Bishop Chris; Mallard TrevorCHRIS BISHOP (National): Thank you Mr Speaker. I want to start my contribution by saying thank you to our hard-working border workers thank you to our nurses and thank you to the people working in our managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) facilities around the country. As I said yesterday they are truly at the front line and as the Minister for COVID-19 Response said yesterday they are the heroes of our COVID response.It was a little bit grating to hear the Minister say yesterday that the Opposition has attacked border workers. We have never attacked border workers and we never will. We have asked questions about the system and we will continue to ask questions in the spirit as the Minister has just noted of continuous improvement. We owe that to New Zealanders. But we have never attacked border workers and we never will. They are doing a fantastic job.On that note can I also say that New Zealand has done really well in tackling the scourge that is COVID-19. That doesn't mean that we can't do better and we all have an obligation in this Parliament to try and ensure that. That's the reason we're all MPs: to try and make New Zealand a better place to try and improve public policy and also to try and improve the implementation of sound public policy. So every time we stand up in question time as the Opposition and we ask questions about the Pullman Hotel and the reports into the Pullman or we ask questions about saliva testing as we have done today or as in the past we have asked about pre-departure testing or we've asked about various community outbreaks and the actions of the Ministry of Health—every time we do that it is in the spirit of continuous improvement. It's in the spirit of trying to make sure the Government does the best job they possibly can.The whole point of our parliamentary democracy is that the actions of Government and the policies of Government and the statements of Government are scrutinised and the reason they're scrutinised is because without scrutiny Governments can do what they like. Governments don't necessarily do the right thing and so the whole point of this House is to make sure that they do. And we'll have a contest of ideas about what the right policies are. We'll have a contest of ideas around whether or not Ministers have behaved badly or behaved well or whether or not they're implementing policy well. That's the whole point. It's like that for education it's like that for health it's like that for social services it's like that for the economy—all of the big issues—and it's no different when it comes to COVID-19. So that's a couple of points I wanted to say at the start of my contribution.I want to talk about saliva testing and I do want to urge the Government to introduce daily saliva testing at our border at our MIQ facilities at our quarantine hotels and for our workers at the border more generally. That is in the spirit of continuous improvement as we've just heard from Meka Whaitiri. It's not just the National Party that is encouraging the Government to move more quickly on this; it is experts like Professor Michael Baker Professor Nick Wilson Sir David Skegg—who was so instrumental in the early part of the Government's response and gave evidence to the Epidemic Response Committee—and it is the Government's own expert advisers that they commissioned themselves Sir Brian Roche and Heather Simpson who recommended it in the Roche-Simpson report of September last year. In fact the learned authors recommended the Government do it as soon as possible and in September noted that widespread roll-out of saliva testing was at least two months away. Well that was in September. Two months from September is November. We're now in mid-February and still no closer to widespread deployment.In fact Newshub reported last night that just 140 daily saliva tests have been conducted in a limited trial on a voluntary basis. As I pointed out in the House today Australia—just one state New South Wales—has done 50000 in the last two months. So our view is that if Australia can do 50000—I don't think anyone expects that many in New Zealand as a smaller population but we certainly should be striving for more than 140. As I pointed out to the Minister in question time today a saliva-based PCR test is acceptable at the border for people to prove that they don't have COVID and to get on a plane and come to New Zealand. I venture to suggest and put it to the House that that means it should be deployed more widely in New Zealand.What are the arguments the Government has proffered against it? The first argument is around validation—that it needs to be validated. Well speed up the validation through the Ministry of Health. That should have been occurring many months ago. And as I pointed out again today the SHIELD a University of Illinois - based system developed by Rako Science says that it's just as accurate and they have had it validated independently by a Victoria University of Wellington scientist. If capacity is an issue expand the capacity. And of course if it is indeed less accurate that can be more than made up for by increasing the frequency of the test to make sure that as many people are done as possible and that more than makes up for any reduction in accuracy—SPEAKER: Order! The member's time has expired.