Tuiono TeanauTEANAU TUIONO (Green): Thank you Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of the Greens to share our whakaaro on this bill the continuation of the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act. The Greens do have some concerns around the relaxing of safeguards and protections. We feel that those have been disappearing too fast and disestablishing the legal basis for many of these safeguards and protections before general purpose pandemic legislation is in place is concerning for us.There are some good things about this bill. I like for example the removing of the warrantless search into marae; I think that's a good move and I want to acknowledge the National Iwi Chairs Forum as they pointed out rightly that that was not the right pathway to go down as well but also acknowledging many of the learnings that we've had through the COVID response as well and those learnings that came out like for example with the Delta outbreak report where that learning was. I hope that this is something that we'll continue to learn around the House about empowering Māori communities empowering our iwi leadership and empowering our local communities because that as we have all found and seen is how you best actually manage local responses to the COVID pandemic.The legislation here was put in place to enable the Government the health measures taken in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. It makes several important changes which are intended to keep the Act relevant while more comprehensive general purpose legislation is developed which could be applied in any and all pandemics. So extending the Act for another two years removing the need for Parliament to periodically review and reconfirm the Act removing the ability of the Director-General of Public Health to make orders under the Act limiting the powers of the Minister to make only orders restricting resident New Zealanders that relate to (a) self-isolation and (b) mask use. Other orders also related to travellers during departure requirements isolation and not boarding while symptomatic as well limiting enforcement powers—and of course what I was talking about earlier around warrantless search into private dwellings and once again reinforcing the lessons that we've learnt about empowering that local leadership empowering our iwi and our Pasifika health providers because they are the most connected to our communities. That is a lesson that we learnt as well.However we do have some massive concerns about this as well because it's all very well to—and I think it is a good thing to you know upgrade your tools and we saw that with the response with officials around making sure that we engage properly with Māori communities. So the warrantless search thing didn't work wasn't appropriate. However putting your tools back in the tool kit is one thing; getting rid of the tool kit entirely is something else completely. So like a number of us we would've listened in to the announcements from last week which talked about the potential for there to be 11000 daily cases over the summer break; also the potential for there to be 100 hospitalisations per day as well. So I ask about the timeliness of this piece of legislation as well and I understand that the Minister did touch upon that as well. Yes we have moved through the winter peak and that had a massive impact upon all of us. It is good that there is proactive thinking ahead about how to deal with related infections as well because when I talk to people as well they got COVID they went into isolation and then after they came out of isolation—I was one of those as well—they caught something else because as the borders opened there were more infections going around as well. So I totally understand and support that there needs to be a more rounded piece of legislation coming down the track which is COVID agnostic but actually captures all of those things which are continuing to come through the borders and impact upon people and families.However with the announcements made from last week around the potential for there to be a summer peak as well I question the timeliness of this piece of legislation about parking all of those tools away. I talked about one good example about how the Government has upgraded its response how we've all upgraded our thinking about how to better engage with Māori communities—ka pai; good thing. That's a good thing to see. However how does that relate to all the other different provisions? Why get rid of all the other tools? It would make sense to actually put the tools in the tool box leave it there while we continue to move through the COVID pandemic as opposed to just getting rid of the tools.I worry about that in the context of the pressures on our health system the amount of people we will be able to recruit for as nurses and health professionals. When you talk to them they tell you about how overworked they are how understaffed they are and you can imagine if there are 100 hospitalisations per day over a week in the middle of summer the amount of pressure that that will create on our hospitals as well.So for me what we actually need to see is we need to really think about well what's the clear response here? What the Government needs to do is actually make that communication a lot clearer. Also by removing all of these protections how does it relate to actually how we're going to get through the summer? How are we going to get through the summer? Summer is very different to winter as we all know. I don't know about you—sometimes when it's winter it's cold; you just want to stay home. You just want to stay home stay with the whānau keep warm so on and so forth. But summer is a completely different beast. People want to get out they want to connect with their families they want to—there are festivals; our young people will want to go to festivals as well. So what's the trajectory to make sure everybody is safe?I was thinking about that in the context from one of the commentators from last week—and he'll be no stranger to most of us—Professor Michael Baker when he said earlier this week actually that right now the numbers are telling us that with every 100 cases one person is going to hospital; with every 1000 someone's dying; and with every 20 cases or perhaps fewer someone's going to get long COVID which may be quite debilitating. What we can say to people is that it could be you and we need to do everything that we can to avoid being infected or reinfected because it could mean running a gauntlet of risks.When I dived into the regulatory impact statement I noticed that there were a number of options that were on the board as well. I wonder because I think second reading is going to follow then we'll be in committee of the whole House and then into third reading if the Minister perhaps could reflect on whether this option that she has selected is the best one for this particular time. I would love to hear her rationale for it. So there are four options. Option one was just the status quo. Option two was continuing the powers in the Act without additional changes. Option three which is the one that we have in front of us was around continuing the powers in the Act narrowing the powers of a core set of provisions for the ongoing management of COVID-19—so this is the default one that we're working with as well. And option four is implementing disease-agnostic legislation which is really important because as we know when you when you catch COVID as I was saying earlier you might catch a bunch of other things so having a piece of legislation that's agnostic to COVID would be really really important to have.But I am curious about the proportionality aspect of it and I'm curious about that in terms of the timeliness our proximity to summer the announcements that were made last week whether this is the right approach that the Government should be taking at this particular point in time given what we know is coming down the track with summer.So I will leave it there. We still have some outstanding questions and concerns and I know the Minister will have opinions on that but at this moment the Greens cannot support this bill.