Hipkins ChrisHon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Health): I'm very tempted to almost endorse the last comment Judith Collins made. I think she should listen to Dr Shane Reti a little more often—when he said that there was no such thing as a 100 percent foolproof plan to protect New Zealand from COVID-19. Dr Reti is right and it's what the Government has been saying since the end of the last lockdown. We've been telling New Zealanders of the need to remain vigilant. We have been putting in place plans to ensure that if we were confronted with COVID-19 again we could rise to the occasion as we did the first time around. And what did we get from the Opposition with regard to those plans? We got accused of scaremongering—all sorts of conspiracy theories about what did we know that they didn't know when we were telling New Zealanders that we simply needed to be prepared. A virus is a virus.Let me just draw an analogy because one of the most obvious solutions—apparently we should just ban the virus. If we're mean to the virus it won't come into New Zealand! That seems to be the implication from at least one member on the other side. If you raise your eyebrows in a sufficient kind of a way towards the virus it won't dare cross the border. But let's just be really clear about that: for the last several decades including the nine years of the last National Government we had a zero tolerance to biosecurity incursions in New Zealand. How did that work out for us? There were 199 biosecurity incursions under the last Government despite their stated zero-tolerance approach for that—including Mycoplasma bovis which has cost the country millions. That happened under their watch. If there was a way to make our border 100 percent foolproof when it comes to viruses and other things that might want to try and get into the country every Government would have done it by now. The thing is there is no such thing as a risk-free strategy here.I do want to again remind New Zealanders that our go hard go early" strategy delivers dividends. New Zealanders know that because we had the longest period without community transmission of COVID-19 of just about any country in the world. New Zealanders can see that the sacrifices we are making right now as of today are worth it because we can get on top of the virus and we can stamp it out. We will do that again to ensure that we get the freedom back that New Zealanders are looking for. We will do that in several ways. First of all we will ensure there is extensive testing: 136000 tests have been processed since 12 August; all border and managed isolation facility workers are being tested; the vast majority of managed isolation and quarantine facility workers have been tested and they have produced negative results. The second line of defence is our contact tracing: where a positive case is identified we identify all their contacts we get in contact with those people and we make sure they are isolated. I can give the House an update that there are 1983 close contacts identified to date and 1861 of those have already been contacted. That is what our system is designed to do and it is delivering as it is intended.Outside of the health system we can support New Zealanders whose lives and livelihoods have been disrupted by this latest COVID-19 incursion. We've extended the wage subsidy—we acknowledge it's tough economic going out there. We've put extra support in place for students whose learning has been disrupted by COVID-19 including restarting the very popular learning from home TV; distributing more laptops to students in Auckland particularly those who are studying towards NCEA; and working with our senior secondary schools to ensure that those students who need to be on site for practical learning can do so in a safe way that is consistent with other workplaces that are able to operate under level 3.Throughout the response to COVID-19 the Government has been accused of many many things. We've been told; we've been given much advice: first we should be more like Australia—maybe not; then we should be more like Sweden—6000 people died in Sweden; then we should be more like South Korea; then we should open the border to Australia and open the border to China with urgency; we should allow international students back into our country as soon as possible. All of those suggestions have come from the Opposition. At every step along this way when they have been asked to make judgments they've made judgments that have been proven to be wrong. On this side of the House we have been working hard to stamp out COVID-19. We have taken a cautious approach.Finally it is a bit rich for the Opposition to be accusing me of not moving fast enough to make testing mandatory when they opposed the law change that allows me to do that and called it the greatest infringement on human rights this country has ever seen. The Opposition—every time they've been asked to make a judgment on COVID19—have got it wrong."