SpeechHon TIM MACINDOE (National—Hamilton West): Thank you Mr Speaker. I'd like to thank the Minister of Justice for the comments that he made at the beginning of his speech and also to acknowledge that I do agree with some of the other sentiments that he's just expressed. But I have to say to him that judging by the deluge of emails that I have received—text messages phone calls to my electorate office posts on social media and so on—I believe that the Government has badly misjudged public sentiment on this particular issue. Unfortunately New Zealanders have gone from feeling valued to feeling patronised. They've gone from feeling trusted to feeling that they're being treated like naughty children who can't be trusted and they've gone from feeling that we've been pulling together as a team of 5 million to feeling that their reward is a chilling and unjustified attack on our civil liberties and our religious freedom.This process for this bill has been unjustified undemocratic and therefore frankly dangerous considering how serious the issue is. The most significant constraints on our freedoms outside of a state of emergency are being enacted under urgency without calling for submissions with limited and mostly fawning media coverage and with no select committee scrutiny. This bill should have gone to a select committee even if only for a very short period of time because we should have been reaching out to the public to legal academics to practitioners and to other commentators who all would have been able to make valid points to improve this bill.So I want to quote if I may from one email that was sent by a lawyer to the Attorney-General in the early hours of this morning. It's in the public domain because he copied it to all MPs. If I could I'll just cherry-pick and try to pick out about three paragraphs. He made the point that in one of the speeches the Attorney-General was making in the House last night he was looking around and asking officials for advice on whether future executive orders would be made under the current section 70 or under the new law.He went on to write: You are the Attorney-General of New Zealand. Who is running this show? First as Attorney-General you don't know any warrantless search powers in New Zealand despite trying to justify the proposed law by comparison to powers you do not know. Next you do not know which public health power is intended to be used in the future which begs the question: why are you using urgency to pass the most Draconian legislation for 88 years? The bill seeks to put virtually unlimited and unchallengeable power to control the liberty of an entire population into the hands of one human being—does that sound like another type of society you can think on?" He went on to write: "The bill does not provide a general right of appeal and the majority of the House blindly have the Prime Minister's back. Most people do not have the wherewithal to take judicial review proceedings. And as the Hon Michael Woodhouse points out the overbroad purpose of prevention adds significant difficulty in challenging an order." Some of his concluding remarks were: "Moreover how can this bill be something done by ambush under urgency? As Nicola Willis said we have had seven weeks of restrictions so surely the legislative basis for moving to level 2 should have been considered and tabled before late on Monday of this week in order to allow a democratic process. That is not democracy; that is a circus. It is shameful. This is the most Draconian piece of proposed legislation ever seen in this country at least since …"—and he quoted a depression-era Act of 1932—"This is a Government that was asleep in allowing indeed encouraging the importation of the virus by telling people to rush home to avoid self-isolation. Months after foreseeable risks this Government continues to make panicked reactions that are destroying individual lives and livelihoods and now democracy itself."So I thank that gentleman for his detailed and considered email. I hope that following Government speakers will answer some of the questions that he raised in it and respond to the concerns—and as I say I have only been able to highlight a few of them.Let me pick up again on the point that the Minister of Justice was making: all New Zealanders wish to continue to lock in the gains that we have achieved together during the COVID-19 crisis. We've all been looking to minimise the risk of further importations or community transmission of this disease. That has never been in dispute and it isn't now. It's why there was such unity and firm resolve in this House when we voted to suspend at the end of March and place our country under lockdown. Public support for those initiatives has been evident in neighbourhoods around the country where physical distancing has been observed and people have worked from home wherever possible while essential workers have continued performing their vital roles under stringent rules and often challenging circumstances and I'm sure we thank them all. We owe a huge debt of gratitude to everyone in our team of 5 million who's assisted us to reach the point where we can now move to level 2 tonight—not a moment too soon.The Government has repeatedly made its expectations clear of all of us throughout the period since the crisis began. The Prime Minister repeated her expectations—albeit not all that clearly at times—when she announced the decision to move to level 2 during her media conference in The Beehive theatrette on Monday afternoon. But there are clear expectations from the public that the level 2 regulations will be justified reasonable and necessary. As I stressed in my previous speeches and so have many of my colleagues the cruel and inexplicable constraints on religious worship tangihanga weddings funerals and so on are anything but reasonable. New Zealanders are distraught that the Government has refused to make the changes despite being offered the opportunity in some Supplementary Order Papers today. For that reason alone we should be cautious in proceeding with this legislation and alarmed that it's had such a truncated process under urgency.Last night Kiri Allan called me out I think for comments that I had made about the urgency process. So I want to point out that the Attorney-General wrote to me and put through a courteous phone call at 5 o'clock on Monday evening but he wanted a response by 10 o'clock the next morning. Well I don't know any time that a caucus—particularly when flights are not operating and members are in their electorates the length and breadth of this country—could possibly meet to have a considered approach to a bill that they haven't seen—and the bill wasn't available—and have a response in by 10 o'clock the next morning. So I say to Kiri Allan that her comments last night were disingenuous they were wrong and she should not purport to suggest that this was just urgency as we know it. It was not—it could not be. No party caucus is able to consider its position under those circumstances. So that's why I say it's been a very poor process.Some laws do need to be considered and enacted at speed. No one denies that. We've done it and all previous Governments have done it. But this Government has had weeks since we went into the lockdown to get its arrangements for level 2 under control clearly articulated understood by members of the public and to have taken the time—albeit with a truncated select committee process—to pass such a bill if needed through the Parliament.Yesterday morning we requested a briefing from the Attorney-General and some of his officials—and I acknowledge that we received that although the Attorney-General wasn't able to participate in it and so the officials weren't able to engage in the more political aspects of that discussion. So it was of some value but only of limited value.Let me just return to the point that I made in my first speech because it's all about the whole purpose of this bill. The Attorney-General was right at that point to highlight the fact that for our economic and social prosperity we need to go to level 2. Livelihoods have been put at risk. Jobs have been lost. Many people have gone on to benefits. Many businesses have gone under and many more sadly will in the weeks and months ahead. We all collectively share grave concern about that. We all collectively wish and need to see our economy get strengthened get back on track for businesses to have the confidence to take on staff for investors to have the confidence to invest and so forth—particularly for industries such as tourism.But a move to level 2 was never dependent on the enactment of this bill. Our civil liberties have been put at risk in ways that cannot be justified and that in weeks and months ahead I'm sure will be shown not to have been justified and that it was too high a price to pay."