COVID-19 Response (Vaccinations) Legislation Bill

Well, here we are on Wednesday afternoon, and the House is about to pass one of the most far-reaching and significant pieces of legislation that this Parliament will consider, and the House has had precisely 24 hours to look at it—24 hours for the first reading, the second reading, the committee of the whole House stage, and now the third reading. As Dr Dean Knight of Victoria University, that very fine law school, says, it is a constitutional disgrace. The Human Rights Commission has criticised it. The Council for Civil Liberties has criticised the speed with which this bill is being passed, and it reflects an arrogance of the highest order from this Government, that they think they can pass this legislation in just 24 hours without scrutiny. I put it to the Parliament that this is contemptuous of the Parliament. It is contemptuous of the people of New Zealand, and it is contemptuous of the rule of law.

The Government says in its own press releases that 40 percent of people working will potentially be covered by vaccine mandates as a result of this legislation—40 percent. That is hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders. A bill that significant deserves scrutiny. We deserve to get the details right. This bill gives the Government enormous, broad, sweeping powers, in some ways never seen before, to create different categories of New Zealanders. The vaccinated will have different rights and freedoms compared to the unvaccinated. Now, there may well be a justification for some of those limits and for some of that differential treatment, but those are issues for Parliament to consider properly through a robust select committee process. This bill allows the Government to say that if you are an unvaccinated person in a red area of the country—because it also allows the traffic light framework, apparently—who wants to go and get a haircut in Auckland, you can’t. It says if you’re an unvaccinated person who wants to go and buy a beer and meet someone in a bar once the red system kicks in, you can’t.

Now, there is an argument as to whether or not that should be allowed, but the point is there should be a debate about that. We should have a thorough investigation of those issues. These are not issues that are open and shut, where the Government necessarily has it right. But what the Government is asking the Parliament to do is just to assume that the Government does have all the answers and that the framework is correct, and that everything they want to do is going to be fine, and, actually, we don’t necessarily agree on this side of the House.

So I want to lay on the record of the House exactly what has happened. We got this bill on Monday night—Monday night. It’s now Wednesday. It was introduced on Tuesday and put through its first and second reading. There was no select committee process. There is no regulatory impact statement on this bill. The departmental disclosure statement is cursory at best. If you read through it, there’s no detail—absolutely no detail. It’s basically the general policy statement in the explanatory note of the bill, and that’s it. It’s very cursory. The section 7 legal advice—there’s no section 7 report but the legal advice to the Attorney-General explicitly says, at paragraph 2, “This advice has been prepared in relation to the latest version … . The advice has been prepared in an extremely short timeframe due to late receipt of the Bill that was not in compliance with Cabinet Office Guidance.”—that’s the officials themselves saying to the Attorney-General that the bill was done in a rushed way.

We know that there was no New Zealand Bill of Rights Act analysis done before the framework was considered by Cabinet, and we learnt yesterday that the policy papers, the underlying policy rationale, the Cabinet papers and the policy advice to the Minister will be made public but not until January 2022. So we are being asked by the Government to take on trust what they are doing and that it’s based on good, sound public policy advice from the officials. We are being asked to take it on trust. And the thing is, the Government had time to get this right. They did—COVID has been in New Zealand since August and we are now in late November, and the reality is the Government did not have a back-up plan in place if elimination failed, and now we are bearing the consequences.

There was plenty of time to put this out for an exposure draft, for example—to publish the details so people could get their heads around it. And to make matters worse, there will be no post-enactment review of this legislation. I moved during the committee of the whole House stage a very sensible amendment. I said, OK, it’s being passed through, and there’s not a lot we can do about that because we don’t have the numbers, but how about the Health Committee conducts a post-enactment review of the legislation? We could do that really quickly. We’re a pretty hard-working committee. We’ve done it before, as Michael Woodhouse says. Let’s do a post-enactment review. Let’s get the officials in, let’s get the Law Society and the Human Rights Commission in and let’s go through it with a fine-tooth comb—just make sure we’ve got the details right. The Government voted against it. So within 24 hours this bill’s been introduced and it’s going to be law.

Let me deal with a couple of substantive pieces in relation to the bill. The first is in relation to a theme I’ve already covered, which is the power this hands to the Government. I think there is real legal doubt about whether or not the bill actually introduces the power for traffic lights for various regions, because if you read the bill, there is no mention of traffic lights in the bill. And there’s a reason why it’s not called the “COVID-19 Response Traffic Light System or Framework Legislation Bill”. There is no mention of it, and so that is going to be something we’re going to have to have a look at. And again, if we had a select committee stage, we could have gone through and examined that, but we can’t.

On the issue of where and when vaccination certificates will be accepted and in relation to the corollary that applies to people who have to be vaccinated to work in those industries, it is not clear to me from reading the legislation that that is authorised by the bill. So I think there is a real, to use the legal parlance, vires issue here as to whether or not the Government is actually going to have the power that it thinks it’s going to have once the bill passes. Now, that will no doubt be tested by the court, and if I’m right and the Government’s wrong, we’re going to have to come back and legislate again—again—an issue that could have been sorted out.

I think there are real issues of legality here. Justice Cooke, when we discussion around this during the committee of the whole House, made it clear in relation to the mandates that already exist for border workers, that the Government has to get the empowering provisions right. The Government cannot just point to broad sweeping powers and say, “Oh, well, Parliament said we can do that, therefore we can.” Actually, Parliament has to authorise the Government to act in accordance with properly constructed provisions of legislation. That’s the whole point of Justice Cooke’s various comments in that specific case before the High Court. So I really worry that this bill doesn’t actually do what the Government thinks it does.

