Brown SimeonSIMEON BROWN (National—Pakuranga): Thank you Madam Chair. That was a feeble attempt I think by Minister Woods to try to cover over and not answer the questions whilst trying to say he's actually answering the questions. The reality is I don't know whether he's actually read the piece of legislation he's partially responsible for where section 11 is amended in clause 6 and it does include new restrictions and new powers given to Ministers around travel and requirements to make people stay in specified places or refrain from staying in specified places.I'd like to ask a couple of further questions around clause 6 in relation to this. I guess the first question I'd like to ask is: why are we needing to put in place travel restrictions around particular places where we're going to allow people to for example refrain from leaving an area unless the person has a COVID-19 vaccination certificate?We all remember the Auckland border debacle where the first proposal put forward by the Government was that they were going to stop Aucklanders leaving this summer unless they could produce a vaccination certificate and then of course we all saw on social media the pictures of that great checkpoint in Beijing where we had hundreds of thousands of cars lined up in about 50 different queues and of course there's always the motorway on the side which I guess that's what the gangs use to get past all the traffic. But everyone else has to queue up to show their papers to prove that they're vaccinated.Hon Members: Papers please—papers please."SIMEON BROWN: "Papers please."—that's right. Then they backed down and they said "Oh well we'll get proof of vaccination or a negative test and we'll just do spot checks. We're not going to stop everybody." It's still very uncertain around this but now we're putting in place a power that gives Ministers the opportunity to effectively go back to their plan A which is that only vaccinated people will be able to travel through checkpoints. That's what this says and that means therefore they want to have big checkpoints which will be stopping every single car to check: "Have you got your papers?" So I have an amendment that effectively amends this I think to allow for a bit of common sense. Firstly I think we'd question why this is here. I think one question the Government should be answering is whether the Government anticipates putting in place level 3 or level 4 lockdowns once we move to the traffic light system because my understanding was that regional boundaries weren't required once we got to that point. So is the Government still going to be putting in place level 3 or level 4 restrictions? I think New Zealanders would like to know. Do we anticipate more level 4 lockdowns in New Zealand even though we're going to have one of the most highly vaccinated countries in the world?The secondary question then is: why are we having this power put in place? The third question then is: why does it not specify it should be a case of being vaccinated or having proof of a negative test which is the requirement that the Government has put around the Auckland boundary—and therefore is the Government potentially going to renege on what they've said for the Auckland boundary which is actually "Now that we're passing this legislation we'll have a power to basically say once again we're only going to have vaccinated people leaving for Christmas." because that's what this power allows the Government to be able to do. It is to be able to restrict movement in that way and not actually allow those who aren't vaccinated—despite the fact that we may not like their choice if they can prove they haven't got COVID we'll let them travel. It comes back to the basic point which is actually that if you haven't got COVID you ain't going to be spreading COVID so why are we not allowing people to use rapid antigen tests? Why are we not allowing people to go down the road and get a test like we're going to allow people this Christmas to be able to travel with a negative test? There's choice in that and there's ability for the Government to stop the spread by stopping people who've actually got COVID and making sure they stay home whilst saying "We're going to put sensible checks in place to ensure that we're not allowing the spread to happen willy-nilly." So this clause though basically says we're going to go back to plan A. we're going to have Beijing-style checkpoints around districts which are potentially going to be in level 3 or level 4 lockdowns because from my understanding this legislation doesn't actually restrict New Zealand from going back to level 3 or level 4 lockdowns. Then our police force are going to be basically making sure everyone's got their papers before they can travel in and out of these checkpoints and these geographical boundaries. Who knows when they're going to be in place or where they're going to be in place and guess what? Under this legislation they don't even have to consult the Director-General of Health. Even though the actual Act that we're amending is called the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act we no longer have to actually consult the Director-General of Health. It's just a "may have to" consult the Director-General of Health. So there are a number of questions there I'd like to ask the Minister to actually stand up and answer rather than fob us off because we don't have a select committee stage. We need actual answers at this stage in the committee of the whole House."