Tuiono TeanauTEANAU TUIONO (Green) (remote): 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.