The final point I want to make is a very important point, and it is that I really worry about the divides that will appear in this country. My inbox is full of people emailing me, telling me that vaccines don’t work, that they don’t like the idea of vaccine mandates, that they don’t like the idea of using vaccine certificates, and that they don’t like the idea of division, to use a vernacular phrase. They don’t like division. If there was one thing a Government could do to solidify and entrench those divisions, it would be this bill. This is not a bill that has been well-thought-through and well ventilated and where we’ve had an argument and a discussion about mandates. It’s not a bill that makes the case for vaccine certificates and carefully calibrates the intrusion on the right not to have medical treatment, and it’s not a bill that carefully calibrates the various rights about discrimination. It’s not a bill that does that. Those are real, legitimate, critical issues, as the legal advice in the section 7 report makes clear.

This bill allows the Government to intrude on all sorts of rights, and it’s not an argument that those rights are not justified; it’s an argument that we have to have a discussion about it. I tell you what happens when you don’t have a discussion about it. It entrenches that division. To do something in a secretive way like this, in a non-transparent way, to ram it through without a select committee process and without any post-enactment scrutiny sends the message to the anti-vaxxers out there and those concerned about mandates and those concerned about certificates that they do have something to fear, that there is something to hide—because, after all, if there wasn’t something to hide, why wouldn’t the Government just do the normal proper process.

This bill will backfire on the Government, not help the Government, and it is wrong in principle. We oppose.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. So, looking back to when we entered alert level 4 for the first time, last year, we had very limited tools in the tool box to protect us against COVID-19, and our alert levels were the main way that we did protect ourselves. But what’s happened since then is we’ve got 91 percent of eligible New Zealanders having now had their first dose of vaccine, and 84 are fully vaccinated. So we can start to take advantage of the protections that confers. But I think, for me and for many of us that are reading what has been happening around the world, reading the stories online is quite distressing, but what, to me, it says is that, while vaccination is important, we’re also going to need other measures if we’re going to prevent our hospital systems getting overwhelmed. So what this bill does is provide those tools that can move into the new COVID protection framework.

I think, as we’ve already heard from some of the debate, while what this bill does is allow the issuing of COVID-19 vaccination certificates so that people can enter into particular businesses or events, it also makes sure that such proof of vaccination is not required for some of those essential services like supermarkets, like healthcare facilities, like pharmacies, and like Work and Income services—so, basically, making sure we get that balance right. And it also makes sure that businesses have the tools they need to assess the risk of COVID-19 to themselves, their business, their customers. And, basically, what it means is they can then weigh up whether they should require their workers to be vaccinated. So this is a very, very significant bill that will underpin the new COVID protection framework, and I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. What a constitutional disgrace this piece of legislation is—and those aren’t my words; those are the words of none other than Dr Dean Knight from Victoria University. A constitutional disgrace is how he has labelled this piece of legislation: produced under urgency, the Government using its absolute majority in this House to pass it; a piece of legislation that has wide-ranging ramifications for every single citizen in this nation; passed without the scrutiny of select committee; passed without the input of stakeholders, of people who have an interest, of experts who would like to make a contribution to making this piece of legislation better than the shambolic piece that it is; and a piece of legislation that almost certainly will have to be, sooner or later—and probably sooner—revisited by this House because of its sloppiness.

This piece of legislation creates the so-called traffic light system. It’s a system that very few New Zealanders understand, that very few New Zealanders can get their head around, and that very few New Zealanders create any kind of sense of direction on from the Government that they have elected to lead them and guide them. It was the case some months ago, probably a year ago, that New Zealanders did understand what the objectives of this Government were in relation to the COVID pandemic, but, actually, this Government has lost the room. They’ve lost the nation, and they’ve lost the sense of direction and focus and clarity of communication that New Zealanders are seeking and looking for as we go into the summer and Christmas period.

So, with them having lost the room, they are now floundering about passing under urgency legislation that was presented to the Opposition parties only 48 hours ago and then debated through the House last night and then through this morning’s stages at breakneck speed, with Government Ministers and Government MPs taking only very short calls, not effectively answering the very good and fulsome questions that were being put to them by members of the Opposition. That is a constitutional disgrace, as Dr Dean Knight says.

I want to focus mostly in my contribution on the impacts for business, because it’s been business that up and down the countryside has actually taken the biggest hit and had the biggest impact in terms of their day-to-day operations during this entire COVID pandemic episode. All through the last 18 months or so, the Government has taken the view that business has an infinite capacity to pay, an infinite capacity to absorb, and an infinite capacity to do the Government’s bidding in the hard graft and hard work at the coalface that the Government itself pretends they don’t need to do.

