled to isolate at home but not that senior clinician.

So I think that the Government is over-reaching with this amendment bill. I think people are sick of being told what to do and when to do it. They are sick of announcements about announcements. They are tired of being treated as though each of us are unable or incapable of thinking and acting in a responsible manner; that only the Government knows best. And we have seen so much of this from this Government: that only the Government should control things, that only the Government knows best.

Before I became a politician, I used to say to politicians that the trouble is politicians surround themselves with people who tell them what they want to hear, not what they need to hear, and I think this Government has been listening to people telling them what they want to hear. They haven’t been out listening to the people running hospitality businesses in Auckland. They haven’t been down in Te Ānau or Queenstown, listening to the people running tourism businesses, or rather, the very few of them that did come down didn’t listen; they just told our business people to pivot. One day we’ll ask what they mean about that. So I think that the people of New Zealand are tired of being treated like children. They are tired of this Government thinking they will tell them what they must do and when they must do it.

We heard that businesses in Auckland feel like they are not being listened to. We heard of the Auckland businesswoman who is losing everything: has lost the reserves that she has built up, has lost the ability to be able to hand her business eventually on to her staff, has lost her will to carry on running a business. She said she feels like she is just collateral damage from the Prime Minister’s legacy project. Well, much as I sympathise with that Auckland business owner, and I do genuinely sympathise with that Auckland business owner because I’ve had enough hospitality business people coming to me, saying how heartbreaking their situation is, I actually think that she’s wrong. I don’t think that it is just her that is the collateral damage from the Prime Minister’s legacy project. I think that it is the whole of New Zealand that is suffering as collateral damage. I think it is the generations to come that are going to have to pay for the vanity of this Government that did not do its work, that did not play its role in getting the vaccinations out, in getting the ICU beds ready, in getting our country prepared for this Delta outbreak, and therefore they must take total and complete responsibility for the huge amount of debt that they are handing on as a legacy to the generations of New Zealanders who are going to have to continue paying this off for their lifetime because of the vanity of this Government and the Prime Minister’s legacy project. Thank you, Madam Speaker. This party opposes the amendment bill.

That was rich—that was rich—for the Opposition to stand there and tell us that this is a legacy project of the Prime Minister. I’ll tell you what this is: this is a public health response to a global pandemic. And if there’s one thing that I’ve heard time and time again, it is, “Thank God the National Party aren’t running this country.” Thank God they haven’t taken over the reins, because they would have tightened their belts. They would have made sure that everybody was walking in misery, that we would have had that record high unemployment that was predicted at the start of this pandemic. We were talking about 25 percent unemployment rates, but we’ve completely turned that around because we’ve taken a people-first approach. We’ve taken a public health approach.

The previous speaker, Penny Simmonds, got up and talked about how the Government thinks that it knows best, and do you know what? There’s a little bit of that that’s true, but what we need to point out is that the Government is elected to lead, and that’s exactly what we’ve been doing. I’m pretty sure that the Prime Minister would prefer not to be going through a global pandemic right now. I’m pretty sure that the Minister of the COVID response would prefer not to be inundated with COVID-19 issues. I’m pretty sure that he’d like to focus on education, which is actually a huge thing in New Zealand and needs lots of support. But we’ve been landed with this, so we as a Government must lead and that’s why the people voted for us last year. That’s why they continue to have faith in our approach, which is a people-first approach.

We have to make those tough decisions—that’s right—because there’s no playbook. We didn’t know that this was happening, but what we’ve done is we’ve trusted our instincts, we’ve gone out there, we’ve spoken to the people on the ground, and we’ve had to make some tough decisions. Of course, we’ve had to make some tough decisions. And I congratulate all of our Ministers who have put their shoulders to the wheel to make sure that this bill, in particular, is an extension of the good work that we’ve gone and done. So on behalf of all of the rational people out there across New Zealand, I completely support this bill.