Seymour DavidDAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Well thank you very much Madam Chair. I want to pick up on Part 2 of this legislation and in particular clause 9. It says that the Minister may make section 11 orders" and I actually think that's one of the better parts of this bill because the principle that's been advanced is that the person making orders that limit New Zealanders' freedoms at least should be somebody that we have the opportunity to vote out. As Karl Popper said the best you can say for democracy and the main purpose of it is that it allows the people to bloodlessly remove bad Governments. So that's not a bad starting principle.The difficulty we have is that there seems to be a lot of confusion in the bill about the comparative role of the unelected Director-General of Health and the elected Minister of Health. Now I suspect the people of Dunedin North may actually decide to bloodlessly remove their local member he of the lockdown bike ride but what they will never be able to do is remove the director-general. There is no Director-General of Health on any ballot paper in any election in New Zealand. The problem is that the way the bill was introduced it does give considerable powers to the director-general and worse than that in a way the powers of the director-general are greater than the Minister—in some ways they are; in some ways they're not. This is something that deserves to be debated and is the purpose of a committee stage.The Minister according to clause 9 must before they make any kind of order restricting New Zealand's freedoms for the purpose of battling COVID-19 consult the Minister of Justice and the Prime Minister any other Minister that he thinks fit—that's clause 9(1)(c). They must "have … regard to any [other] decision by the Government on the level of public health measures appropriate" it says. So there's actually quite a lot that the Minister has to consider and they have to give a 48-hour notice before any public health measures come into effect. All of this I would say is a vast improvement on the kind of seat-of-the-pants unclear and arbitrary diktat to which New Zealanders were subject during level 4 and level 3 of this COVID-19 crisis.But where it gets difficult is that the Director-General of Health can also introduce measures that restrict New Zealanders' freedoms—in fact in all the ways that a section 11 notice allows your freedoms to be restricted. You can be stopped stopped from gathering stopped from doing certain things stopped from moving things around the country stopped from opening a business stopped from going to your church or worshiping having a funeral—just about anything you can be stopped from doing under a section 11 notice and the director-general can issue them. So we support the principle of the democratically elected Minister being able to do it; what we don't support is the principle of the unelected director-general being able to issue these notices. The director-general doesn't have to consult the Prime Minister doesn't have to consult any other Ministers such as the Minister of Justice. He can just make the decision unilaterally.So in many ways the director-general actually has greater powers than the elected Minister of Health. What's that about? Well a couple of clues: the director-general can only issue a notice for a region one territorial local authority at a time. No obvious reason why they couldn't just issue 70-odd and lock down the whole country but that's one constraint. And they can only issue it for a month at a time but it's infinitely renewable. So there are some constraints but by and large the director-general has all of the powers of the Minister of Health and far less responsibility and accountability. That seems to me to be a mistake.Now I have an amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 495 which is designed to get around this. The solution it would seem to me if the objective is for the director-general to be able to issue sudden emergency orders if it seems that a virus or an epidemic is about to break out in a particular region and it's a matter of hours a matter of days to take action and squash it well you can see why the Government might have thought it was good to give the director-general the power to do that in a small region for a short period of time. But a much better way to approach this would be to say "OK if that's the objective fine. I'm not sure I agree with it but OK fine. The director-general should be able to issue a notice for 48 hours." Why 48 hours? Because that is the warning that the Minister of Health has to give before his or her notice comes into effect.So the policy objective is maximum democratic accountability and maximum nimbleness in moving to stomp out an outbreak of virus. The way to do that is not to give this kind of workaround where the director-general basically has all the same powers but actually to say the director-general and the Minister of Health have different roles. The director-general can issue a short-term regional directive for a maximum of 48 hours. After that period it is necessary for the Minister of Health with all the democratic accountabilities and constraints—they need to consult the Prime Minister and the Minister of Justice and risk being voted out of office for not doing a very good job. That Minister is the only one who can make a directive that lasts longer than 48 hours—so the director-general for the first 48 hours in a region but everything more permanent than that has to be done by the Minister.This is what I mean by engaging to make better law. I'm increasingly coming to the conclusion that actually this law shouldn't pass. It's just not good enough and it's almost—in fact it is—worse than what we've had to date. But let's continue to engage and try to make it better. I would hope that members of Parliament from all parties would consider this point about the interface between the rights and controls afforded to an unelected civil servant—the Director-General of Health—and the responsibilities of an elected politician who can be voted out—the Minister of Health.I'd appeal to the Green Party because for as long as I've been in Parliament and a lot longer before then there was one thing you could always say about the Green Party. You might think that maybe their economics were a bit on the unorthodox side to be polite; you might sometimes wonder if their environmentalism was entirely based on science; but you could always rely on the Green Party to be there standing up for civil liberties until they got into Government. Here's a great opportunity for the Green Party to stand up speak their mind and assert their independence because I can tell them from bitter experience if a support party in Government doesn't do that they're in political trouble. So even if they don't care about civil liberties they should still do it for the purpose of their own political survival.I say to New Zealand First: there's a reason that Winston Peters has been voted out of three electorates and sacked from three Governments. It's because when it really matters he's silent—haven't heard anything. Maybe he'll try and take the credit for the bill as introduced. Well that would be politically suicidal in my view. The fact of the matter is Winston Peters should be down here in the Chamber standing up for the basic rights and freedoms of the ordinary bloke and "bloke-ess" which is how he likes to profess himself. But where is he?Hon Member: He doesn't care.DAVID SEYMOUR: He doesn't care is what I'm hearing. I think that's a bit harsh. But I would actually appeal—even on such a basic issue as do we give this power to elected officials New Zealanders can vote out or unelected civil servants—for the so-called support parties of the Government—New Zealand First and the Greens—to get down here to the Chamber take a call stand up for themselves and stand up for New Zealanders because if they don't do that New Zealanders might just decide to stand up to them in a few months. Thank you Madam Chair."