So it once again is going to fall to businesses in terms of how they manage non-vaccinated employees. It’s going to be business who have to make those decisions, and those decisions are tough decisions for any business to make. The vast majority of people in the country—91 percent, we hear—have had at least one vaccination. By definition, the number of people that are going to be impacted by the provisions in this bill, that create a tool kit for a streamlined process for employers to make a decision about whether an employee should ultimately be exited from employment in their business, is going to be relatively small in number, but those people have had ample opportunity to get vaccinated. On this side of the House, we have been encouraging them from day one to get vaccinated—we still do. We hope that those people will take the opportunity to get vaccinated and that the provisions of this bill, in terms of employers being able to exit staff from businesses, won’t need to be put in place. But the grim reality is that some of those people have come to very firm, determined views about their vaccination status, and many of them are not for turning. They will simply put at jeopardy their employment. In some cases, they’ve been employed for many, many years, and they’re prepared to risk that and sacrifice it to stand on their principles of choice. No Government is going to prevent them from doing that.

But with choice comes responsibility and consequence, and one of the consequences that this bill establishes is that there is a potential—and there always has been—that a non-vaccinated employee can ultimately be terminated from the employment with their employer. So it’s back to business that actually has to make that call, the call about where the line is between the health and safety and wellbeing of other employees in their business versus the health and safety and wellbeing of a non-vaccinated employee in their business, and how that relates to their customers, their suppliers and their contracts, and the people that they do business with.

On this side of the House, we trust business to make those decisions. We trust business to make a sensible, prudent decision, as difficult as it may be. But to give them such a short time to prepare themselves is absolutely unconscionable by this Government. The Government has had at least nine months to be preparing for this piece of legislation. From the minute that the vaccination programme, albeit late and slow, was commenced in New Zealand, the Government should’ve been talking and thinking and doing the hard work on this. Had they been doing that? Absolutely no. Had they been doing it, this piece of legislation would not have needed to be introduced under urgency without select committee scrutiny and without input from submitters. But, no, the Government seemed so full of itself that they were happy to rest on their laurels, hoping that managed isolation and quarantine would keep Delta out of New Zealand and failing to realise that, sooner or later, Delta would arrive. Well, it’s here now, and the fact is that this piece of legislation is a hallmark of their lack of preparedness, their lack of foresight, and their lack of work in preparing New Zealand and our legislative and regulatory regime for it.

Just today, we’ve had a situation in the Employment Court where an employer who had been stood down, in fact exited from employment at Auckland international airport some months ago—well, today the Employment Court has decided that that employee needs to be reinstated on paid leave for an indeterminate period of time whilst further discussions and negotiations are completed between the employee and the Auckland international airport. That goes to the very problem that this bill is failing to address, and that is that this is going to be an employment lawyer’s gravy train. The only people who will really benefit out of this piece of legislation will be the employment lawyers, who are going to have an absolute field day. If there is a situation where Auckland international airport can’t make stick the decision that they had made some months ago, then what hope is there that even when this piece of legislation becomes effective, and that’s not going to probably be for some time yet—what will it actually mean if employers can’t rely on the judgments they make and litigation is going to continue? We know that litigation’s going to continue because this bill specifically provides for an option for personal grievance cases to continue to be heard.

Now, we’ve heard the Minister say, “Oh, well, that’s about balancing rights.”, but we heard nothing about the balancing of rights of the business owner, the operator, or the small-business person who has already had to endure and suffer so much over the last 18 months. This is a Government that doesn’t seem to care about business and doesn’t seem to care about the implications for business at all.

We on this side of the House have taken the view that, actually, if a business goes through a formal health and safety risk assessment process, or if they use the tool that this piece of legislation establishes, or if they use another formal process, which they are entitled to and can do, then once that has occurred, that should be the end of it and the business should not have to suffer the further prospect of a sword of Damocles hanging above their head, potentially with long, drawn-out, expensive, draining litigation going backwards and forwards from an employee who has decided for whatever reason, not to be vaccinated and is determined to see it through to the nth degree in terms of stating their case, making their position well known, and, frankly, making it as difficult and hard and complicated and expensive for an employer as is humanly possible. Those will be relatively few in case, but a number of businesses will have to confront that.

So, on this side of the House, we do trust business. We think that business should be able to make those decisions without the prospects of being further dragged through the employment courts or, indeed, into higher jurisdictions once they are challenged on appeal. This is bad law, it’s bad process, and, actually, I think Dr Dean Knight is completely right, as are other commentators when they call this a constitutional disgrace. They are exactly on the money.

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for the chance to say a few words on the COVID-19 Response (Vaccinations) Legislation Bill—it kind of says it, what’s written on the tin. This bill assists with the implementation of the protection framework. The amendments provide the legal framework that affords us the chance to move into the next phase of our COVID-19 response; one that is less restrictive, because it is based on recognising the protection that vaccination has now given most people. It allows for vaccine certificates to be used. It allows for businesses who want to be able to use vaccination certificates to ensure that their staff are, in fact, vaccinated. As we heard in the committee stage, in dealing with the global pandemic, you’re often dealing with a situation that can change quickly and you need to be able to change and adapt; so, by having reasonably broad empowering provisions, this bill accounts for that and creates the flexibility that’s required. It’s a pragmatic bill about vaccinations, it’s the next logical step, and I commend this bill to the House.

Kia ora, e te Māngai. On behalf of the Greens, I rise in support of this bill in its final reading. We’ve consistently stood by the Government in its strong health response to the pandemic, even as we have raised our concerns about how the detail of some strategies, and especially the upcoming traffic light system, will work, just because of the potential impact on Māori, regional, and rural communities with lower vaccination rates. We have no doubts that the Government and its agencies are working very, very hard on this; so are our iwi, Pasifika, health, disability, and community providers on the ground. They need every resource we can throw at them. We recognise there are many moving parts in addressing COVID. We still see that it’s less of a waltz and more of an awkward robot.

