COVID-19 Orders — Approval

I move, That this House approve the following orders made under the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act 2020:

COVID-19 Public Health Response (Vaccinations) Amendment Order (No 3) 2021

COVID-19 Public Health Response (Air Border) Order (No 2) Amendment Order (No 11) 2021

COVID-19 Public Health Response (Required Testing) Amendment Order (No 5) 2021

COVID-19 Public Health Response (Air Border) Order (No 2) Amendment Order (No 12) 2021

COVID-19 Public Health Response (Isolation and Quarantine) Amendment Order (No 4) 2021

COVID-19 Public Health Response (Required Testing and Vaccinations) Amendment Order 2021

COVID-19 Public Health Response (Isolation and Quarantine and Maritime Border) Amendment Order 2021

COVID-19 Public Health Response (Vaccinations) Amendment Order (No 4) 2021

COVID-19 Public Health Response (Air Border) Order (No 2) Amendment Order (No 13) 2021.

This is the last one for 2020. There have been several such motions in the House this year to confirm orders made under the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act. I do want to begin this particular contribution with a very genuine word of thanks to the members of the Regulations Review Committee, who have done a very thorough job of scrutinising every one of the orders that’s been made under that Act. They provided some incredibly constructive feedback and suggestions for how those orders can be improved, some of which have resulted in revisions to the orders, and some actually resulted in some changes to the primary legislation under which those orders are made. I do want to thank the committee for the way that it has engaged with that.

Just to very quickly—I’m not going to run through all of the orders that are covered by this particular confirmation, but they do cover a lot of things, from required vaccinations through to changes to the air border order, which makes it a requirement to be fully vaccinated to come into New Zealand if you are not a citizen. There are changes that are being made to the required testing and the frequency of testing that people need to undertake. Changes have been made to the quarantine-free travel arrangements with our Pacific neighbours, particularly with the Cook Islands, Niue, Samoa, Tokelau, Tonga, and Vanuatu.

There have been changes made to the maritime border order in terms of defining the amount of time that people need to isolate on board ships before being able to come abroad. There are some changes to the required time frames for vaccination, particularly around Fire and Emergency New Zealand. That covers the main thrust of the changes. The rest deal with relatively, I think, technical issues around the required vaccination requirements.

I do acknowledge, as I always have done in issuing these orders, that it’s an enormous responsibility that I have as the Minister who has to sign them. I think this is a very important part of the process where Parliament confirms those orders, because they are made in a relatively unusual way, in the sense that they are scrutinised after they have been made, rather than before, unlike most primary legislation, where it gets thoroughly scrutinised before it is made. So I want to thank members of the House for the way they have approached these orders throughout the course of the year. This is the last one for this year, although I have to tell members that there’ll be another confirmation motion on either the first or the second day back after the summer holidays for them to look forward to.

But finally, can I just take a moment to thank all those who were involved in both putting the orders together and implementing the orders. The Parliamentary Counsel Office often have to turn these orders around overnight, where something’s happened urgently, and we need to put the orders in place. I acknowledge the huge pressure they have been under this year, as a result, largely, of COVID-19 - related demands, among other things. But I really want to thank them and put on record my thanks to them for the way that they have handled this. I also want to thank those at the front line who have to implement these orders, again, often at quite short notice, and thank them for their work, their commitment to our COVID-19 strategy, and wish everybody involved a very merry Christmas.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Can I echo the comments of the Minister for COVID-19 Response and just note that this is a critical part of the rule of law and I think it’s proven to be an excellent exercise. Can I also just thank the Regulations Review Committee—which I was sporadically a member of at moments of this year—for their hard work. It’s one of those committees where it’s really a geek’s committee, I think it would be fair to say; lawyers love it and the good news is that Chris Penk, who is an excellent lawyer, is the chair of the committee. We also have Rachel Brooking on the committee, who has made an outstanding start to her parliamentary career examining the various orders. It’s a committee that works in a bipartisan way and does seek to uphold the rule of law and consider the vires nature of the various orders that the Minister makes. He makes a lot of them and we’re looking forward to examining them when we come back in the new year. We don’t have any particular objection to many of the orders. The Regulations Review Committee has done a good job in examining whether or not they comply with the primary legislation.

