Seymour DavidDAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Well thank you very much Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of ACT in opposition to this motion. ACT has been opposing the continuation of the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act since November. It's interesting to look at the report of the Health Committee which says Our response: The majority of us"—that being the Health Committee—"agree with the continuation of the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act. The ACT Party"—the only party listed here—"opposes the continuation of COVID-19 Public Health Response Act." The reason for that is very simple: the rest of the world has moved on and the provisions in this bill are no longer useful and they are no longer helping us avoid the effects of COVID-19.In fact this Government's response has become so incoherent it is not even clear what the objectives are. I asked the former Minister for COVID-19 Response Chris Hipkins a month ago in select committee precisely what the objectives of the Government's COVID-19 response are now. Is it to reduce cases? Can't be; we're leading the world in the wrong way for the number of cases. Is it to flatten the curve or reduce pressure on the hospitals? Well it can't be—the main issue right now is flu and hospitals missing staff because of unworkable isolation rules. Is it to reduce deaths? Well actually the rate of COVID-19 - related deaths per day is currently one of the highest in the world; can't be that. This Government does not know what the purpose of its COVID-19 response is anymore but it remains prepared to impose costs upon New Zealanders with nonsensical unworkable rules that are making it harder for New Zealanders to get by and live their lives.Let me give you a few examples. If you are a household contact of somebody who tests positive for COVID-19 you have to isolate for seven days. Practically no other country in the world requires this but the impact of it is that a person who tests positive can be out of action for 14 days. How is that possible? Well your partner or someone in your household tests positive you're out for seven days; around the end of that period you also test positive—that's another seven days for your own case. Now you might only be infectious for a few days of that but you're out of the workforce for 14 days.I talked to principals I talked to people in the healthcare sector and I talked to people in a thing the Labour Party may have heard of called business; they are finding that people being taken out of action for up to 14 days for a few days of infectiousness is totally unworkable and unviable.There are two ways people respond: they actually obey the rules and they're taken out of action or they ignore them and they spread COVID-19 more. These rules are nuts. They are perpetuated and allowed under the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act. We should dump it. We would actually be better allowing people to voluntarily isolate than what we have now. Or better still if we did want to keep an isolation rule then perhaps—perhaps—we should have something like Singapore where you isolate for 72 hours and you're out with a negative test. That would be sensible that would be moving with the times but this Government can't do that so they should not continue to have the power of a COVID-19 Public Health Response Act. They cannot use it responsibly.This Government imposes unworkable rules such as allowing people to go to nightclubs with no mask but if you go to a retail store you must be masked. Where is the cost-benefit analysis? Where is the sympathy for the retail workers up and down this country who've become unwitting enforcers of rules that subject them to abuse when we have enough trouble with social cohesion in this country right now? Now if masks were making a difference and they were so essential that you couldn't go to a nightclub without one you might say it's worth bearing that cost. But actually like I say this Government's response is so incoherent.What else does this COVID-19 Public Health Response Act allow? Mandates for medical professionals. Well we have a crisis in our hospitals we have a crisis in midwifery and we have hundreds of nurses and midwives who cannot operate because they are not vaccinated. Now personally I think most of them are nuts. There are some who have had a reaction to their earlier doses and didn't want to get a booster; I sympathise with them. But the facts are it no longer makes sense to stop people from practising their trade in the middle of a major shortage because they haven't had their booster. And that's what we're doing: contributing to a crisis. That is absolutely crazy and yet that is what this COVID-19 Public Health Response Act allows. We should just dump it.There's one more justification the Government gives for its response: they say something like "Well look there might be another variant. That's why we need to give people a couple of test kits so they can test themselves on arrival and if they're positive maybe they'll go off we can gene sequence it we can find out if another variant has come about."Well actually if you think about it we're now at a stage where we've got a highly transmissible and thankfully much less virulent strain of COVID-19; it is unlikely—very unlikely—that a more virulent and more transmissible version will out-compete Omicron. And actually if we're worried about that risk then what we should do is actually be on guard all the time in case there's a new virus. In reality the real probability is that a new variant—like all of the others—will evolve somewhere else in the world and we'll have months' head start as we did throughout this pandemic in order to respond and consider our response. Once again the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act is not necessary if you're going to have months as we have for every other variant. So why do we have this law in place?I thought it was telling to listen to the outgoing COVID-19 response Minister Chris Hipkins—actually it was really telling to listen to him on the weekend when he said he thinks "Probably we could have stepped down some restrictions a bit faster." Has this guy been to Auckland? Does he know what Aucklanders went through? Does he understand the loss of business the mental health suffering? And he says "Actually we probably didn't need to do all of that." Really? This guy is now either trying to clear his own conscience now that he's not the Minister and not responsible for Government policy and not responsible to the Prime Minister or the Labour Party is trying to eat their cake and have it too by saying "Look if you don't like the way we responded look at Chris Hipkins and if you do like the way we responded look at Ayesha Verrall because we're going to keep on restricting people anyway."This Government at some point needs to accept that it has made enormous mistakes throughout its COVID-19 response. They say "Oh but fewer people died." Well you know what? Anyone can quarantine an island. The question was always going to be: could we reconnect? The question was: would New Zealand only take steps that stacked up and made sense and actually saved lives? We now know thanks to advice from Ashley Bloomfield to the Minister that they continued with managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) for four months after they were told it was making no difference. They kept people like Charlotte Bellis out of the country having to seek sanctuary with the Taliban because they continued with MIQ for four months after it made sense.We know that they kept spending $2.7 million a month advertising boosters when almost nobody is getting them to the point that it's costing them $67 of advertising for every person that takes it up. I would wager most of those people didn't even see the advertising.We now have a Government that is totally incoherent that doesn't know what its objectives are that none the less continues to impose costs on New Zealanders and has a history of imposing costs that weren't well calculated getting it wrong and leaving New Zealanders worse off for little to no gain. The only reason that it carries on—the only reason we still have this COVID-19 Public Health Response Act—is because it is embarrassed to admit it's done wrong. We saw it today in question time: could the Acting Prime Minister say sorry to Aucklanders? No he could not. He couldn't admit what Chris Hipkins admitted on TV.Well it's about time that this Government owned its mistakes fessed up to the impacts that it's put on New Zealanders and dumped this COVID-19 Public Health Response Act that is well past its use-by date. Thank you Mr Speaker."