Hipkins Chris; Mallard TrevorCOVID-19 ORDERSApprovalHon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister for COVID-19 Response): I move That this House approve the following orders made under the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act 2020:COVID-19 Public Health Response (Air Border) Order (No 2) Amendment Order (No 9) 2021COVID-19 Public Health Response (Required Testing) Amendment Order (No 3) 2021COVID-19 Public Health Response (Air Border) Order (No 2) Amendment Order (No 10) 2021. First by way of background as we do when we confirm these orders under the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act as the responsible Minister I am able to issue a variety of orders that compel people to do things or to not do things depending on the situation as part of our overall public health response when it comes to dealing with COVID-19. The orders that I issue if they are not confirmed by a motion in the House are revoked after a certain time frame. I therefore have to put the motion down on the Order Paper for those orders to be confirmed. That motion and the relevant orders are then referred to the Regulations Review Committee who scrutinise my use of the power that I am given under the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act. They have the ability to raise issues both with me as the Minister responsible and also with the House a. And so we are now dealing with a motion to confirm three of the orders that have now been scrutinised by the Regulations Review Committee under that particular process. I would note that the orders that we are talking about here are all amendment orders. There are basically two reasons why I amend orders made under the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act. The first is that many of these orders have been put in place in a hurry and there will undoubtedly be improvements that can be made corrections that need to be made to them further refinements and so on. So yes there are a number of amendments that fall into that category. The second of course is that the situation is constantly changing and constantly evolving and as a result we often need to constantly amend these orders. We're not confirming any alert level orders made in this particular batch of approvals but alert level orders are a really good example of where we need to constantly move and adapt and change depending on the circumstances in front of us. So there are three orders that we're confirming today and I'll quickly run through those. The first is the COVID-19 Public Health Response (Air Border) Order (No 2) Amendment Order (No 9). This is the second air border order that's been put in place and this one's already been amended nine times. This set of amendments removes Australia" and references to Australia particularly when it comes to talking about quarantine-free travel on the basis that there are no longer any quarantine-free flights from Australia to New Zealand. It does not preclude us reintroducing quarantine-free travel with Australia in the future. That order came into force at 11.59 p.m. back on 11 August. The COVID-19 Public Health Response (Air Border) Order (No 2) Amendment Order (No 10) of 2021: this particular amendment added Fiji and Indonesia to the list of very high-risk countries. By being designated as a very high-risk country it means that we are significantly limiting the number of people who can travel from that country to New Zealand. We're narrowing that down to only New Zealand citizens who are returning home and it does provide for some new or expanded exemptions which include the dependent children of New Zealand citizens who are coming home; persons transiting through New Zealand while travelling from Fiji to another destination outside of New Zealand recognising that at the moment New Zealand is effectively the only regular gateway to and from Fiji; and people involved in medical transfers from Fiji to New Zealand. The order also removes Fiji from the list of low-risk designations for the purposes of quarantine-free travel. That has an implication for aircrew members who have undertaken any flight to or from Fiji in the 14-day period before their arrival in New Zealand on a quarantine-free flight and that means that they must have a negative result for COVID-19 before they come. That order came into force at 11.59 p.m. on 15 August.The final order is the COVID-19 Public Health Response (Required Testing) Amendment Order (No 3). This order amends the COVID-19 Public Health Response (Required Testing) Order to allow people who are required to undergo regular COVID-19 surveillance testing and medical examination to elect to undergo regular saliva testing as an alternative to the nasal pharyngeal swabs that they currently have to take. The order also sets out the duties for the people who make that choice as well as the record-keeping duties for the people who are conducting the business undertaking with respect to those particular people.The Regulations Review Committee did raise an issue with regard to this particular order. They were concerned around the clarity around the frequency of the testing requirement recognising that saliva testing will need to be more frequent than the nasal pharyngeal swabs. I've considered closely the feedback from the Regulations Review Committee. I am comfortable that the order is clear and that there isn't ambiguity there but as we continue to refine and test the orders we will look and see whether there is simpler language that could be used in future orders just to remove any potential suggestion that that's not clear. So that particular order came into force at 11.59 p.m. on 11 August 2021.Finally I just want to thank all those who were involved in putting these orders together. I'm often waiting up till quite late in the evening to sign the orders in order for them to come in force—typically just before midnight—because these orders as I said are often put in place in quite a hurry and the people who have to draft them often have to do so under significant time pressure. So I want to thank them for their work. By and large they get it right. They've served us incredibly well. There are undoubtedly improvements that they identify and would have been able to identify had we given them more time in the drafting but ultimately we are able to pick those up with future amendments. It is a pretty nimble piece of legislation that we're making the orders under and I think that our COVID-19 response overall is the better for it.SPEAKER: The question is that the motion be agreed to."