Stanford EricaERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): Thank you Madam Speaker. I'm very pleased to take a call on the COVID-19 Public Health Response Amendment Bill a bill that sets up a framework for cost recovery of the quarantining system that we have in place. And if we are so lucky to be in Government after 19 September then we would be using this Act once it's passed today which I'm sure it will be to implement a regime in which we recover some of the costs of that quarantine regime.Now it's been said before and I'll say it again that it is disappointing that we are doing this under such urgency. It has been known for a number of months that this was coming. The National Party have been indicating for a number of weeks if not months that some kind of cost recovery mechanism was going to be required. The figures that are coming through are eye-watering and I think they've certainly exceeded the Government's expectations. They've exceeded the expectations of New Zealanders. And when we extrapolate out what we're spending at the moment to next year we are looking at a billion dollars in terms of our quarantining of Kiwis returning home. The reality in all of this is that that is a cost that we cannot continue to bear. There needs to be some form of regime where we claim some of that back from the people who are returning to New Zealand. It is a position of the National Party that everyone returning to New Zealand regardless of whether they're coming to stay for good coming to visit their mum or going on a business trip should all contribute to the cost of quarantine. Of course there are going to be situations and that's why it is an important part of this bill to have an exemption regime. There will be people who are in circumstances where they're unable to pay. There will be people who are coming back for reasons for which they should not have to pay. This bill lays out a good framework to make regulation to create classes of people who would be exempt from paying this and that's a very good thing in our opinion.Obviously the debate on this will come down to what those regulations will be. They're not in the bill. The detail is not in the bill about who will pay how much they'll pay what kind of recovery there'll be how it will be policed how it will be managed how you will pay and can you pay after. None of that is in the bill for now. We can only go on what the Government have said in press releases and said in the media about what they assume they will do. We've obviously heard differing opinions from Mr Peters and his party about they're more on the side that we're on which is everyone should be charged. And then we've got the Greens on the other side who don't believe that anybody should be charged. So I presume that if these guys are back in Government after September 19 it will fall somewhere in the middle. We've had indications that this may only recover a very small part of the overall cost and we're looking at it in the range of under $10 million. We heard from the Minister in the chair the Hon Megan Woods during the committee of the whole House stage that the costs of recovery that she's been told might be incurred are upwards of $600000. She admitted—or she didn't bring into account any of the cost recovery of the people who didn't pay so there's a significant amount of cost there as well. Potentially we will be looking at well over a million dollars in just having this regime in place. So to then recover somewhere between $2 million and $8 million or potentially $10 million—it's not a lot of cost recovery for a fair amount of cost that we'll be incurring. One of the issues with the rush in this bill is that although the Minister said she has seen evidence the fact is there was no regulatory impact statement for us to see any evidence as to whether or not this would impact the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. We will have to obviously take her at her word that it doesn't. But it just highlights the fact that this was done in such a rush in the last couple of days of this Parliament. And given that we've known since April that we're going to be incurring these costs and people would be coming home there is no excuse for us to be doing this now. We could have done this a number of weeks if not months ago. It just shows the lack of attention to detail by this Government that not only are they not on the ball with implementing this regime but also the fact that we didn't even really understand or comprehend exactly how much this is even costing us. A few months ago we were talking about $3000 the $4000 and now today we find out that it's upwards of $5500 heading up towards $6000 per person. So it's a significant cost that when extrapolated out to next year is potentially going to cost this country a billion dollars. When you look at that in terms of opportunity cost I mean we've seen just recently for example on the news the girl who had cystic fibrosis and the drugs that would save her life—$250 million I think it was to fund that for all sufferers in this country. So when you take that into consideration over the billion dollars that we're going to be potentially spending next year it really highlights the opportunity cost of funding other things: hospitals classrooms drugs that should be funded by Pharmac. I want to go back to that statement that I made in my second and first reading speeches where Grant Robertson said himself that this is not actually about fairness. It's never been about fairness because we had right from the start decisions around who could open who couldn't open. And he said this is not about fairness. Well it would be wonderful if we could afford to bring everyone home and pay for it all. But the fact is that a billion dollars a year is not something that is sustainable given we don't know how long this is going to go on for. It is reasonable that we expect New Zealanders who are coming home whether that's for 90 days for a year for good for a visit for a business trip for a holiday—all of those people—to contribute in some way to the cost of the isolation. They are part of the team. They are part of that team of 6 million when you include everyone who's overseas. And when you consider what's happening in Australia with what's happening in Victoria and Melbourne with that explosion of cases and you think about the number of New Zealanders that are in just Australia alone who could potentially want to come home to escape what's going on there—the cost of delivering that service of quarantine and isolation facilities is eye-watering. There's a huge opportunity cost. It is reasonable and it's really the only option that we have to recover that cost not just $10 million dollars of that cost but a significant chunk of that billion dollars that we will be spending next year and who knows how long for?This is as I mentioned a piece of legislation that the National Party will use should we be in Government after 19 September to implement what we have described as the regime that we would want in place. With that being said I commend the bill to the House.