Little Andrew; Mallard TrevorHon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Justice): Thank you Mr Speaker and I acknowledge the member who's just resumed her seat Nikki Kaye—her remarks—and she is correct: this has been a huge challenge to the country and particularly to this House and the members in it on this side of the House and on the other side of the House as well—a challenge for Government to come to grips with a crisis that has afflicted the world and afflicted us too as we try to predict and respond in a way that keeps ahead of the challenge that we're seeing.I don't think it helps actually terribly to make a whole lot of comparisons to different countries around the world. This crisis—this virus—has hit countries at different times. It hit us at a different time. If you want to make comparisons let's acknowledge that although New Zealand and Australia are reasonably comparable in the way the virus has affected us actually it's not quite the same. Australia has had a higher per capita infection rate. It has had a higher fatality rate. Their pubs and bars are going to be closed for a lot longer than ours. They've got another month or six weeks to wait yet and their Parliament is closed would you believe until August. Here in New Zealand we've striven to keep a level of parliamentary accountability going with the establishment of the Epidemic Response Committee chaired by the Leader of the Opposition as well as a bunch of other measures.The Government has been grappling with the need to put in place an effective public health response that protects people and saves people as well as dealing with the obvious economic impact. There is going to be one question that I think New Zealanders will be asking at election time and that is: Did you keep us safe?"—did you keep us safe? And I think this Government and indeed this Parliament can say—because as the Hon Nikki Kaye said the Opposition did support the initial measures that the Government took—New Zealanders were kept safe by the response that this Government championed in the face of COVID-19; lives have been saved as a result. When you compare what's happened to other countries and you look at death rates you look at infection rates New Zealand has done remarkably well. And as my colleague the Hon Chris Hipkins acknowledged we didn't just flatten the curve we squashed it.But we're not out of the woods yet. This is the reality of this insidious bug—or at least this virus—that we are having to deal with: we don't know fully what the characteristics are. We don't know what might happen. Even with the 66-odd current cases that we have in New Zealand—even though we have another day where we report zero cases—we don't know what is going to happen because people can be asymptomatic and still be a carrier of the virus. People can return successive negative tests and then return a positive one—not just 14 days after potential contact but for a lot longer after that. So we just don't know and we have to be prepared and we have to have a regime that allows us to adapt and adjust and be nimble and agile as we now face the next few months ahead of us. And that is what the legislation that is currently before the House allows us to do because the blunt instrument that is the old 1956 Health Act doesn't allow us to do that. It is too blunt and too unsubtle and we will have the powers to do that.As well as dealing with the public health measures to keep people safe we've also worked on keeping people's jobs in tact as much as possible and supporting business. So we've had the wage subsidy scheme—nearly $12 billion expended on that in the period since the end of March. We've had a $6.25 billion business finance guarantee scheme. We have an amazing tax refund scheme in operation right now and the results of that have been phenomenal. And indeed with the Small Business Cashflow (Loan) Scheme in just the first couple of hours that that scheme was available 6000 applications and more than $100 million has been provided to businesses under that scheme. And of course we know that there is more to come. There is the immediate stuff and there is the long-term stuff and that is why there is a specialist ministerial infrastructure group looking at the projects ready to go that will be the subject of good quality public investment.We know that now we have a major job—this Government and this Parliament—to make sure that New Zealand pulls out of the impact of COVID-19 in better shape in the long term than when we went in it. This has been a challenge for everyone—everyone in New Zealand and many many countries around the world—but New Zealand is clearly leading the way. New Zealand is looked upon by many many countries as the country that has done it right and done it well and is going very successfully and we should celebrate that not pat ourselves on the back gratuitously but be thankful for what we have achieved.SPEAKER: Order! The member's time has expired."