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 (Protection Framework) Amendment Order (No 8) 2022 (SL 2022/143) and

COVID-19 Public Health Response (Protection Framework) Amendment Order (No 9) 2022 (SL 2022/165).

It’s a pleasure to speak in this House as the new Minister for COVID-19 Response and, in particular, to follow that contribution from the previous Minister. I also want to take the time to thank him for the work he did over the course of his time in his roles, first, as Minister of Health and then as Minister for COVID-19 Response, to keep our country safe, to balance a strong health response with the rights of people in our population, as well as the need for us to maintain social and economic activity. The success of New Zealand’s COVID-19 response has been, in large part, due to his tireless effort.

As the House is now well accustomed to, Parliament is required to approve orders I or the former Minister have signed, within 90 days of them being signed. Today’s motion covers two different orders.

First, the COVID-19 Public Health Response (Protection Framework) Amendment Order (No 8) 2022 amends the COVID-19 Public Health Response (Protection Framework) Order 2021. This order amends the face-covering requirements in relation to voting and ensures that a person cannot be denied entry into a voting place on vaccination grounds. It also clarifies several technical matters, including excluding all sports from the definition of a “close-proximity business”, and clarifies the meaning of “gathering” to people who are a group in a defined space. I thank the Regulations Review Committee for its consideration of this order, and I note they raised no concerns.

The second order we are confirming today is the COVID-19 Public Health Response (Protection Framework) Amendment Order (No 9) 2022. This order amends the COVID-19 Public Health Response (Protection Framework) Order 2021. It clarifies that the 2-metre distancing rule applies between entertainers and their audience and creates an exemption process for a person with a physical or mental illness, condition, or disability to apply for an exemption pass, to be issued by the director-general, making them exempt from the face-covering requirements under the principal order.

I understand that the Regulations Review Committee wrote to the former Minister, who clarified some of the questions they raised, and I can briefly cover those responses. I am informed, in relation to the proposed enforcement of certain clauses, the former Minister confirmed that breaches of the clauses are intended to be enforced under section 26 of the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act 2020 and are not the subject of infringement notice offences. This is consistent with the approach taken to the enforcement of the rules against the misuse of COVID-19 vaccine certificates. I further understand it was reinforced that enforcement action is likely to be exercised only when exemption cards are misused in organised, systemic, or serious cases.

The committee also considered it was unclear whether a breach of clause 106A(7) results in liability under the Act, the Crimes Act, or both. I am informed the former Minister explained that a declaration required by an appellant for a face mask exemption and referred to in clause 106A(4)(a) is not a declaration in the form provided for in section 9 of the Oaths and Declarations Act 1957. Therefore, section 111 of the Crimes Act is not available to enforce false declarations.

I don’t want to take up too much of the House’s time today. As the new Minister, I am very much aware there is much more work to do in this portfolio to ensure our ongoing response, as well as being prepared for whatever the future may bring. Our response will continue to be based on public health advice and will continue to adapt to any new challenges or changes that we may face. I look forward to working with you all and continuing the legacy of New Zealand’s successful response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of ACT in opposition to this motion to ratify these orders. I think it’s worth looking at what they actually say, in order to see why that is. You know, the first, the COVID-19 Public Health Response (Protection Framework) Amendment Order (No 8) 2022—it says, “Primarily, this order relaxes some of the restrictions that usually apply to a person when that person is accessing premises in order to vote in an election of a member of Parliament”. I think it shows what a conflict there is between the continuation of a COVID-19 response that makes little sense, that does not have coherent goals atop it, and does not have good cost-benefit analysis or really logical common sense behind it, and trying to get on with ordinary life, including doing things such as voting in elections that are essential to New Zealand’s way of life. The fact that the Government, enabled by the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act, was required to pass a special exemption in order to ensure that people could vote in an election, I think shows what a conflict there is. And that’s why, while in theory this order is a good thing, actually the whole regime needs to go.

The second order being considered here—and let’s just call it No. 9—says that this order has made “two general changes”. The first was “to clarify the exemption from the face-covering rules for entertainers, provided that entertainers comply with the two-metre physical distancing rule. Previously, entertainers were required to maintain physical distancing from all other persons who are not fellow entertainers in the same performance. Clauses 23 and 23A have been amended so the two-metre physical distancing is only required from the audience.” This is New Zealand in 2022: the Government is making rules so that when you are in a band or perhaps at a dance—I wonder if a certain TV show might have benefited from this rule—you could not wear a mask and be within 2 metres of another person—

💬 Damien Smith: Eden Park.

