Brownlee GerryHon GERRY BROWNLEE (Deputy Leader—National): My apologies Madam Speaker. I was just looking at the Hansard record of your fine speech in the House last evening and got quite engrossed in it so I was momentarily delayed—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Ruth Dyson): I thought it was a more generalised apology.Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: Well in the spirit of your valedictory statement take it any way you like. This bill does not strike a fair balance between the cost being borne by the taxpayer and those who are returning to New Zealand. We need to be very very clear that there is no impediment to a New Zealand citizen or resident returning to their home country other than physical barriers that might be put up by way of airline availability etc. But there is no reason for the team of 5 million who have sacrificed to pick up all of the costs or even a substantial part of the costs of the many who will choose to return to this country. It's very hard for many to understand how we can charge our students a big portion of their education and think that there is no rights issue around that that we can charge for things like visas or passports or anything else that could be seen as an impediment to returning into this country or coming to this country. But when someone comes back to New Zealand and needs to go through managed isolation knowing they have to go through managed isolation to show that they are not a carrier of COVID-19 then why would we not have a regime that enables them to contribute to the huge costs that are being borne by taxpaying New Zealanders at the moment? $479 million has been budgeted out to 31 December this year. But I'm quite sure that figure was calculated on the $4000 per head price that was quoted in the House earlier in the month.Since then it's been revealed that the real cost is about $5700 per head. So the idea that the National Party had of charging people $3000 for the first family applicant $1000 for the second and $500 for children after that is incredibly reasonable given that that unit is going to cost the taxpayer in excess of $22000. Hon James Shaw: They are taxpayers.Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: Now I can see the Green Party over there muttering and saying it's only money—and that's the problem with the Government. Hon James Shaw: They are taxpayers.Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: That's the problem with the Government—like that person on the other side of the House. Last week the Minister was asked Well why are you having such a low amount of recovery?" Why only the $2.2 million to $8.8 million—as she quoted—recovery on $479 million? That's a derisory 2 percent recovery. And the answer was "Well at best we calculated it could be somewhere between $93 million and $125 million and we didn't think it was worth it." Well go and tell that to the 212000 New Zealanders who are out of work. It may be a bigger number in about an hour's time. Tell it to the hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders who are on reduced incomes or the hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders who've lost part-time work and casual work because they are the people Mr Shaw who are taxpayers and who are paying for these people to come back into the country. The head shakes again. "No no. We shouldn't charge them. We just want them all to come back. We want them all to be contributing here." Well I hope they are. I really hope they are. But at some point that dries up and there's a bigger economic question that the Government has to answer. So while the National Party will support this bill we do so because it provides schedules that enable the Government of the day to set the recovery price to set the parameters for who pays and how much they pay. And we think the proposals that are out there by the Government at the moment are incredibly light—saying to family returning to New Zealand after perhaps years and years of being away from this country that they are up for a $22000 or $23000 cost to the taxpayer and the Government is only going to be recovering around about oh what a very small amount of that if they fall into the very narrow band of people who the Government intends to place a charge on. We think that's unreasonable. It's unfair to the taxpayer but the structure of the bill is something that we will use in Government. Therefore we support it.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Ruth Dyson): The following call is a split call."