We have supported agency in this case because it is urgent, but we are very clear that this speed is necessary because the Government set arbitrary dates for opening the Auckland borders based on people travelling for Christmas, not based on equity, which would have seen Māori and Pasifika vaccination rates equal with our tauiwi counterparts, not based on the traffic light system being effectively trialled for national adoption, and not at all based on the case numbers in Auckland coming down. I have sympathy for my colleague Nicola Grigg, who spoke eloquently this morning about safely opening up Te Waipounamu, the South Island. It’s another three weeks, but come 15 December, anyone travelling south by plane or ferry will be required to present their brand new vaccination certificate or pass, and this law will provide the rules for them to do that. We absolutely support that.

As much as we support reuniting whānau across the country, we are worried about all the people who will be able to travel by car throughout the North Island. Checking vaccine passes can work really well one on one, or where there’s security on the door. Spot-checking for vaccine passes will not be sufficient for the deluge of people who may or may not be vaccinated coming to a low vaccination area near you. It will not be sufficient for immunocompromised people, who will, effectively, go into a self-imposed level 3 or 4 to stay safe until summer is over. I note that he identified that no members had raised an inquiry of the bill at any of the relevant select committees. For the record, I did raise this in my speech in the second reading last night and this afternoon at our truncated Health Committee. I’ve just been waiting for the end of our other agenda items.

This bill will provide clarity on where people can and cannot go depending on their vaccination status. It will allow people to some places if they meet those rules, and it will require some services to permit people in regardless of their status. We welcome this clarity because people are really, really confused. We hope this framework will be flexible enough to cover the changes that will inevitably come. We hope it will address how especially young staff will be supported when they have to face belligerent people who are not happy they’ve been refused entry or service. As much as we want people to be vaccinated to protect all of us, the Greens do not support forced vaccinations. We do not want to see a two-tier summer because some people cannot and will not get vaccinated. We hope that on certain occasions, such as weddings especially, and tangi, people are able to put sensible precautions in place to allow people who are not vaccinated to celebrate the occasion or mourn with their whānau.

The Greens support the development of the workplace assessment tool to make decision making better for our employers and our business people. We felt that there wasn’t enough emphasis on whether testing would be available in that space, so we did ask and had that confirmed that it will just help businesses decide what’s going to be feasible in their situation. So we hope that that good support will be available for them as they’re going through and using that tool. We also support very solid privacy measures to make sure all this new health data that employers will be required to record and report on will be safely held.

So the Greens believe everyone should have fair and equal access to these vaccine passes. We’re concerned some people will struggle with obtaining it. I will reiterate what I’ve said, which is that approximately half a million New Zealanders do not have regular access to the internet: elderly people, people with learning difficulties or other types of disabilities, people for whom English is a second language, including recent migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers. This also affects people without a suitable ID and takatāpui, trans, intersex, and non-binary people whose name or gender marker do not match what is on their National Health Index record.

In conclusion, we agree with requirements that keep our people safe. We support a collective public health approach, and this is one piece of it. Nō reira, we commend this bill to the House. Kia ora.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of ACT in opposition to this COVID-19 Response (Vaccinations) Legislation Bill. I welcome the Speaker’s invitation to have a looser than normal debate on the third reading of this bill. He’s expressed his displeasure with the way that the Government has rushed it through Parliament with no due process whatsoever—no consultation, no regulatory impact statement, no proper New Zealand Bill of Rights Act analysis, nothing.

Did we think that maybe the Minister would come down to the House with some humility and say, “I’m here to listen and work with other members in order to get the best bill possible in the tight time frame we’ve given ourselves.”? Of course he didn’t; he stood up and used most of his speeches on the first and second readings to politically attack another political party, mainly the National Party. And what about the Labour backbench? Those Labour members of Parliament, some of them very intelligent people who are actually here on the same salary as everyone else in the Parliament, were they there to question the Government, to question the legislation? No. Were they there to give support and say why they think it is good legislation? No. They gave two-minute speeches of platitudes at best—and, recently, only one minute. Well, I kind miss the two minutes because, as Bret and Jemaine used to say, “Two minutes in heaven is at least better than one minute in heaven.”!

But this bill, which is being called a constitutional outrage by legal experts, that has wiped out so much of the credibility of democracy and due process in New Zealand, is actually part of a pattern. If we think about the way that this Government has managed the pandemic, let’s go back to last February or last March. New Zealand was the 63rd country to have a case of COVID-19. New Zealand had more natural advantages in facing a viral pandemic than any other country. And we know that’s true because I’ve asked the Minister for COVID-19 Response to name a country that was more isolated, had a more spread-out population, had a younger population, was wealthier, had a more cohesive population that was prepared to act together to beat a virus. He couldn’t name one country that had more natural advantages than New Zealand. That’s the backdrop that this Government went into COVID-19 with—and add to that record low interest rates and more borrowing of money and taxpayer stimulus of the economy than any other OECD economy but one, being the United States, and ain’t they in some fiscal and monetary trouble right now.