—because previously that wasn’t allowed. I’m not sure—I’ve just heard the member say, “Eden Park.” I’m not sure if rugby players or netball players, or any other sportspeople, for that matter, count as entertainers. But, nevertheless, we’ve got a Government making orders to clarify that you have to wear a mask, but not if you’re an entertainer; if you’re an entertainer, you cannot wear a mask, but you’ve got to be 2 metres from the audience, but you can be less than two metres from other performers. I mean, that’s what this is actually about.

That’s what this Government has been focused on—a level of micro-management behind which there is no cost-benefit analysis; simply ordering people around for the sheer sake of it, with no coherent policy objectives being pursued by this particular law. This just has to stop. New Zealand needs to move on. New Zealanders need to stop being micro-managed in so many different ways by a Government that doesn’t even know what its true objectives with these policies are.

“The second change is the creation of a scheme to provide passes which exempt a person from both the face-covering rule and the medical-grade face-covering rule. Clause 7 inserts three new provisions into Part 4 of the principal order, which deals with exemptions. Exemption passes may be sought on the basis” of, first, as a physical or mental illness or condition or disability that makes face-coverings unsuitable. So, just to be clear, the Government said if you are a person who has other health concerns, perhaps a physical or mental health concern, then maybe in the interests of balancing all aspects of New Zealanders’ welfare—that’s not a bad idea—you can get an exemption from the mask-wearing requirement in certain circumstances.

And then they forgot that they hadn’t exempted all types of masks, so the Government had to make another order, to make it clear that, actually, we are making the exemptions for people that have those needs, for people who have all types of masks—medical and non-medical. Again, I know—I don’t want to labour it, but I think the point needs to be made: this is New Zealand in 2022. This is the level of micro-management with which the Government has indulged itself.

And yet, when it comes to the really big stuff—like, did we get the timing right of dropping managed isolation and quarantine, and reconnecting with the world? No; missed that one by four months. Did we get the ad spend for getting people to have COVID boosters right? No; carried on doing that even when it wasn’t working, wasted millions of dollars. Did we, for example, manage to order the vaccines on time? Or did we have a whole year of the Prime Minister saying there’s greatness in our lateness and saying it’s really a good thing we’re letting the rest of the world get vaccinated first, only to have Auckland locked down for months as a result of not having those vaccines on time, and then have the former COVID-19 Minister go on the TV over the weekend and say, “Oh, sorry Auckland; I think I might have locked you down a bit longer than really necessary, and, in hindsight, we could have let you out earlier.”, totally insulated from the pain and suffering and frustration and anguish that people in my city have felt? And, boy, that shows up when you’re there. But, of course, the Prime Minister didn’t visit Auckland for three months, while it was locked down, and I think that’s partly why the reality that people experienced still is not real to this Government and they can make such flippant statements.

These orders tell us a lot about the Government’s response. They are micro-managing the little stuff. They’ve become obsessed with it. But on the really big calls, the questions that actually matter for the welfare of New Zealanders, they’ve got it wrong.

And, just while I’ve got the opportunity, I’d say to the COVID-19 Minister: I think it would be very helpful if the Minister investigated, using the recently passed Medicines Amendment Act 2022, to enable children between six months and five years to have a dose of Comirnaty. Now, I’m no lawyer, but my reading of it is that that is possible, and I know that there are people in the Epsom electorate and beyond who would like to have that ability. And my appeal to the Minister: if she does want to do something useful with the various laws that have been given to her by this Parliament, then she should use that section of the Medicines Act that we amended recently to help those parents and those young New Zealanders who wish to get immunity from vaccination. She should stop focusing on the micro-management of whether or not you have to wear a mask if you’re an entertainer—can you be within 2 metres of the audience or other performers, or what the deal is there. We should actually start focusing on the bigger issues that make a difference to people’s welfare, and ditch this parody of lawmaking where we are constantly trying to micro-manage increasingly Lilliputian matters in New Zealanders’ lives.

With that, the ACT Party opposes these orders as a matter of principle. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Members, it’s come time for me to leave the Chair for the dinner break. The House will resume at 7 p.m.

