Court Simon; Parker DavidSIMON COURT (ACT): Thank you Madam Chair. I have some questions for the Minister about the premise of the bill. I just want to return to the regulatory impact statement initially just to refresh the understanding of the committee as to what this bill proposes to do. In the regulatory impact analysis when it talks about the COVID-19 support framework the Treasury considered that an impact statement was not required on the grounds that this legislation is likely to have no or only minor impacts on businesses individuals and not-for-profit entities.Hon Gerry Brownlee: No they're not going to pay it.SIMON COURT: Mr Brownlee is correct. It appears that while this legislation is being rushed through under urgency with much fanfare and described as being absolutely vital to align the new traffic light system to the old COVID alert framework—or in Auckland we're not quite sure. It's COVID-19 alert level 2 or 3.haircut". Last week it was "level 3.Mitre10". As far as Aucklanders are concerned it's "level 3.Let's get out of here".Chris Bishop: What about "3.picnic"?SIMON COURT: Well "3.picnic" was some months ago Mr Bishop and you can guarantee that Aucklanders who are freedom-loving people took that very very seriously to get out there have picnics go and talk to friends and family and support them.Now when we're thinking about whether this is actually going to work what's the point of it and then we come to the next stage of the regulatory impact assessment at paragraph 2.5: "For the policy to be given effect by this Bill is there analysis"? Well on the COVID-19 support payments framework no further analysis is available. So what the ACT Party always asks is: what are the costs and what are the benefits? The second question we ask is: who pays the costs and who receives the benefits and that is simply not clear from this legislation. It's a sketch it's a charcoal imprint and it's not clear whether this legislation will actually benefit anyone. But by forcing it through under urgency this House costs over $20000 an hour to run and so all of those hours spent this morning under urgency were to pass legislation which it appears may not ever be used or not used in the way that it's intended.Then I want to come to the matter of what do businesses actually need. Well what they need is clarity. What they've been given is a traffic light system. Now I've run a few roadworks in my time as a civil engineer. I know how badly a stop-go can go when it goes wrong particularly in summer on a dusty road when all the workers decide that they're going to take smoko at the same time and they just put the sign to "Stop" and they all wander off and sit under a tree—and that's not just in Fiji; that's here in New Zealand as well. So my impression of this legislation is that it's going to be more like a stop-go somewhere out in the regions with not a lot of supervision from the Government. As the Prime Minister has said "Look you all have to do the contact tracing and you'll all have to have the vaccine passport on your phone but gosh don't worry about checking it. As long as someone thinks they've seen it when you walk into the bar well that'll be enough." Look you know I've had a number of boys go through high school in the past few years and if they thought they could pass exams by waving a piece of paper like this in front of the teacher I tell you what they'd be through with scholarships by now. They'd all be on their way to med school or probably off to the Manukau Institute of Technology to learn how to build rockets.So what businesses need is certainty. This piece of legislation gives absolutely no certainty to businesses because it actually doesn't qualify who will get to be a business what is a business circumstance or matter or who is the group who might be affected by such matters and then what they do about claiming any benefits.Now what I'd like to do is offer a bit of an example. I have a very dear friend who mortgaged his home bought some trucks hired some people including people who you might say at first glance weren't going to be the people that you'd want to trust with your brand new truck and all of your brand new power tools. But he took a chance on those people and he has a landscaping business. That business has contracts in the south of Auckland delivering landscaping for very large housing developments. Now my dear friend has a business and some of his staff live outside of the Auckland level 3 alert level zone. One of the ones who has the truck with some of the tools on it lives in the Waikato and despite the fact that alert levels have bumped around and hopped around and tripped from here to there the staff who sometimes were in level 2 in the Waikato and sometimes were in level 3 haven't been able to return to their place of work in South Auckland with the truck and the tools for months and months now.CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! I'm just going to invite the member to come to Part 1 in this committee stage.SIMON COURT: Thank you Madam Chair. So I'd like to return to who is financially affected—Hon Gerry Brownlee: Point of order Madam Chairperson. Earlier this afternoon the Speaker made it very clear to the House that there would be a great deal of leniency taken on these two COVID bills and recognised that because of the shortened process and the importance of these bills there would be a straying away from some of them and that sometimes speeches might have been slightly extraneous. I think—CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): Thank you for that.Hon Gerry Brownlee: —the committee would be very interested to know Mr Court's story.CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): Thank you—thank you for that. The Chair is as the member knows the sole judge of relevance. I am indeed very mindful of the short notice and time frames and urgent nature of this bill. I am cognisant of it and I'm keeping it in mind.SIMON COURT: Thank you Madam Chair. Look for the benefit of the committee I'm always prepared to accept the friendly but forceful advice of the Chair in this particular case to come back to the bill.Look businesses like my friend's landscaping business are financially affected by public health orders. His staff are awaiting the opportunity to return to work. His contract is unfulfilled. His client is saying "If you can't deliver the landscaping so I can hand the site back to the developer then you're going to have your contract nullified. You will then be liable to me to pay my costs even though your workers are excluded from coming to work by a Government health order." Unfortunately despite writing many letters to the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment seeking permission and then trying to seek cost recovery through the Government's current support schemes he remains unfulfilled in his ambition to have the costs imposed by Government—the cost of managing the public health response which this Government has outsourced on to New Zealand businesses and outsourced in the most deeply cynical way whether it's by imposing contract clauses into commercial tenancy agreements or whether it's by telling businesses that they must check the vaccine passport but "We won't check you but if the hair salon wonders if somebody's turned up without the right documentation they should call the police." This combination of friendly advice and the billy club held behind the back is an example of this Government's cynical behaviour just like this piece of legislation is.So what I would ask the Minister is instead of all of this pantomime around pretending to care about business why don't you just do what business is asking you to do? Open New Zealand up—open up on 1 December. Let businesses manage their own risk just like construction businesses and transport businesses who have drivers and operators and customers and who are at risk of trucks crashing or forklifts tipping over. I mean COVID19 to them is simply another health and safety risk that they need to manage. What they're asking for is "Let us out of here. Set us free. Stop wasting our time with your good intentions but obvious hopeless delivery and let us get back to business. Let us open our doors without all of this." because none of this would be necessary if businesses were actually able to open to welcome their customers and to manage their own health and safety risk. They wouldn't need the Government to be standing over them saying "Oh we'll save you when you need saving." because it turns out—particularly in the Auckland CBD and the Auckland region—the time for saving businesses is long long gone. The "For lease" signs are up the shops are emptying out there are tumbleweeds blowing down some streets in the wind and no amount of pretend caring from this Government is going to change that. I'd like the Minister to answer all of those questions please.Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister of Revenue): The idea that if we had given in to the prescription that we heard again from the ACT Party and have heard repeatedly over the last year and a half that we should just open up—the idea that that would have had a better outcome for New Zealand is nonsense. The economic outcome would have been poorer as well as the health outcome and many more people would have died."