That’s the background of a country that was lucky and was prepared to borrow more and use low interest rates more than any other. And even then, we didn’t have a plan, because back in March when we went into lockdown, the rhetoric of the Prime Minister was “Let’s flatten the curve.” She didn’t think we could achieve elimination. It was only several weeks into the lockdown they thought, “Oh, if we keep going, we might get to zero cases.” And once they did it, stumbled upon success, did they think “That was lucky. We should start preparing to safely reconnect with the rest of the world.”, as people like, say, Helen Clark—we’ll come back to her—was suggesting; the way that many medical experts and public health experts were suggesting we might need to do? No, they were not. Instead, the Prime Minister did a little dance and spent the summer that we had to prepare, instead of mending the roof, celebrating and doing victory laps and thinking, “If we’re successful, it must be all due to us.” Not luck, not debt, not cheap money, not isolation—it wasn’t any of those things! It wasn’t the efforts of a cohesive population of New Zealanders; it was all them! And they thought it was so easy and they were so good that they didn’t do anything.

If you doubt that, let me give you an example of what I mean. I asked Chris Hipkins back in July, “Minister, have you done anything? Can you tell us anything that this Government’s done to prepare for Delta? Because, you know, it’s out around the world. It’s just wreaked havoc in India.”—as it had at that time—“What sort of preparations has this Government done to prepare for Delta?”, and he couldn’t name one. In fact, when the Delta outbreak occurred in Auckland, they had to shut down the vaccination centres because they hadn’t considered the possibility that they might have to vaccinate people for COVID-19 while COVID-19 was out and about. They literally had no plan B. They thought they were going to hit a home run, isolate the country, Delta would never break through managed isolation and quarantine, vaccination would give population immunity, and they would open up sometime around now like nothing had happened.

And now it has all gone completely wrong and they don’t have a clue what to do. You can feel the panic. They’re making it up as they go, and they are making Kiwis pay the cost. They are making our constitutional arrangements pay the cost. They’re ramming stuff through Parliament in a way that even the Speaker is admonishing them, in an extraordinary way that I’ve never seen in the seven years that I’ve been in this Parliament. And what does the Labour backbench have to say about that? Crickets, nothing, nada—can’t hear a word from them.

Actually, their handling of COVID is nothing new in the context of this Labour Government. Remember when this Government was going to bring kindness? This Government was elected because “Climate change is my generation’s nuclear-free moment.” This Government was going to fix the housing crisis. At one point, Stuart Nash went on ZB one morning and said they had fixed the housing crisis! That was only six months ago. Everything this Government has promised to do they have profoundly failed at and somehow managed to paper over the cracks.

Take “my generation’s nuclear-free moment”. Well, what has happened to New Zealand’s emissions under this Government? They’ve gone up. And have they confronted their failure? No, they’ve gone off to Glasgow and set an even more ambitious target that they also will fail to reach in order to distract failing at the last one. What has happened with housing? Do we remember KiwiBuild? It’s almost unfair to talk about KiwiBuild in the context of this Government, because it’s become unfair.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! I’m going to interrupt the member. I know the Speaker made a ruling at the beginning of this debate, but I’ve listened very carefully to the member. He should really talk about the bill. Housing, all of these other matters, important as they are—climate change and all the rest—he should actually speak about the bill.

Well, the thing is they are also failings of this Government, and what a time to talk about them. And the other thing this Government has done, just like this bill—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: No, I’m having another ruling on that one. The member knows very well he should not be giving a narrative or commentary on the ruling, just get on with his speech.

This bill has been described as a constitutional outrage. You might remember, in pursuit of climate change being “my generation’s nuclear moment”, the ban on oil and gas exploration, the kind of legislation that is eroding the constitutional underpinnings and the faith that people around the world have in this Government and in this country’s institutions. Throughout this COVID pandemic, we’ve had legislation, before this bill was rushed through, where we legislated in this House—or at least those guys voted for it—that a private business can have their property taken away from them; that we can have contracts for commercial rent that were made when the law said one thing—now the legal backdrop for those laws is different and you’ve actually got retrospective legislation.

This Government is constantly eroding the capital that they have inherited for New Zealand because they simply don’t know how to plan ahead; they simply don’t know what to do. And New Zealanders up and down the country are at a loss to explain this phenomenon. How can governance that is so practically inept, that fails at everything it sets out to do, fails at COVID, fails at housing, fails at reducing emissions, fails at controlling the cost of living, which is now ramping up for every New Zealander—people ask, “How is it possible that this Government can carry on?” And the truth is that we are witnessing a very special phenomenon, not only in New Zealand politics but in world politics. What we are witnessing is the world’s first “Instagram Prime Minister”. The American people have until recently suffered the world’s first “Twitter President”, and that leader and our leader right now actually have more in common than people realise. The “Trump of the South Pacific” is dividing people with her rhetoric, separating people, and dividing not only people but dividing wealth as well, instead of creating the conditions to unite New Zealanders behind good ideas to create a wealthier, more cohesive, and more prosperous country, exactly like our friends in the United States.

Well, the good news is that the polls aren’t usually wrong, despite what some people say. People are wising up. They are seeing that, after four years of promising, this Government simply can’t deliver. You can fool some of the people some of the time, but this Government cannot fool all of the people all of the time. I say today is a turning point when people are seeing it more and more. And you mark my words: this Government has two years to go if they’re lucky. Change is on the way. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. That was interesting! I would just like to thank Mr Seymour for his comments around Dr Tracey McLellan’s minute of heaven. I think that one minute of relevant conversation at this point would have been very welcome.

