Seymour DavidDAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): I rise on behalf of ACT in opposition to these motions and just to make it clear to summarise what's going on here the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act allows the Government to make orders that direct New Zealanders to do or not do things to be or to not be at a place and they're able to do it just by signing a piece of paper. The catch is that Parliament has to debate them retrospectively. The ACT Party at first was actually prepared to support this basic idea because we thought the Government would stop making rules when they no longer made sense. We asked that there be more accountability into the system and the Government didn't bring it so that's when we stopped supporting this—months ago. We voted against the last set of orders I think in November. We voted against the COVID-Public Health Response Amendment Bill that made many of these orders possible; we voted against that last year. So we've been opposing this for some time because the problem is the rules no longer make sense. The benefits of these rules no longer exceed the costs. It's time to move on from a paradigm of fear from a world where people are supposed to bear huge costs at the altar of the COVID god even if it doesn't make practically any difference. And we heard that in the parliamentary question time today. I asked the Prime Minister: if we let people come and be tourists and drive the New Zealand economy if foreigners could come without isolation how many extra COVID cases how many extra hospital cases would there be? The Prime Minister didn't know. She said she knew how many there'd be if they had to isolate—a few hundred. How many if they didn't have to isolate? She didn't know. The fact is there's no reason not to open up the border. The restrictions on people coming into New Zealand that we still have do not have benefits that outweigh their costs.It's the same with so many of these rules. You know we're talking about rules here—for example the requirement for groups of people to be vaccinated. Well we heard a summary of the recent court case under Justice Cooke from my colleague Chris Bishop and it was a pretty good summary. What the judge found is that the mandates are not required for the specific purpose of business continuity for Police and Defence. They have enough people. They could take the people who are in danger of COVID from not being vaccinated and sub them out. They wouldn't actually stop the police or the Defence Force from continuing to do their work. So the mandates weren't justified. They weren't a justifiable limitation on people's freedom to choose. Then the judge said something else that's very important. He said Omicron is changing the calculus of COVID. Omicron is different. It's easier to spread; spreads more easily. It's less virulent. It's milder if you do get it. And it has what they call immune escape properties—different vastly different from Delta. So vaccination's effect on spread and hospitalisation even from Omicron is nothing like it was for Delta. And that changes the rules. It doesn't matter if you pro-vax or anti-vax or pro-mandate or anti-mandate you have to start from an agreed set of facts. And the facts are that Omicron is now the dominant strain. Almost 100 percent of cases are Omicron now and the effects of vaccination on Omicron are much different than they were on Delta. When the facts change we have to change our response because this whole COVID response—if the epidemiology if the biological facts are the foundation the policy is the frame the politics is the roof. And right now Omicron is shaking down the whole edifice on which this Government's COVID response has been built.Let me give you an example of what some of these rules that are inflexible mean at a personal level and this is a story of a constituent. When someone comes to see me as a constituent it's a secret. I don't talk about them. But this is from someone who said It's time to use my voice." I'm talking about the chaplain at a school called Dilworth that's had a lot of challenges. This school is going through all sorts of difficulties not the fault of any of the people there now—all historical but still very painful. The chaplain is not an anti-vaxxer. In fact he was vaccinated twice. But he had a response that was very bad from his second dose. He went to see his doctor and his doctor said "I recognise that. That actually is a legitimate recognised response to the Pfizer vaccine." It was so horrible that it affected him for months. He didn't want to get the booster but because he doesn't want to get the booster and because of the mandates on whole professions like education and because of the requirement to be boosted by today if he wants to keep working he has to go home. At a time when that school most needs a chaplain it can't have one. I have to ask given the changing calculus of COVID with Omicron: is that worth it? Is that sane? Dare I ask the Prime Minister: is that kind? I don't think so. It no longer stacks up. It no longer makes any sense. And there's so many ways that we could have had a more humane response to vaccination requirements. In fact there's three things we could have done that would have helped him. First of all we should have said it's vax or test. Sure I understand under earlier variants people wanted to know the people around them were less likely to give them COVID. It's self-protection. But really if the person gets a test every 72 hours as ACT proposed in October if you know that they are not carrying COVID because they have been tested then do you really care if they're vaccinated? Why would we indulge in a mania of going even further and saying that they have to be vaccinated if we've already secured our own protection by them having regular tests? So it should have been vax or test. That would have let this guy keep working.Second of all what we should have done is said "Look we're able to have an organisation set its own rules." Now this particular school any time—they'd be very happy to make an exception for this guy. But actually they can't you know because it's the whole education sector. And here's the third thing we could have done to have a more humane response. If we had decided that we were going to let doctors have their own professional autonomy and give exemptions his doctor would have given an exemption like that but she's not allowed to. And the way that doctors have had their rights to give exemptions taken away was really quite extraordinary. You know imagine if lawyers had to ask the Minister of Justice before they gave certain advice. There would be an outrage. Lawyers would never stand for it you know? Doctors have been told "You can't give certain advice to patients unless the Ministry of Health stands over you and says so." It's pretty extraordinary. Now if we'd made it vax or test and we had organisations like schools make their own rules and exceptions and let doctors operate with professional autonomy and make exemptions I suspect we wouldn't have the loss of social cohesion and some of the angst that's out there. We could have had a much more humane effect on vaccination with the same outcomes in terms of public health. And yet here we are post hoc ratifying vaccine mandate rules. Well ACT opposes them and we have since at least October now and we've made positive suggestions that could have given us a more humane response. They've been there all along.There are other suggestions here around the border but I don't think the Government is capable of making sane calculations around any policy to do with COVID. That's why we say it's time to move on. It's time to ask—when it comes to isolation rules for example—why does it make sense for somebody to isolate for 10 days when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the incubation period is two to three days and your infectious period's day four and five? The New Zealand Government says you got to keep isolating for another five days after you're infectious. Why? Because they don't care about the cost they put on New Zealanders. They don't care about other aspects of your life or wellbeing. It's COVID above all else. It's sacrifice at the altar of the COVID gods and damn all the other costs that people face. Those isolation rules are completely wrong. And then there's the question of QR codes. Well actually you're only a contact if you live with someone. So unless you're scanning the QR code in your house then it's actually not going to—Mr Speaker I assume you're too sensible to have one. Unless you have a QR code in your house then scanning QR codes doesn't help with contact tracing. But you know what? Every business in this country is required by law to display one and every customer that goes into those businesses has to scan. Does it make any difference to public health? No. Is it an imposition on New Zealanders? Yes. Does it show how much the Government cares about other aspects of New Zealanders' welfare? Absolutely. "We're making it do it because we can. It won't make any difference. So what?" And then the likes of Michael Baker have the temerity to say "Well it doesn't work now but it might work at some time in the future so you have to keep doing it." This is the lack of analysis of the costs and benefits of the Government's COVID response and it's absolutely shameful. There's the border there's the mandates there's the QR codes there's the isolation requirements. There's the ban on rapid antigen tests. Those things all matter.Hon Andrew Little: And the low fatality rate.DAVID SEYMOUR: And there's Andrew Little barking away in the corner saying "Oh we have a low fatality rate." We don't have a low fatality rate because of anything that Minister's done I can assure you. He's been incompetent from start to finish. How many tests can the Government do? Oh 58000? No they forgot about rising rates and the inability to pool. Nothing that Minister's been responsible for has made any difference. How many ICU beds do we have? He barks away but he knows he's screwed it up at every point. That's why we need to move on. We need to get past rules that no longer make sense and take our freedom back. Thank you Mr Speaker."