Simmonds PennyPENNY SIMMONDS (National—Invercargill): Thank you Madam Speaker. Well I think it's an incredibly sad day that we are here debating this COVID-19 Public Health Response Amendment Bill (No 2). It's a sad day for New Zealand that we should be looking at an extension of extraordinary powers of control which enable this Government to control people to control businesses to impact on our lives to impact on the economy and to create divisiveness in our community.We are debating a bill that when we got it at the select committee it was out of date. It is a bill based on an elimination strategy; an extension that will carry the powers for this Government out for a further 18 months. The pessimism of that thinking is without doubt of enormous concern to people. There is the extension of the managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) requirements when we should be looking at how we can have less MIQ and the ability for this Government having not wanted to get into any partnership discussions with private laboratories to now be able to requisition private property from those same laboratories that they ignored when they offered help.A lot has been said by my colleagues about the MIQ situation about there being thousands of people with COVID now isolating at home while at the same time in MIQ we have 34 people with COVID. We have thousands of people wanting to use our MIQ facilities and not being able to. Some of the speakers have talked about the opinions from professors on these MIQ facilities but actually I just want to talk about ordinary people like me who judge things on common sense and reasonableness and logic. I want to look at three examples that I have talked about previously but they are really important examples.In August this year our head of obstetrics at Invercargill hospital had to return to the States because his mother had sadly died and his father was very terminally ill. So the district health board allowed him leave to go home thinking that as a talented senior clinician who was absolutely critical to the care of our expectant mothers he would be allowed back in through the critical worker MIQ allocations. It took three applications and Joseph Mooney and myself embarrassing the Minister publicly with an open letter in the media for him to get a place to be able to return to his work after gaining an MIQ place.I look at our GPs our rural GPs and our wonderful nurse practitioners out trying to keep rural practices going looking after and caring for our people out in the rural areas who cannot get a locum to come in and support their work because they cannot get them through the MIQ process.I look at an ICU nurse in Invercargill a recent migrant who we were very keen to keep in Invercargill. Her partner was an engineer in Sydney and was keen to come over and join her so we were going to get two for the price of one: a wonderfully valuable ICU nurse and a much-needed engineer. He couldn't get through the MIQ system so she has gone to Sydney to join him.Now I want to apply the common sense and reasonableness and logic situation there. Let's look: that incredibly talented incredibly important senior clinician who runs the head of obstetrics in Invercargill was he capable of being able to self-isolate at home? Let's compare him to the gang member with COVID self-isolating at home. The senior clinician who was double-vaccinated who had tested negative—weigh him up against the member who may not have always followed the rules and regulations of New Zealand society. He was enabled to isolate at home but not that senior clinician.So I think that the Government is over-reaching with this amendment bill. I think people are sick of being told what to do and when to do it. They are sick of announcements about announcements. They are tired of being treated as though each of us are unable or incapable of thinking and acting in a responsible manner; that only the Government knows best. And we have seen so much of this from this Government: that only the Government should control things that only the Government knows best. Before I became a politician I used to say to politicians that the trouble is politicians surround themselves with people who tell them what they want to hear not what they need to hear and I think this Government has been listening to people telling them what they want to hear. They haven't been out listening to the people running hospitality businesses in Auckland. They haven't been down in Te Ānau or Queenstown listening to the people running tourism businesses or rather the very few of them that did come down didn't listen; they just told our business people to pivot. One day we'll ask what they mean about that. So I think that the people of New Zealand are tired of being treated like children. They are tired of this Government thinking they will tell them what they must do and when they must do it.We heard that businesses in Auckland feel like they are not being listened to. We heard of the Auckland businesswoman who is losing everything: has lost the reserves that she has built up has lost the ability to be able to hand her business eventually on to her staff has lost her will to carry on running a business. She said she feels like she is just collateral damage from the Prime Minister's legacy project. Well much as I sympathise with that Auckland business owner and I do genuinely sympathise with that Auckland business owner because I've had enough hospitality business people coming to me saying how heartbreaking their situation is I actually think that she's wrong. I don't think that it is just her that is the collateral damage from the Prime Minister's legacy project. I think that it is the whole of New Zealand that is suffering as collateral damage. I think it is the generations to come that are going to have to pay for the vanity of this Government that did not do its work that did not play its role in getting the vaccinations out in getting the ICU beds ready in getting our country prepared for this Delta outbreak and therefore they must take total and complete responsibility for the huge amount of debt that they are handing on as a legacy to the generations of New Zealanders who are going to have to continue paying this off for their lifetime because of the vanity of this Government and the Prime Minister's legacy project. Thank you Madam Speaker. This party opposes the amendment bill.