I’m rising to speak to the COVID-19 Response (Vaccinations) Legislation Bill at its third reading, and I’m delighted to do so, because this bill allows us to move forward with clarity together. Because we are together: 92 percent of eligible New Zealanders have received their first dose of the COVID vaccine, which is an extraordinary sign of unity that I think we should celebrate. One million people have accessed their vaccine pass, which is, again, another sign of efficiency and unity. And I would just speak to my colleague Dr Elizabeth Kerekere in just encouraging people who are struggling to access their pass to call the 0800 number—which is 0800 222 478—for support if they need it.

So, with that, I would like to commend this bill to the House.

This is a split call. I call Simeon Brown, five minutes.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I stand in opposition to this bill, the COVID-19 Response (Vaccinations) Legislation Bill, alongside my National Party colleagues. I stand in opposition because this piece of legislation is not needed for New Zealand as we come out of this COVID-19 lockdown. This piece of legislation is not going to unite New Zealand in our fight against COVID-19. This legislation is going to confuse New Zealanders, it’s going to cause chaos, and it’s going to divide New Zealanders rather than bring us together.

New Zealanders have all played their part in the fight against COVID-19. We’ve stayed home, we’ve shut our businesses, we haven’t gone to school, we have got our tests—we’ve done all of the things which this Government has done. We’ve got vaccinated. We’ve done everything this Government has asked us to do, but now we have come to a point where we are beset with a piece of legislation which is not about saying, “New Zealanders, you have played your part, and now it’s time for the Government to step back and give you back control of your life.” It’s about saying, “We’re going to impose a new set of restrictions, a new set of rules, and to continue to impose and impinge on your freedoms in a significant and substantial way.”

Instead of debating these points and this piece of legislation, this cowardly Government has not even put it out to a select committee. They’re dictating to New Zealanders rather than debating this legislation through a select committee and having the guts, and having the braveness of their convictions, to actually let the public have their say. Instead, we’re having announcements and then we’re having legislation rammed through this Parliament in less than 24 hours, without New Zealanders being able to have their say around what it’s going to do. Instead of giving New Zealanders the tools to make their own decisions around their own health, they are forcing these decisions upon New Zealand by giving themselves massive empowering provisions under this piece of legislation, which will change New Zealanders’ way of life for many, many months, if not years, to come.

We’ve had the divisive language from the Prime Minister, saying, “You can’t get a haircut if you haven’t been vaccinated.” We’ve got the restrictions around funerals and weddings and places of worship, which are highly restrictive, which continue to confuse, cause chaos, and divide New Zealanders. It causes division in our community rather than bringing New Zealanders together. This piece of legislation should be about giving New Zealanders the tools they need to make their own decisions. It should be giving New Zealanders the tools and businesses the tools to say, “If you want to do this with a certificate process, that’s your choice, but the Government is not going to dictate to you and your business how you should operate and what rules and what things you should be doing.” It should be about ensuring that New Zealanders have the vaccinations, the boosters, the rapid antigen testing, the ability to get the therapies if they get sick—those are the things this Government should be doing.

The Government is spending all of its time trying to control and dictate rather than giving the tools to New Zealanders as to how they should be doing. They should be making sure we have the ICU beds. The number of ICU beds in Counties Manukau, where I am from, has gone up by one—one additional bed—since the pandemic started last year. What has this Government been doing in the last 18 months if they can’t even grow the number of ICU beds in Counties Manukau by more than one? That’s an absolute failure, and that is until we even get to the point around human rights considerations, which this Government didn’t even consider when announcing this policy and which it only got advice on yesterday morning, before the legislation came to Parliament in the afternoon.

And that advice was very clear: this advice has been prepared in an extraordinarily short time frame due to the late receipt of a bill that was not in compliance with Cabinet Office guidelines. And it impacts on so many rights and freedoms: the right to refuse to undergo medical treatment, freedom of expression, freedom of peaceful assembly, freedom of association, freedom of movement, freedom from discrimination, the right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure, the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty—all of these substantial rights, and the Government didn’t care until yesterday morning. That is an absolute constitutional outrage, which I think New Zealanders will not look upon lightly.

We live in a free and democratic society. We live in a country where New Zealanders should be debating these issues, not having them dictated to us. And this Government has spent the last 18 months sitting on their laurels rather than actually being prepared for this eventuality. Rather than debating these issues, they are dictating them, and New Zealanders will not look upon this lightly. The National Party does not support this legislation. It will cause chaos, confusion, and division. We do not commend it to the House.

Tēnā koe e te Pīka—thank you. Tēnā tātou e te Whare. I rise to speak to the final reading of the COVID19 Response (Vaccinations) Legislation Bill. As we already outlined last night, just in case you couldn’t hear over Minister Kelvin Davis’ yelling, Te Paati Māori will not be supporting this bill, and our reasons are simple: Te Paati Māori could never support legislation that attacks our mana motuhake through imposing mandates on tangata whenua. We would never support legislation that sidelines Māori leadership in times of crisis, that tramples on our tikanga tangihanga processes, that lumps Māori in with everyone else, leaving us behind, or that intends to enact warrantless searches of our marae. This legislation does not move us forward. It takes tangata whenua back to an era that divided and negatively profiled us.

