Woodhouse MichaelCOVID-19 RESPONSE (FURTHER MANAGEMENT MEASURES) LEGISLATION BILLSecond ReadingDebate resumed.Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): Thank you Mr Speaker. Can I firstly thank the Minister Chris Hipkins for his acknowledgment not of me but actually of the committee's work. Before I go into the details of that I want to just segue a little bit away into something else that's been going on during the lockdown and which is relevant to the process we just followed. I was asked if I would represent the New Zealand Parliament at the World Bank Group Parliamentary Network Briefing on Pandemics and Covid-19 which I was very pleased to do and I'll be reporting to Mr Speaker on the discussions on that and the Asia-Pacific World Health Organization forum. In the early hours of Anzac Day actually between 1 a.m. and 3 a.m. I was on this virtual meeting and didn't stand at dawn that day but stood instead at 3 a.m. It was a very helpful dialogue to understand what was going on around the country but in the chat that accompanied it I was struck by the number of MPs and representatives from around the world who were worried about the degree to which Parliaments were setting aside the normal scrutiny process of in our case the executive. The representative from the Italian Parliament described this as something that was going on in his country but also in what he described as weak democracies".I've been reflecting on that in the context of the last bill that this House passed last week this one but also another bill that may be before us in the not too distant future. It highlights—for me—that weak democracies are not necessarily developing nations in far-flung parts of this world with autocratic leaders and family dynasties; actually Westminster democracies with strong and proud histories of passing bills carefully and over time risk undermining that legacy through the crises. What I would say is that actually the rule of law and the process of passing bills is most needed during a crisis whether that's a war or a war-footing such as a pandemic. It is not a time to set them aside and so I was very pleased to see that this bill and another was referred to the Epidemic Response Committee last week for what was a very short but as the Minister said quite thorough examination of the bills—that came to us in good shape actually. There's obviously been a lot of thought and I commend the Government for what the submitters told us was a degree of engagement with them during the writing of the bill but also for clearly Cabinet's but definitely the department officials' willingness to take good ideas and make the bills better.I won't steal the thunder of my colleagues who will speak after me because they are the subject matter experts in areas like the Companies Act and the Courts Matters Bill and so on but I do want to acknowledge that this is actually a pretty good exemplar and an example of what can be done in emergency without setting aside due process without setting aside the necessary scrutiny of the executive that is so important in times of crisis. I worry that we are going to fall below that standard again and we will see what that means for the freedom of movement the freedom of expression and the freedom to live our lives without fear of interference from the Government and the State even in an emergency. So I commend the Minister for this process actually and I sure as heck commend not only the members of that committee who worked so incredibly hard in what I described in the first reading as a herculean effort but it was made easier frankly by the fact that officials burnt the oil literally—Stuart Smith and I were still examining the proposed committee report at about 11 o'clock last night having only finished the meeting process but a few hours earlier. And the quality of that support was high. Once again we can have an extraordinary confidence in the quality of our public sector.But the public and the public sector have a right I think to expect the same in return from its executive and this is the place where we examine where we scrutinise where we make better where we hold the Government to account for their actions and inactions. I hope in commending the Minister and the Government for the ability to be able to do that in this case that we can continue to do that because we know laws made in haste—and we saw an example of that last week—can be very very difficult to fix or can undermine what we're actually trying to achieve.Can I particularly point out a couple of the areas that I know my colleagues will elaborate on that I thought was a very sensible change that the submitters first came up with and that was particularly around the use of audiovisual equipment and audio equipment only in the courts and corrections process. We heard from our submitters and they said "Look this is understood but we need to have a hierarchy."—that there was a standard firstly of face-to-face then audiovisual and then audio only if that was a last resort. I was really pleased with both the nimbleness of the response and the amendments that were made which I'm sure the Minister of Justice—who is nodding—had a part to play in but also there were concerns around when that might be used particularly in relation to the mental health Act but also sentencing. So we had a very sensible amendment—an improvement to the bill—that made that part of the bill better.The one that was really vexed—and I know Mr Hudson will elaborate on this. We all want to make sure that as many companies as possible can survive this and boy I'm sure colleagues will agree we're getting some horror stories about what's happened and what will happen if we can't give them the means to get through the next period of time. So the business debt hibernation scheme and the directors' safe harbour is going to be so important in doing that. I hope it works. I think the directors' safe harbour is one where we're actually asking directors who are conditioned generally to be cautious—because the law requires them to be—to be a little less risk-averse at a time when they are seeing risk at every turn. So while I'm hopeful I'm not overly optimistic that this will make more than a minor impact on the bill but we've got to give them a go. We've got to give them the conditions as best we can to enable them to be able to survive. But the best conditions—I'll finish on this point—that we can give them are the conditions that enable them to trade. So we need to get back to a new normal as quickly and as safely as we can and I do worry that we have the balance not right in that regard because they're telling us that they can trade safely that they can re-open and it's only then will we give them the truest safe harbour that they want and that is something of a return to a normal. But with that I'm very pleased to have been part of this process and to continue to support the bill."