I do want to flag for the House that we have significant concerns about the COVID-19 Public Health Response (Isolation and Quarantine and Maritime Border) Amendment Order 2021. This is the one that came into effect on 16 November. The significance of this order is that it lowered the amount of time that people had to spend in managed isolation down from 14 days to seven days. The point I want to make to the House is that there is no reason in our view—the National Party—that we shouldn’t be looking to extend that order even further. Managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) has become a lottery of human misery, it is wilful State-sponsored cruelty on an industrial scale. Right now, we have 42 active cases of COVID in MIQ out of around 4,000 rooms, and 2,000 people with COVID—or their close contacts—isolating in the community. It’s a real perversion of Government priorities to have people who are fully vaccinated, with no COVID, taking up quarantine rooms that could be being used by people who are currently in the community with COVID. And as I revealed yesterday in the House, since 23 August, from Australia, there have been zero cases of fully vaccinated travellers testing positive for COVID in New Zealand; not a single person—zero. But yet this order means that someone coming from Australia has to spend seven days in MIQ, plus an additional three days in self-isolation, and have a polymerase chain reaction test before they can go into the community.

So our view is that we have the risk weighting completely around the wrong way. When the risk indicates you take a different approach, then the Government should take a different approach. We believe that there will be people sitting at empty Christmas tables this Christmas as a result of this order. It should go far further than what the Government has done so far. The Prime Minister likes to refer to these people as “cumulative risks”; actually, they’re Kiwi citizens who have legal rights under the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act.

MIQ is legally dubious. We know that the Government has had legal advice to the effect that the MIQ regime is probably inconsistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990, in particular the right for New Zealand citizens to return to New Zealand. The Bolton case has demonstrated that and there’s a legal case that will be heard in the new year, and it will be very interesting to see the outcome of that. Our view in relation to legality is that this order should go further than what it has done already and shorten down that MIQ time, preferably down to zero days altogether.

So with those brief remarks, thank you to the Minister for bringing these orders to the House and we approve them, other than the one I’ve just mentioned.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of ACT for the first time to oppose the adoption of these orders—at least, the motion that the reports be accepted. We’ve been on quite a journey on this issue, initially supporting the first reading of the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act, believing it important that we have a process where the rule of law makes New Zealanders’ rights and responsibilities clear even as the Government needs to respond, sometimes rapidly, to a changing public health situation. We entered into this in good faith, but what we have watched over the year and a bit since that initial vote is a Government’s response to COVID-19 that has become increasingly chaotic, inconsistent, and disproportionate to risk.

Just to take one example of that, there are vaccine mandates for some workplaces here that do not allow the alternative of testing. Now, the Government has decided that, for travel through certain internal borders, the mandate is vax or test. Air New Zealand, a major commercial operation that flies people all over the country, have said their requirement is vax or test. Initially, for the education sector, the requirement was vax or test. Now these orders say that, for certain jobs, the only way to reassure people around you is if you are vaccinated, rather than tested negative. And it’s not even clear which of those, at various points of vaccine fade, will truly be safer.

We have heard from other members already about the total lack of risk proportionality in the air border orders that are put in place that require people to isolate for long periods of time when they return to New Zealand, even seven days. And, again, that’s totally out of proportion to the risks that the Government is willing to take on COVID-19 in other circumstances. For example, we now know there are hundreds, if not thousands, of people with COVID-19—that the Government knows have COVID-19 because it tested them and they were positive—isolating at home, but we still require New Zealanders, if they’re lucky, to come and get a managed isolation and quarantine spot and isolate for seven days in a hotel room. Many won’t have that chance and will find themselves trapped overseas, virtually being tortured by a rollercoaster of changing expectations on behalf of the Government.

At the same time, to give one example, there are youth hostels that normally have 30,000 people sleeping in them each night that are ready to start isolating people on education visas and skilled work visas that could be returning to New Zealand and isolating there. But they’re completely empty and they’re going out of business by the mass. We’re paying those costs while right next door, in Australia, the universities, the schools that ply their trade in international education are welcoming students, are welcoming skilled workers across the border, making sure that their economy is producing valuable goods and services for their people to consume—to counteract the inflation New Zealand experiences as too much money from the Reserve Bank and Treasury chase after too few goods, raising the cost of living for every single New Zealander.

Then there’s the question of how the Government has used the power it has to control the movement of New Zealanders around this country and enforce those rules. As a Parliament, when we started out with this COVID-19 Public Health Response Act, we gave the Government the power to act nimbly in a changing public health situation with the right legal framework, and what has been the experience of a simple concept, which is analysing the costs and benefits and risks of Aucklanders leaving the city to travel throughout New Zealand? What is the chance of somebody who is not vaccinated in Auckland leaving the city, actually harms somebody outside? The Government hasn’t calculated that. And, at various times, they’ve said that, when people leave the city, every car will be stopped—then “Some cars will be stopped.”

