Bishop ChrisCHRIS BISHOP (National): Thank you very much Madam Chair and I echo the comments of my colleague Michael Woodhouse. I would like to speak to the tabled amendment in my name which is a very important amendment. What I'm proposing is that after clause 9 we insert after new section 12(2) of the current Act a new section 12(2)(d). And just by way of context section 12(2) is the power for the Minister to make COVID orders. That's the operational provision of the Act. That's what gives the Minister the power to do a whole actually massive swathe or suite of things. I'm proposing that what he will not be allowed to do now is make orders in relation to fully vaccinated international travellers entering New Zealand—very very simple; very very simple amendment. It will stop the Minister making orders in relation to fully vaccinated international travellers entering New Zealand. Now what that means is that orders will not be able to be made for fully vaccinated travellers to this country. This will start to dismantle and erode the managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) system. What it does is place restrictions around what the Minister is not allowed to make an order about. We're saying on this side of the House that the time has come to start dismantling MIQ because full vaccination—the evidence is now extremely clear—provides enormous benefit to not only individuals who receive it but also the community and what we've seen is that the risk of fully vaccinated travellers entering New Zealand markedly diminishes because of that vaccination. We've got the data now.Hon Chris Hipkins: What would you do with the unvaccinated ones?CHRIS BISHOP: Well in relation to unvaccinated—and the Minister said it before: there has to be provision of MIQ facilities available. We had this long argument last night—well not long but we had this argument last night in the House. I think there's widespread consensus that there should be some quarantine facilities and on this side of the House we think there should be purpose-built. If the Government had done it a year ago they'd be opening now—maybe; although the way this Government does things probably not but we had the quarantine facilities. But for fully vaccinated travellers—and we've now got the data. So here's the thing: the Government only started collecting the data on the vaccination status of people who arrive into MIQ from 23 August. One might well ask why the Government didn't collect that data earlier and I've got the written question answers from the Minister. It wasn't that they didn't ask—every now and then the health officials would ask but they got collected—and I can't believe this is true but it is—in just sort of a general all-purpose any-other-section sheet on the returnees' health forms. The Minister says it will be too difficult and cumbersome to go back through every form that people filled out to figure out if they've recorded their vaccination status or not. I accept that that would be—I mean there's 130000 or something people who have been through MIQ in that time so it would be ridiculous to figure that out. But that doesn't answer the question as to why the Government only started asking people from 23 August onwards and that actually the tragedy of this whole situation is that if we'd asked people about vaccination back in maybe March April May or June rather than August we could have made changes—we could have made the changes that the Government's making now in terms of halving the time in terms of MIQ from 14 days to seven days. We could have made that earlier and thousands more people could have come home. The other point is the emergency-allocation process which is a debacle. Still today we see in the paper examples of people who have been granted an emergency allocation into MIQ but they can't get early release to come out of MIQ even though the reason they got the allocation in the first place is because of compassionate reasons. Now we find they can't get early exemption to leave. Again if we'd taken account of vaccination status earlier then we could have made some changes to that process. So this is a very simple amendment. It will prohibit the Minister from making orders in relation to fully vaccinated international travellers entering New Zealand. What this will mean is that full vaccination will give huge benefits to people in terms of travel. There are 240000-odd people who are registered in the MIQ system who have never received a spot. Again we have this from the Minister himself in terms of written question answers. It's around 240000 people who are registered who've never received a spot. People I think get a little bit confused by it or at least misled by the MIQ lottery numbers that appear whenever the Government allows the lottery to take place because there's anywhere between 25000 and 35000 people in the lottery on a regular basis. But what that doesn't capture are the people who are registered who never bother to enter because you know they see the time frames and that's not available for them or actually just the logging in on Twitter or Facebook and they see everyone else in the lottery posting up and saying I'm number 25043." and you know they've got no hope—they've got no hope. Even if they are a fully vaccinated Kiwi in Queensland they've got no hope. So they just give up. So there's 240000 people in the system who never bother to actually go into one of these regular lotteries. Even James Shaw had to do it. James Shaw had to go into the lottery to go to Glasgow. I think he got a special spot in the end but he participated in the lottery and I asked him in a written question "What number did you get to?" He claimed he didn't remember which was interesting—but anyway. But that was interesting. So James Shaw's sitting there on his laptop trying to get all the way to Glasgow for the international COP26 and James Shaw had to log in. He was looking to see—up there in his Beehive office with his staff around him. Nine o'clock rolls around. "I'm registered in the system."—the Hon James Shaw Minister of Climate Change. Off he goes into the system and off it pops "Oh you're number 17043."—no chance or whatever it was. But that's the stupidity of that situation. In the end he got a special slot. But anyway this amendment would mean James Shaw wouldn't have to get a special allocation from the Prime Minister or the Beehive through the group allocation system—it would mean he didn't have to do that. James Shaw could go to COP26; happy days. It means the Prime Minister could go to Europe because she's a fully vaccinated traveller. So the European trip that got cancelled at the last minute she could go without being worried about taking up a slot for somebody else. Damien O'Connor went on a trip. He didn't get much flak for that because he was doing God's work during the free-trade negotiations which has bipartisan support—but Damien O'Connor could go without worrying about it. And I'll tell you what else it could do. It's not about the Government actually. It's not about Ministers; it's about Kiwis and it's about New Zealanders travelling overseas to Australia. I've got a similar amendment which I'll talk to later—a similar amendment in relation to the trans-Tasman bubble which the Government will not make any move on before Christmas for reasons best known only to themselves—not even on a state-by-state basis. Queensland for example Tasmania Western Australia and ACT—where yeah there's a little bit of COVID but a very very small amount. The ACT is 97 percent vaccinated and the Government's position is that—it's a jurisdiction; it's not a state better get that right—a jurisdiction of Australia the ACT that has a 97 percent first dose vaccination rate we can't have a bubble with. Or Queensland where there is very little COVID—the vaccination rate's lower there; I accept that but there's very little to no COVID there and tens of thousands of New Zealanders live in Queensland and have family and whānau over there. The Government's position is that we can't even have a state-by-state bubble with Australia before ChristmasSo all of that will be eroded and evaporated with this amendment. It's about the right of Kiwis to come home and this amendment is consistent with the arguments that Erica Stanford and other colleagues have made around the Bill of Rights Act because there is a right in section 18 of the Bill of Rights Act for New Zealand citizens to return to New Zealand. I accept the argument that that was a justified limit under section 5 18 months ago; very few people think it is a justified limit these days in November 2021 heading into December 2021 with the benefits of full vaccination and the risk calculus that exists in New Zealand right now. I refer the Minister to the very good opinion piece by Professor Andrew Geddis of the University of Otago law faculty who has written about this particular issue. He makes the same argument I do which is that MIQ was justified last year but it is increasingly difficult to justify the restrictions in November 2021 once you take into account vaccination and also once you take into account the fact that COVID is here. Elimination is gone. COVID is here; it's not going away. The Government now accepts that and the Minister has been I actually think refreshingly frank about the fact that COVID is here and it's not going away and it will spread. He's been refreshingly frank in a way that I wish the Prime Minister would be in relation to those salient facts. So when you take into account the fact that COVID's here and the Bill of Rights Act and vaccination it's hard to justify not supporting this amendment and I invite the Minister to support it."