Simmonds PennyPENNY SIMMONDS (National—Invercargill): Thank you Madam Speaker. I rise to speak in opposition to the COVID-19 Public Health Response Amendment Bill (No 2) at the second reading.The Health Committee which I am a member of heard a number of submissions in a very short space of time over the consultation period for this amendment bill. We heard a number of people speak very pessimistically about the signals given with the extension of the expiry date of the Act by a year from May 2022 out to May 2023. The concerns that lockdowns managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) alert levels etc. might extend through to May 2023 were certainly a very sobering thought for many. We also heard concerns about the strengthening of the infringement regime. We heard worries that the significant increases might impact on those who could least afford it. And we also heard concerns about the enforcement of stopping vehicles at checkpoints and how that might also continue on to 2023.National opposes this bill not only because of the things that were brought up in the submissions but also because fundamentally this bill is already out of date. It was out of date in September when it was referred to the Health Committee. All throughout the bill was talk of the elimination strategy which by that time was clearly out of date. Further matters that have come in since that time in terms of a new traffic-light system changes in MIQ and hopefully more fundamental changes than are in at the moment a vaccine certificate regime—none of these things are being accounted for in the elimination strategy and in this amendment bill. What it shows is that this Government did not use the advantages that this country had in preparing for Delta and moving into this suppression phase. So the bill was written around a world in which elimination was the aim of the Government. We've been left scrambling in this country over the last few months with rushed announcements announcements about announcements changes of systems and general confusion for all involved. The bill's been predicated on a situation where we have to have highly restrictive border settings continuing through into the foreseeable future all at a time when countries all across the world are opening up their borders. We only need to look across the Ditch at Australia and see opening up not only to Australians coming home but to international students who are able to come in without MIQ if they are fully vaccinated. In the meantime we are still looking at MIQ where our fully vaccinated returning New Zealanders are having to go into isolation while out in the community those with COVID are at home isolating. National believes that we should now be looking at legislation which dismantles MIQ for fully vaccinated travellers. We should be looking at pulling down the borders not legislation that is continuing on an outdated time in this COVID recovery.We heard submissions particularly around clause 7 which enables COVID-19 orders—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Order! [Member in the Chamber not socially distancing] Thank you.PENNY SIMMONDS: Sorry Madam Speaker. ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Penny Simmonds.PENNY SIMMONDS: Thank you Madam Speaker. We heard a considerable number of submissions around clause 7 which allows COVID-19 orders to be made which requisition testing consumables and resources from private labs. We also heard the situation in Australia where right from the start of the COVID-19 pandemic there were private and public partnership meetings to ensure that the Government knew about the inventory that was held right across both public and private laboratories they knew when there would be pinch points identified for resources and they knew what alternatives could be considered for testing. But in New Zealand that didn't happen. So we didn't have that sharing of information that private-public partnership sharing right from the start and so now we see a clause which will enable the Government to take that testing equipment when they need it from private laboratories. We also need to look at the Auckland situation and understand that the Auckland situation is entirely due to this Government's handling of the pandemic over the last year. The slow vaccination roll-out and the slow process to get vaccination certificates are fairly and squarely in the hands of this Government. It must be heartbreaking for Auckland businesses and Auckland individuals to know that they are in this situation because this Government did not do its job. People are sick of it and they are angry.I have heard people up and down the country—Hon Member: Ha ha!PENNY SIMMONDS: —and I see the member across the aisle laughing and I suspect that there are many people in Auckland who find that incredibly disrespectful. People are angry because they are sick and tired of this Government telling them what to do telling them that they can't run their businesses telling them that they can't move out of their regions when this Government didn't do what it should have done when this Government did not do its own job but instead they want to tell other people how to do theirs.I can understand why this Government doesn't see the issues for businesses. They haven't run businesses. They don't know how difficult it is to deal with cash flow. They don't know how difficult it is to pay wage bills or meet tax bills. And they simply don't care. They sit across the other side and laugh when we bring that up. It is an insult to those people in Auckland who are risking and losing so much. We have heard of businesses where they have put all their reserves into trying to keep their businesses going and they still know nothing about when they are going to be able to open. I hesitate to talk about businesses in the South but I do it in the context of saying that even at level 2 hospitality and tourism businesses are struggling to make ends meet. So I fear for Auckland businesses that they are hoping they will get an incredible bump when they finally can start operating but if it's anything like what we have seen it will be a very slow and hard crawl out of their situation. I also want to touch on the lost health opportunities or the costs to our other health services: the tens of thousands of operations that have been cancelled; the undiagnosed cancer that is still there it just hasn't been diagnosed yet. I think about our head of obstetrics at Invercargill hospital and the ridiculous situation we were in with that person who was so critical to our maternity care in Southland three times having to try to get his MIQ places to get back. The costs across our health sector—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): The member's time has expired.