Mitchell MarkHon MARK MITCHELL (National—Rodney): Thank you Mr Speaker. It's my pleasure to be able to stand to speak in the House since we were suspended to this COVID-19 Response (Further Management Measures) Legislation Bill. If you'll humour me Mr Speaker can I just start by first of all acknowledging all our first responders and essential workers that have carried us through what has been a challenging time for us as a nation through both the level 4 and now the level 3 lockdown. Can I acknowledge the Government and the work that they have done. None of us could have predicted or expected to be hit with something as serious as a global pandemic and I think that everyone in this House has responded and worked as hard as they can to do the best that we can for the country. On saying that I felt very strongly six weeks ago or seven weeks ago when we moved into level 4 that—and we went into a full lockdown. All of us could see and understand or should have seen and understood just how significant the impact was going to be on us as a nation. We had to be focused on flattening the curve and I think that the country's done a very good job of doing that. But we understood that there was going to be a price to pay on that and that was going to be the economic harm that we now have to face and try and deal with in terms of recovery. I felt very strongly at the time—and I raised this with the Minister for Small Business and the Minister of Revenue the Hon Stuart Nash. I said to him If you are going to move us into level 4 and if you are going to shut the country down of course we'll get behind you."—and the country has got behind that decision—"But you must have an equal and opposite response when it comes to the economy." You must have someone—Dr Bloomfield's done a very good job of protecting the health system and leading the health response. You must have a focus on what we're doing from day one in terms of the support that needs to be put in place especially for our small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) but across our whole economy. If you don't do that if you fail to do that and you take too much time then the pain and the suffering and the damage is going to be far worse. I feel that we're in a position right now where although it's good to have this bill in the House and most of the provisions in it we are supporting—and I will talk directly to the issues that the Hon Andrew Little has raised in his role as the Minister of Justice and in my role as the portfolio holder in our party in Opposition. But I just want to say and put on record that this is way too slow. This should have happened four five six weeks ago. I indicated clearly and signalled clearly to Stuart Nash that we were already working on this. There was no problem. Our leader Simon Bridges had indicated that we would cooperate and work if it meant passing legislation to make sure that the enforcement agencies actually had the powers under a state of emergency to be able to actually police the lockdown right through to our economic response in terms of—and especially with—businesses having cash flow. Having had my own company and having done my own start-up and having carried the burden of understanding clearly the responsibility to my employees and the fact that they had families that they were feeding and children that they needed to school—they needed certainty. They needed to be able to financially plan themselves. Understanding all of that I understood very clearly that there were two things that were going to be front of mind. One was cash flow coming into the company and the other one was payroll and you had to make sure and you had to be confident and work hard so that you could match those two things together. Now the Government has responded—sorry Mr Speaker. I will get back to the—SPEAKER: Well hardly back to it—the member hasn't quite been there yet. Hon MARK MITCHELL: The Government has responded in terms of the wage subsidy. We could debate the effectiveness of that because unfortunately a lot of companies have fixed costs and they may have to use some of that when it's actually intended for the employees. So we could have a debate about the wage subsidy. Fundamentally that was good. A good response—good to put that in place. At least employees had some certainty around three months on the 80 percent but there was a massive deficit and hole around cash flow. Coming to the—thank you for your patience Mr Speaker and I want to acknowledge that. I will come back to what's being proposed in the bill. Very quickly on the rents—to me that's good but it's messing around on the fringes. We're going from 10 to 30 days. I understand the sentiment that the Minister was talking about in terms of allowing the landlords and the people renting to have that space to be able to negotiate something but one thing I think we can all agree on is that there is no square peg going into a square hole here. I know that with every single case that I deal with in my own electorate in supporting my own constituents every case is different. Some landlords are not wealthy commercial property owners. They might have invested their life savings in one commercial building and actually that revenue is quite important to them. So I agree with the Minister: let's not demonise the commercial landlords because many of them are working very hard and they're trying to accommodate the businesses that are renting space in their buildings without a doubt. I just don't feel that this goes far enough. It extends it from 10 days to 30 days. It's putting off the inevitable because what's happened is that the tap—that cash flow I was talking about—has been turned off and the hand that turns it off has got a responsibility to find a way of actually filling that gap that's created. It's through no fault of their own. It's not the Government's fault that we had to deal with coronavirus and it's not the country's fault that we had to deal with that but the reality of it is that the Government's hand was the one that turned the tap off so we have to find solutions and ways to be able to bring those SMEs through. SMEs run on two things fundamentally. They run on confidence and they run on energy. If you remove the confidence or the energy is driven down you've got a big problem in terms of trying to recover and have them lead the recovery because the Government—they don't generate revenue. It's our businesses that generate the revenue. They are the ones that pay the tax that runs our health system and that runs our education system. So fundamentally they need to be supported. In terms of the electronic communications in our courts—look this is common sense. We have got a backlog. I understand that we're going to have to deal with that so basically what the Government's proposing is that instead of using the audiovisual link (AVL) we can go to an audio link. I agree with this. I think this is a good move. I don't want to see it used once we transition out of lockdown and when we can get the courts back up and running again. I think that it's important that we transition back to having the default of an AVL because obviously—the Minister's agreeing. He knows the issues around going to just an audio link only. In terms of being able to swab a deceased person—absolutely. It makes complete sense. We're in support of that. So Mr Speaker thank you again for your tolerance. I just felt very strongly that I wanted to make some comments that I feel fundamentally are critically important for us as a nation. I'd just finish on this: it feels like there's been a sense of urgency—I think that there has been a genuine sense of urgency. That sense of urgency needs to scale up and not be reduced. Every day now is a wasted opportunity in terms of how we respond and I'd rather see—people are starting to feel "Why are we staying in level 3?" They want more information and they want more transparency around that and I feel very strongly now that daily the Government should be looking at ways to be able to get the country moving again. That means having that rapid testing regime in place. That means having—SPEAKER: Order! Order! Order! I have been very tolerant."