Sitting suspended from 5.57 p.m. to 7 p.m.

Kia ora and thank you, Mr Speaker. I hope you had a good dinner break. Before we had our dinner break, the Leader of the ACT Party was talking about how he was lost in the minutiae and failed to see the bigger picture. I, for one, was not surprised at all. But these COVID orders come to the House every now and then, and I’d like to acknowledge the work of the Regulations Review Committee; they get into the detail of these things to make sure that it makes sense.

Previous speakers have covered what this particular set of COVID orders will entail; some of them around the lifting of protections around entertainers, some of them around mask exemptions, and so on and so forth. But if we’re going to make sense of the minutiae, we’ve really got to take a step back and actually look at the bigger picture and give that line of sight. What does the plan look like? I mean, what are we doing within the certain set of circumstances that we have? I guess, with the last couple of years, it has been a bumpy ride. We’ve had ups and downs, the borders have opened and closed and now they’re open again as well. But the minutiae and the detail, it makes sense when you have plans in place.

The Green Party supports access to democracy as well as the need to protect those with valid reasons to be exempt from mask requirements, including people with disabilities. However, this needs to be done safely in the context of a robust system of protections to reduce the spread of the virus through our communities, especially those already facing considerable inequalities as we come into the winter period—this includes, for example, ventilation standards for all buildings to improve indoor air quality, and particularly within our schools as well. There are a number of parents, grandparents, aunties and uncles, mums and dads all around the House as well, and I’ve certainly noticed—and I’m sure other people have as well—how we’ll put that extra pressure on our schools, and on our teachers and principals and school staff as well, to not only handle that workload of being teachers but also be, by circumstance, de facto healthcare workers as well. I think it’s really important when we do this stuff that we always have those things in mind.

While the orders being discussed today may not in themselves be of significant concern, they contribute to a health response that we feel is no longer being backed by Government regulation that meets the challenges at hand. Unfortunately, this is not a position that the Green Party can support. We have supported these in the past, but without that vision, without that clear plan about what we’re going to do to support in particular our schools, we need to get that into place.

So what the Green Party wants is: to see the needs of Māori and Pasifika peoples and disabled communities put at the heart of the ongoing pandemic process. I say that in the context of the recent work from the Ministry of Health on the Delta response—lessons that I hope that we have all learnt and have continued to learn and then put in place, in terms of the implementation. We need to empower Māori leadership. We need to empower Pasifika leadership. We need to listen to our disabled communities and our immunocompromised whānau. I reflect on how at the beginning of the year we had incredibly loud voices from certain sections of the community where it made it very difficult to hear those voices that we needed to listen to. People were banging on the business drum. We had all that business happening on the Parliament lawn, and it was incredibly distracting when we should have been focusing on our most vulnerable whānau. The current response falls short of this, and the further loosening of these protections, restrictions in some ways—some of the changes that are being discussed today could be harmful, particularly in the face of a potential winter spike of respiratory illnesses and future variant risks.

I am mindful that we now have a new Minister for COVID-19 Response as well, and the Greens would like the opportunity to sit down with the Minister to discuss all the things that we’re hearing from our different communities about making sure that we move back to this notion of solidarity between the team of 5 million. I’ve seen the shift, and I don’t know if you have, Mr Speaker, where previously we talked about the team of 5 million—it wasn’t just about ourselves as individuals; it was about us as communities and taking care of all of those, particularly our most vulnerable—now we’ve gone to the team of business as usual. And so I think we do need to take a step back and to actually get that in place as well. I’ve seen it in a number of spaces, including in the media.

We also urge the Minister to implement a COVID-19 action plan for schools. Now, our tamariki are growing and learning alongside severe threats to their wellbeing and to that of their families as well. The communities need to have that expert-led plan to support our children’s access to education, protect our tamariki, school staff, and their families from COVID-19 and other winter respiratory infections. So I’m looking forward to the opportunity to be able to sit down and discuss the things that we’ve heard, as the Greens, with the Minister to see if we can get a bit more clarity—well, not a bit more clarity; a lot more clarity—around what the next steps are and to then get us back to focusing on the team of 5 million, focusing on Māori and Pasifika leadership, supporting our immunocompromised whānau and disabled whānau as well. Thank you, Mr Speaker.