Hipkins ChrisInstruction to the Finance and Expenditure CommitteeHon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister for COVID-19 Response): I move That the COVID-19 Response (Management Measures) Legislation Bill be reported to the House by 14 October 2021 and that the committee have authority to meet at any time while the House is sitting (except during oral questions) during any evening on a day on which there has been a sitting of the House and on a Friday in a week in which there has been a sitting of the House and outside the Wellington area despite Standing Orders 193 195 and 196. I had hoped that we would not find ourselves back in the position of having to deal with one of these pieces of legislation. The Government has taken the approach right the way through the pandemic that we should only use expedited procedures for emergency provisions as much as is absolutely necessary to deal with the immediate COVID-19 response. So when we passed the two omnibus bills that we've previously passed dealing with very similar provisions to this one we deliberately put in them sunset clauses that meant most of those provisions then expired even if some of them were desirable for the longer term. I have taken the view that if there are longer-term changes that should be made like things like being able to file documents electronically and affix electronic signatures things that make common sense in the 21st century—if they're desirable in the longer term we should bring forward separate legislation that goes through a proper and considered process to make those changes rather than to rush though changes that are then in place permanently. So we've taken the attitude that when we're doing these types of approaches we should do them for a specified period of time and if they should then expire and things should either revert back to the way they were or where there's a desire to keep them that we can do that with a proper legislative process that is subject to the regular level of scrutiny. Many of the measures that we are now re-enacting were going to expire or have expired or weren't potentially foreseeable as necessary a couple of months ago. The Delta outbreak that we have been dealing with has meant that we do have to bring forward another bill so there's been some criticism from the members opposite: why is it that this bill which has only been introduced this week is now being progressed in such haste? I'm always open to conversations about progressing legislation through Parliament in haste. It is something that as Leader of the House I try to avoid doing. But when it comes to dealing—Hon Member: Not very hard. Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I've actually used less urgency than most people who have held this role and actually the Government does try and avoid the use of urgency unless there is a very good reason for doing so. Dealing with this particular Delta outbreak we do need to provide some of these relatively sensible common-sense measures. For example the ability for the courts to clear their backlog of cases is dependent on this bill passing its way through the House and of course we want to be able to do that very quickly. It is important that people do have certainty about knowing what the law is going to be and so we want to make sure that for those who are currently finding themselves potentially on the wrong side of the legal ledger we need them to know that we're fixing that for them so that they can become compliant. So if there are deadlines that they have missed because they've been unable to—if they've not been able to file the documents or sign the documents that they needed to—because of COVID-19 restrictions this bill will give them the certainty to know that they will be compliant with the law. So we want to get that in place as quickly as we can. The last two bills didn't have any select committee scrutiny. The reason that we're now having another debate now is that we are sending the bill to select committee but we're only doing that for a period of a couple of weeks so that it can be scrutinised. The alternative would be just to pass the whole bill through under urgency and then we wouldn't be having this debate that we're about to have now. Actually our view is that if we can do a select committee hearing even if it's a short one that's better than nothing.