I refer to the Crown’s convenient amnesia of the history here in Aotearoa. It was only a hundred years ago that we, as tangata whenua, were officially on the brink of extinction, marginalised on the outskirts. To feather the dying pillow of the Māori race then, Government policy framed it to help us die quietly, easing the politicians’ conscience. We were being pushed to the brink of extinction because of disease: the common cold. This was my grandparents’ generation. During my parents’ generation, Māori had to sit on the floor in Māori theatres and were not allowed to see the same hairdressers as Pākehā, and now, today, three generations later, for my mokopuna, we find ourselves similar as their tūpuna were. Rather than feather the pillow this time, though, the Government has determined to adopt a one-size-fits-all approach, knowing health experts warned that something designed for an individual could never fit a collective indigenous people such as tangata whenua, and that is where this Government and this legislation have failed Māori and where this has left us.

As of yesterday, Māori make up the highest number of COVID cases for the 50th consecutive day. We make up the highest number of cases in Aotearoa, surpassing the 3,000 mark. Six Māori have now died from COVID-19. Three of these were men between the ages of 40 and 50. Māori are 3.7 times more likely to catch Delta, 2.3 times more likely to suffer severe sickness and be hospitalised, and 3.1 times more likely to die from Delta. Our health experts, whose advice this Government has consistently ignored, are telling us that we will have 6,400 Māori cases by Christmas. You have willingly unleashed this virus into our communities, knowing that Māori are 20 percent behind the general population, and hearing the heed of our leaders in Tai Tokerau and Tai Rāwhiti to not visit our regions that have low vaccination rates. When one of our foremost public health experts, Dr Rawiri Jansen, left the Government’s pandemic advisory group in April, it was symbolic of what was to come—tangata whenua choosing to opt out of a response programme that sidelines our rangatiratanga, that ignores our needs, and that does not acknowledge our mana motuhake.

This Government has let tangata whenua face the prospect of losing their livelihoods over mandates. We must show aroha to those of our people who don’t trust a public health system that has never turned up in their neighbourhood and that they have suffered from because of the systemic racism that saw this very Government establish a Māori health authority, because, as we have illustrated, these seeds of mistrust were sown generations ago. The trust has not been rebuilt since. When you leave tangata whenua out of the equation, you leave us behind. I’ve been on the front line and heard whānau mistrust of your approach, their mistrust of the public health system that has never ventured into their world but is telling them now what to do. I’ve also seen the opportunities communities and iwi are owning, which you have not included in your traffic light system. How can our people be at the traffic lights when they’re still caught up in the mess of the roadworks you had left when you decided that 70 percent of our population did not matter in your vaccination programme?

This bill is cruel. It will never gain Te Paati Māori support. You have forgotten your tangata whenua. You have forgotten to honour Te Tiriti. Nō reira, e te whānau, kia haumaru te noho, tēnā tātou katoa.

[Therefore, family, stay safe, greetings one and all.]

Fa‘afetai lava, Mr Speaker. Thank you for the opportunity to speak on this third reading of the COVID-19 Response (Vaccinations) Legislation Bill.

This bill will help to reopen safely for our whānau and vulnerable communities. Again, I want to highlight why we are in this position, and that’s because of a successful vaccination campaign. Specifically looking at where I’m from, in Counties Manukau, 92 percent having their first doses, and also 85 percent having their second doses. So I just want to say a huge thankyou for all the mahi from all our health providers, our nurses, our social workers—all the wraparound services—in order to help that rate go up.

I always want to look at freedoms. I know everyone wants those freedoms to come about, and I know for sure that my electorate of Takanini is also looking forward to those greater freedoms. But we must do it with safety in mind, especially when we look to our vulnerable communities. That’s why I support this bill to the House. Thank you.

I rise on behalf of National, and as the member of Parliament for North Shore, on the COVID-19 Response (Vaccinations) Legislation Bill, third reading. National opposes this bill. I want to recognise Chris Bishop, the Hon Scott Simpson, and Simeon Brown, and all the members on this side of the House for their valiant effort, I think, in terms of articulating to this Government what a shambles of a process this has been in terms of that. I think we will get into a little bit of the detail in terms of the process that we have been through to get to this point, but I say, if it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right, and today and last night are examples that are completely against that principle.

This is a bill that has been rushed through without due or proper consultation. “Constitutional disgrace” is how it’s being described from commentators outside of this party. Multiple and major issues are within this legislation, and this is being passed through with that sense of urgency, without the right level of consultation and engagement from the many stakeholders around this country that could have inputted, could have added value, and could have made this better.

This bill is being described as complex by the Minister, but also, in the same breath, articulated that it provides greater clarity. Well, I’m sorry, those two things don’t go in the same. The reality is that a bill that is being seen by many New Zealanders at the moment as something that is very complex is exactly the wrong thing that we need right at this critical point. Auckland has been in lockdown for 99 days, and as an Auckland MP representing my community—and I recognise the other MPs here around the country—it has been a significant burden on them. This bill will introduce a traffic light system which will bring further pain to those people because of a lack of certainty and lack of direction.

This bill impacts every single Kiwi in this country. It has implications on their rights, and we have been through a process that does not allow them due consideration to input into that process, and that is a disgrace. We have heard that there has been no regulatory impact statement, no impact analysis undertaken in terms of costs and benefits and implications around that. We’ve discussed the implications around the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act this morning, and we heard some feedback during the committee stage in terms of that, but I don’t think it went at all far enough in terms of providing any comfort around the issues and the complexities that this bill has. And I want to point out Christopher Penk, who raised some significant issues around the court system through that committee stage. I think that, as a small example, highlights the multitude of issues in what is a bucket with multiple holes that is leaking across the place.

