Hipkins ChrisCOVID-19 ORDERSApprovalHon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister for COVID-19 Response): In accordance with the determination of the Business Committee I move That this House approve the following orders made under the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act 2020: COVID-19 Public Health Response (Protection Framework) Amendment Order (No 2) 2021 COVID-19 Public Health Response (Required Testing and Vaccinations) Amendment Order (No 2) 2021 COVID-19 Public Health Response (Protection Framework) Amendment Order (No 3) 2021 COVID-19 Public Health Response (Air Border) Order 2021 COVID-19 Public Health Response (Isolation and Quarantine and Other Matters) Amendment Order 2021 COVID-19 Public Health Response (Air Border and Isolation and Quarantine) Amendment Order (No 2) 2021 COVID-19 Public Health Response (Air Border and Isolation and Quarantine) Amendment Order (No 2) Amendment Order 2021 COVID-19 Public Health Response (Air Border and Isolation and Quarantine) Amendment Order 2022 COVID-19 Public Health Response (Protection Framework) Amendment Order 2022 COVID-19 Public Health Response (Protection Framework) Amendment Order (No 2) 2022 COVID-19 Public Health Response (Vaccinations) Amendment Order 2022 and COVID-19 Public Health Response (Protection Framework) Amendment Order (No 3) 2022.I'd like to begin by thanking the Business Committee for agreeing to debate the motion today. Here we are again and I'm asking the House to approve a number of orders—12 orders—that have been made under the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act. As is the nature with these debates some of those orders themselves are already out of date and have already been replaced by other orders and some are about to be based on the announcement that we made yesterday. But I would like to as I always do in these debates thank the Regulations Review Committee for their consideration of these various orders. I think the committee does a very thorough job on behalf of the House in scrutinising the use of the powers provided under the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act and I'll touch on a few of the themes of their comments in a few moments.So the orders that we are confirming here were made between 10 December last year 2021 and 23 January this year. The COVID-19 Public Health Response (Protection Framework) Amendment Order (No 2) 2021 was reported back from the Regulations Review Committee in its report on 10 February. The remaining 11 were featured in the committee's report on 17 February. The 12 orders in question cover quite a wide range of issues including the opening up of the Auckland boundary just before Christmas the status of different parts of New Zealand in the traffic light system and so on.The COVID-19 Public Health Response (Air Border) Order 2021 and the COVID-19 Public Health Response (Isolation and Quarantine and Other Matters) Amendment Order 2021 set out the revised regime for travellers arriving into New Zealand that came into effect late on Monday this week and that was about to be replaced as of late tomorrow night. That of course was the one stepping through the removal of managed isolation and quarantine and imposing a self-solation system instead. That of course is now going to be replaced by another order that will also go through this process that in due course we will address and have to confirm here in the House.Other amendments address technical drafting issues and they seek to clarify details that have emerged as our response to COVID-19 has continued to develop. I would like to take a moment here to thank the Parliamentary Counsel Office who work under great pressure to put these orders together often having to do so in a very compressed time table and often having to deal with what are quite technical issues—often quite a complex network and web of technical issues that they have to work their way through. Inevitably from time to time there are technical drafting amendments that need to be corrected and we try and correct those in the next orders that are made.The COVID-19 Public Health Response (Protection Framework) Amendment Order (No 2) 2021 dealt with a range of issues related to the crossing of the Auckland boundary. At the time of the transition from alert levels to the protection framework the Regulations Review Committee expressed some concerns not about the orders themselves or the provisions of the order but about the accessibility of regulations. And they raised similar concerns about the difficulties of navigation through the order when they expressed concerns about the COVID-19 Public Health Response (Air Border) Order of 2021. The committee asked for clarity over the meaning and criteria that applied to country groups in this order and again an issue around the ease of understanding.So the constant revision and updating that the rapid development of COVID-19 has necessitated has been a challenge in terms of keeping the secondary legislation as easy possible to navigate and I want to acknowledge that and I thank the Regulations Review Committee for drawing attention to those issues. I do agree that it's important the regulations should be clear they should be easily understandable and the comments and feedback of the Regulations Review Committee will help us to continue to improve the design of orders in the future.There are two orders that have been omitted from this motion and I will cover them now because they have been subject of significant discussion over the last few days. The requests for vaccination mandates that originally came from the Police and the Defence Force were the subject of orders made under the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act. There are operational factors that drove the decision by those agencies to request the vaccination requirements: for example Defence Force personnel need to be vaccinated in order to undertake overseas deployments in many instances including in places like the Pacific for disaster relief. So there are operational considerations there.The decision of the courts to not uphold those two orders has only just been released and we do need to take time to consider that. I do want to be clear that the judgment's quite clear that it's not questioning the role of mandates per se but whether they are required specifically for Police and for Defence in terms of business continuity purposes. So we need to take time to just carefully consider what the court's ruling is—not have a knee-jerk response to that. So we will do that and then we'll make further decisions. We have been really clear though that where there is no longer a justification for a vaccination mandate to be in place we would look to remove that in a timely manner. So in some cases in the case of the Police very high rates of vaccination have now been achieved and it may well be that there is no replacement for that mandate. But we'll work through a careful process to look at that and then we'll make decisions in due course.In terms of wider issues around vaccine mandates as the Prime Minister and I have both been clear we will seek to remove those at the appropriate time and at the moment as we head into what is already a very large outbreak and growing by the day it isn't the right moment to do that in many cases but we will consider each of those mandates on a case by case basis. When the case has been made for them to be removed then we would look to do that.Chris Bishop: Does that mean these four—the Police ones—they're not approved?Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: The Defence Force one the one that related to Defence and the one that related to Police which were the subject of the court decision last week have not been included in the motion. The motion was revised and has removed those from that. They're not being confirmed so they will lapse. I didn't want the Parliament to be in a position of effectively voting to confirm something that the courts have ruled against so we've removed those from the motion and we'll now take some time to consider what the future of those if any future may be. With that Mr Speaker I congratulate you and commend this motion to the House.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Ian McKelvie): The question is that the motion be agreed to.