7. Question No. 7—COVID-19 ResponseCHRIS BISHOP (National) to the Minister for COVID-19 ResponseQuestion No. 7—COVID-19 Response7. CHRIS BISHOP (National) to the Minister for COVID-19 Response: On what dates if ever did Cabinet authorise the development of COVID-19 vaccination certificates and on what date will vaccination certificates be available for New Zealanders?Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister for COVID-19 Response): Ministers have been considering formally introducing a vaccination certificate since the beginning of the year. Cabinet formally authorised the development of a COVID-19 vaccination certification on 5 July as part of the reconnecting New Zealand work which was announced in early August. Since then we've been working through a variety of details and options around what a vaccine certificate might look like in New Zealand. I expect that vaccination certificates will be available from mid to late November.Chris Bishop: Why did it take the Cabinet until 5 July to authorise the development of vaccination certificates?Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Up until that point the focus of the vaccination certification work was primarily on the international border and on making sure that people could validate their vaccination records for the purposes of international travel. The work around considering how a vaccination certificate regime could be used domestically started before July but it was formally noted by Cabinet in July.Chris Bishop: Would a vaccination certificate regime be in place now if the Government had moved earlier than 5 July to authorise the development of a domestic vaccination certificate regime?Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: The development of vaccination records and how people can access vaccination records has been ongoing throughout the year. I would note that the IT systems that that relies on were the very IT systems the member confidentially predicted in the House were going to be a flop—like Book My Vaccine and the COVID Immunisation Register. They have been hugely successful and I have absolute confidence that the team developing this will produce a very successful vaccination certificate system as well.Chris Bishop: Does he agree with the Deputy Prime Minister who stated this morning that should an eligible area reach 90 percent of double-dose vaccination before mid-November If in the worst of all worlds if we had to we could use a paper-based system for a period of time"?Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: People can access their vaccination records now. They can go and download them off the internet right now if they wish to do that and if they wish to print them out to show other people that they have been vaccinated they can access that now. But one of the issues is that people want to know that they have been validated and so making sure there's a technological solution available that respects people's privacy and that allows for digital vaccination certificates to be validated is one of the pieces of work that is now in its final stages. Of course though one of the things that has to be resolved and that did need to be resolved before this system could go live and be finalised is exactly how they would be used. I can say on this side of the House we're very clear on how vaccine certificates will be used.Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern: Can the Minister confirm that some countries throughout the use of vaccination certificates have used a paper-based model but what the Government is working to develop enables an app to be used for the purposes of scanning and a quick response code certification that is an accurate vaccination certificate so enables large-scale events to use them much more smoothly?Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Yes I can in fact confirm that. Many other countries' vaccination certificate regimes aren't anything more sophisticated than the little card that people get when they go to be vaccinated. Our system will be significantly more advanced than that and it will allow for the validation of someone's vaccine record. It would help to prevent vaccination fraud in the sense of people passing off that they have been vaccinated when they haven't been. Those things are important. People have the ability to produce evidence to show that they have been vaccinated now. Some people use the little vaccine cards already. And people can download their records off the internet today if they wish to.Chris Bishop: Is he comfortable with every country in the OECD plus Cuba and Burkina Faso having a vaccination certificate available right now and New Zealand not?Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Well if the member's setting a very low threshold for what a vaccine certificate is—such as the little blue card that people get after they have been vaccinated being the equivalent of a vaccine certificate—then he's welcome to make that claim. But that is about as sophisticated as many of those systems get. We're developing a system that will be a lot more robust that will stop people ripping off the system and claiming they've been vaccinated when they are not. One of the things that we've been working through as I just told the member is being very clear on where vaccine certificates will be used and where they won't be and on this side of the House we have clear answers to those questions.David Seymour: Were all of the parameters of the vaccine certificate decided by Cabinet on 5 July and if not when did Cabinet last meet to make decisions about the parameters of the vaccine certificate to be contracted out?Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: It depends what the member is talking about. If he's talking about the IT systems those answers were dealt with some time ago; I'm happy to come back to him with a specific date. If it depends on how vaccine certificates will be applied Cabinet is still working its way through that process. That will almost certainly involve having to bring legislation to the House. I look forward to the member's support for that legislation given the previous encouragement that he has given the Government in this House around issues around vaccine mandates."