The human rights commissioner was quoted, and it has been raised multiple times, in terms of having grave concerns. I mean, those are not light words. They are not sort of, you know, “It’s OK. I have a few issues.” Grave concerns. And that is because of the urgency with which this bill is being pushed through and the implications, most importantly, on the rights of New Zealanders—rights that this House should do everything in our power to protect. We have failed New Zealanders in terms of protecting their rights, because this bill has been rushed through this House without due consultation.

The second aspect of this bill that I want to cover is the fact that this is unnecessary legislation. I covered this in terms of the words that we spoke through in the second reading and during the committee stage, but it sets a framework for a traffic light system that is not necessary. I referred to National’s plan that we articulated a couple of months ago—detailed plan and considerations around the actions that this country should have taken in order to avoid being in the positions that we are faced with today. A system that is not necessary—we have articulated that, at 85 percent vaccination level or 1 December, New Zealand should be in a position to begin to open up, but what we’ve seen from the other side of the House is a flip-flopping in terms of where we are around that position. This bill does nothing in order to provide any level of confidence that they have a plan, that they have any idea in terms of what is coming forward.

That is the single-biggest issue that businesses within my electorate of the North Shore are crying out for—they’re crying out for certainty. It is not a complex thing to do—providing guidance, providing an indication of what that future looks like. They are asking for something very simple; they are asking for certainty in terms of what their future looks like. Why are they asking for that, in terms of that certainty? Because they are running out of cash, and for many of the businesses in my community, they have run out of cash. This bill impacts on all of those business owners. I want to just put a little reflection in terms of that.

I also want to acknowledge some of the comments made by my colleague and year group member Nicola Grigg in terms of the contribution around other places outside of Auckland. She referred to the impacts in Christchurch and her home electorate of Selwyn. I think that just, again, reinforced the fact of the wide level of implication of this specific bill on the members of our communities across this country. It is not just Auckland that is impacted by this Government’s lack of plan and lack of certainty; it is everyone across this country. The real disappointment is that, while COVID-19 is a complex area to manage, it’s difficult to predict and difficult to control—I acknowledge that. We all acknowledge that. No one is arguing. But this bill fails to deal with those complexities. It tries to be specific in areas where we should be able to stand back and say, “Actually, you know what? Businesses have the capability, experience, foresight, and attitude to make their own way in terms of the future and be able to cut their own path.” We are not trusting Kiwis, and that’s why this bill, again, has failed.

We are in this position with this legislation because this Government has been complacent. They have failed to take the action at the time in which it was required—months ago. I’ve articulated we were planning around two months ago, nearly, that we had articulated recommendations. We are still waiting for actions. We seem to be myopically focused on vaccination, but we’re not even getting moving around the treatment aspects that are there, and the other public health considerations. There are three elements of managing COVID, and we are still focused squarely on vaccination. Well, I can give you a prediction in terms of this bill. In the beginning part of next year, we won’t be talking about vaccination anymore. We’ll be talking about why we have not ordered those COVID treatment drugs and why they are not in the country now, and why they’re not being prescribed to those 2,000 to 3,000 Aucklanders who are in self-isolation right now with COVID-19. Why have they not got access to that medication to treat their illnesses? That is a failure by this Government, and it is a failure that we will reflect on in the early part of next year and say, “That was another example of where this Government was asleep at the wheel.” They are taking a long lunch every single day, and they are failing to take the action required, and that is another disappointment from this bill.

The implications of what I’ve outlined in my short amount of time this morning and this afternoon were really about who will pay the price for this. Who feels the implications of the failure to deliver and the failure of accountability by this Government? Well, I can tell you who feels that. It is the businesses within our electorate. It is the hospitality sector. Earlier this week, or actually as of today, it is still all those hair salons and barbers across this country. It is the multitude of businesses that are trying to get across that Auckland border to trade and to do that. And outside of Auckland, obviously, it is the many people across this country that are just trying to get on with their lives. This Government is set on introducing complexity in regards to a traffic light system that isn’t even required, and that is such a waste.

National will seek, via the Health Committee, to put a motion in front to undertake an immediate post-enactment review of the COVID-19 Response (Vaccinations) Legislation Bill, including a full public submission inquiry. Listening to the Speaker’s comments in terms of the dissatisfaction that he noted before he left the Chair around this bill, I expect that all parties across the House will support those movements. This bill has real-world consequences and, for people, they will suffer because the planning has not been done, and the planning has been done on the fly. National opposes this bill.

Kia orana, Madam Speaker; thank you. I rise to take the final call on third reading. Just reflecting on some of the contributions in the committee of the whole House, yes, this does allow for the existence of vaccination certificates, but also confirmation—in the committee—around the access to life-preserving services being regardless of vaccination status.

The bill clearly has a focus on vaccination. We’ve heard contributions from members opposite that suggest that some vaccination opportunities actually are only available from 9 to 5. Well, we know that that is far from the truth. Actually, I find the commentary about general failure coming from members opposite to be absolutely disrespectful—disrespectful to all the hard work that health and community providers are doing to increase vaccination rates. They’re working hard around the clock to do their bit to support members of our Māori, our Pasifika community to make a difference.

This bill will allow greater freedoms as we transition to the new framework. It gives certainty. I commend it to the House.