Reti ShaneDr SHANE RETI (Deputy Leader—National): Thank you Mr Speaker. It's a pleasure to speak to this debate today and to add to the dialogue. I too want to thank our workforce who are helping us with this right from border to the laboratory. I guess I want to continue that theme of how we can do better. Are we an efficient learning community so that with each outbreak we do better? I want to talk to two aspects that will help us address that.First of all I want to talk in this recent outbreak around the roadblocks at the Northland boundary. So what we know is that on midnight Sunday the roadblock at the Northland boundary for this the Auckland outbreak was at Mangawhai and at the bottom of the Brynderwyns just before the Maungatūroto turn-off. This was perplexing to many people who found out later on Monday that that's where the purported Auckland boundary was going to be albeit at least 20 kilometres north of where previous boundaries had been and where the Auckland region actually finishes. But at midnight Sunday that's where the boundary was. It seemed like they understood that this was an error at 6 p.m. on the Monday through a full business day and the roadblocks were taken back to Te Hana. But the consequences of that full day of a roadblock fundamentally in the wrong place are quite substantial. Two significant communities affected are Mangawhai and Kaiwaka. There are significant schools—Otamatea High School—around Kaiwaka who had a surprise on Monday morning. I understand 90 percent of Mangawhai businesses were closed.So if I come back and put this into a learning framework what did we expect to happen with an alert level what actually happened and what will we do differently? Well what we expected to happen when we went into alert level 3 was what happened with every other alert level 3—that is the boundary was at Te Hana. That makes sense. We understand that. People on either side of the boundary could prepare. That's what we expected to happen. What actually happened was the boundary was pushed 20 kilometres further north to the bottom of the Brynderwyns.So what did we then learn from this? Well we need to be much more efficient in collaborating and determining in advance what the roadblock boundaries will be for each alert level. There's no epiphany to this. What's especially disappointing was that Kaipara mayor Jason Smith is telling us that as part of the Northland Mayoral Forum they wrote to central government last year saying If we go into alert levels let's be very clear with our boundaries. Let's make sure that everyone knows what's happening so there's no confusion." and yet clearly there was. So a learning environment here and we didn't learn from it. What is the request? The request is that the boundary at alert level 3 and 4 be Te Hana. Done. It's a really simple piece of policy.I think the second thing I want to emphasise is around saliva testing. Remember we called for this in the Northland outbreak two weeks ago. Here we are discussing it today. Clearly it works. I've got no question with that. Arguably the sensitivity may be less: some of the enzymes in the mouth can degrade the virus; you get less viral load in saliva. It's actually quite tricky in the laboratory as well and it doesn't do well with dilution. There's other issues actually getting it as well: you're not allowed to eat chew or smoke for 30 minutes beforehand. So yes I understand all of that but what I heard from across the House today was that it's an infrastructure problem. Yes we can't pool samples—I get that—but this is sort of news to us where we're relatively happy to throw money around and suddenly we're hearing an infrastructure hurdle which we hadn't heard before.I think that really needs to be looked at because we're making the case here that it works and that we knew back in September in fact that it was going to be effective. I'm reading here from Official Information Act documents: "Saliva testing can be used for screening in certain populations such as border workers who require regular testing." So the question of daily-ness—if you want to call it that—wouldn't seem to be in question. Also—and I raised it with the Minister—testing saliva is approximately as sensitive as and less invasive than nasopharyngeal swabs. I understand there's some conjecture around that and other medical experts will offer a view into that. But what we were told on 10 August is "Saliva testing as a routine option for surveillance testing is well over a month away." OK then maybe in October—that was in August. Let's go a month away: "No it's still coming in September." and in October we were hearing it may be at least two months away. It just seemed to get away on us. Now I understand part of that because on around about 10 August was around about the Americold coronavirus case so I understand a little bit how that stretched out but not why we're so late.My final point is I just want to take a statement if you like around what Minister Robertson was saying around not being distracted by fomites. What I'm observing is the hat that suits is the hat that's worn. Let's remember the proposition is that for the Americold case the fomite was the lift button. That's the explanation and yet here we are being told today "Well we don't know if it's the laundry worker. Fomites aren't quite what they're made out to be." It seems to me that you wear the right hat when you want to.Anyway I come back to the main point of this dialogue: one good discussion around roadblock boundaries have that set for if—heaven forbid—we get another outbreak and let's move saliva testing. Thank you."