Then maybe, at one point, there was going to be a special time that you would be allowed to drive up State Highway 1! And then they said, Chris Hipkins said, “Only the Police will be able to stop people and check their status and where they’re going.” Then they said, “Actually, it will be enforcement officers.” Then they said, “It will be the Police that initiate them.” Then the Police said, “Actually, after discussion with some of the enforcement officers, we’ve decided what the details of these checkpoints will be.” This is absolute chaos despite the power this Parliament gave the Government to make rules, and into that void of chaos have stepped activists who don’t represent Northland, who don’t represent Māori, who don’t represent iwi—and we know that because they stood for Parliament in Te Tai Tokerau and were rejected by the voters—now bullying the Police into setting up checkpoints that will create more chaos, filling the void left by this Government’s indecision and inability to use the legislative power that we gave it as a Parliament to use these kinds of orders.

That is why this Government no longer deserves the power to operate this way. It’s not doing proper cost-benefit analysis. It’s not weighing up the risks and all of the costs that New Zealanders face. It is not allowing New Zealand to be competitive in a global context. All it is doing is behaving like a tired, weary Government that has lost the initiative, that is watching costs go up, that is separating families at Christmas, and that is creating confusion and eventually constitutional problems as it’s no longer clear who is really deciding what Police operations are when people try to drive up the road. That is a total failure to use this legislative framework that this Parliament gave the Government in good faith to use, and that is why, against that backdrop of increasingly chaotic and disastrous COVID management, the ACT Party cannot support this motion for these orders. This Government’s initiative at managing COVID is out of time. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Kia ora e te Māngai, ki a koutou katoa. It’s a pleasure to stand in general support of these COVID orders, which, of course, are already in effect. We note the hard work of the Regulations Review Committee in preparing this report—thank you very much.

I want to comment briefly on just a few of these things: number one, around managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ). These orders set the vaccination requirements and exemptions for incoming travellers. These particular orders go back to on or before 12 December, so we’re already moving into a space, I guess, that we’ll be getting the orders for next year. Most importantly, though, it enables people to stay in MIQ for seven days, so this is a big deal.

I’m hoping that means that if we’re halving the time, we can double the amount of people that are coming through. I really feel for our whānau who are trying to get home and have struggled so much, trying to match flights with vacancies in MIQ and are just figuring out how this all works. I feel for the whānau who are still separated in this country and are trying to get their whānau here. Along with my colleagues from National and ACT, yesterday we accepted a petition from Grounded Kiwis, and shout-out to Global Greens and to our other parties and their international bodies who are in contact with our people trying to get here.

As I mentioned then, we’re restructuring our health system to avoid the postcode lottery that exists here. But we’re, effectively, running that for the people who aren’t here and we can do better, and we should.

In education, we notice quite a few things coming in around there, particularly around allowing schools to operate in person without the normal distancing requirements, but making sure there are other things in place. We’re hoping that our schools can be fitted with proper air filters, and just making sure that we do all the protections possible for our tamariki, for our taiohi, and especially for our five- to-11-year-olds, who cannot yet be vaccinated.

A quick point about the Pacific Islanders being able to come here with quarantine-free travel, particularly Samoa, Tonga, Tokelau, and Vanuatu: they’re specified because of our country’s strong connection with them. They supply Recognised Seasonal Employer scheme workers for us, and they’re free from COVID in their countries. We just wanted to strongly recommend that the country look very soon at making those arrangements with other Pacific Islands. They often will transit through those countries, but as much support as we can give to them, with them trying to grow their economies, and also connect back with their whānau who are living here.

Finally, when people ask where did the rules come from to allow the vax mandates for health and disability workers and those in education, this is the bill—one of these in here—that made it happen. It also applies to corrections workers, and we were interested in that. We thought it was a weird exemption that although the mandates apply to corrections workers, for some reason they don’t apply to people working in police cells or court cells. We just thought that people who are in custody in those cells should be afforded the same protection and peace of mind as people who are in custody in jail.

It may prove to be auspicious that the last day of Parliament coincides with the relaxing of the Auckland border. I’m really happy for everybody who is able to travel home, especially to see whānau and reconnect across the country. That connection is so important for our health and wellbeing; just please do it safely. Be really aware that when you’re going into low-vaccination areas, they’re going to be wary of travellers coming in, so just be respectful. When you’re going into shops, be respectful to the people who are serving you. If you’re going to argue with the Government, continue sending us the letters and the emails, but don’t hassle the 15-year-old who’s just giving you your food.

Nō reira, ngā mihi o te wā ki a koutou katoa. Season’s greetings to you all. This year has been a wild ride, and I hope you all get a good rest and come back next year, ready to keep changing the world, one select committee and one law at a time. Kia ora.

I think Mr Penk might want to take a point of order.

Point of order, Mr Speaker. Just to clarify—I seek to confirm that I stated or at least intended to state 33 votes opposed for National.

I thought that the speech indicated the other direction but if there’s been a—of course, we’ll take the whip’s word on it.

Motion agreed to.

Orders approved.