Simmonds PennyPENNY SIMMONDS (National—Invercargill): Thank you Madam Chair. I was beginning to believe the narrative that women over 60 are invisible. Thank you Madam Chair—I've only been here for a few minutes though. I'm wanting to ask a question of the Minister regarding section 11 inserted by clause 7 around managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ). A number of my colleagues including my colleague Erica Stanford have said we accept that MIQ was absolutely necessary in terms of securing our health services in the early stage of the pandemic. But what I want to ask the Minister is: does he believe now that continuing our MIQ is helping or indeed heeding our health services?I want to give him three examples which may assist his thinking on this. In August we had the unfortunate situation where our head of obstetrics in Invercargill hospital had to go back to the States. His mother had sadly died and his elderly father was terminally ill. He went over expecting that as a critical health worker he would be able to get back into the country and the DBH gave him leave expecting that. Sadly it took three attempts and considerable publicity from myself and Joseph Mooney before he was able to be granted a critical worker MIQ spot to come back into the country. Our maternity services were at that stage in danger of being downgraded and pregnant women with complications were going to have to be transferred out of Southland. I was particularly aware of that because I had a daughter heavily pregnant at that time. So that was one example.Last week I spent considerable time out and about with rural GPs and I want to acknowledge the tremendous work our rural GPs and our nurse practitioners are doing out in the rural sector and the great sense of nervousness that they have of how they will be able to cope when COVID becomes more widespread because our rural GPs and our nurse practitioners are under an incredible amount of pressure as it is. In fact a number of our rural GPs have been trying to get locums in to assist them but because of the MIQ situation have not been able to get in a locum for up to 18 months.The third example I want to give the Minister is an ICU nurse in Invercargill a recent migrant who was a very valued ICU nurse. She had a partner in Sydney who was an engineer and Southland was looking forward to not only keeping a very valuable ICU nurse but gaining a well-qualified engineer. Sadly because he couldn't get an MIQ spot she decided to go over to Australia and join him.So here we have three examples where the MIQ system has impacted significantly on our health services in New Zealand. At a time when we have over 3000 people with COVID isolating at home in New Zealand here were people who were double vaccinated and would have been assisting our healthcare system in New Zealand being denied access to return to or come to New Zealand. So I want to ask the Minister whether he considers that section 11—and all the infrastructure detailed in that section around MIQ and how MIQ will be run continuing on and with the provision of it being able to continue right through to May 2023 with the extension in this amendment—may well now be actually hindering our health system in New Zealand rather than helping it. I would appreciate his answer to this. Thank you Madam Chair.