Seymour David; Rurawhe AdrianDAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Thank you Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of the ACT Party in support of the Medicines Amendment Bill. I've got to say it's the most fantastic time to be alive. Thanks to the twin miracles of capitalism and science the same company that gave us Viagra has now given us a vaccine that will end this epidemic. What a time to be alive. I think it is absolutely critical that we roll it out and make it widely available so that we can get our lives back. I also want to tell you echoing what Julie Anne Genter has said that just last Friday ACT's deputy leader Brooke van Velden and I were vaccinated. We thought a bit about jumping the queue. We were worried about that perception. I want to make clear we answered the call from the Minister for COVID-19 Response. We considered the fact he was acting on behalf of the Queen and we thought it is our duty to be ceremonially vaccinated in front of the TV cameras for the country. We did it with no fear and I apologise to our political opponents—and particularly the Minister for COVID-19 Response who asked us to get it done—neither of us have died; we haven't turned into crocodiles—Hon Simon Bridges: Well you don't know that.DAVID SEYMOUR: Simon Bridges says I don't know that. Maybe I have died and this is parliamentary heaven. I have to say if those were the circumstances I think things would be a little bit different. Hon Simon Bridges: Run us through that.DAVID SEYMOUR: Simon Bridges asked me to run through that. I can say Simon Bridges would be here and he'd never get kicked out. But seriously this is a very serious matter. It is important that we actually have access to this vaccine. And I think actually a little bit of levity is the right response to some of the objections that have been made to it. I mean let me give you the—not a medical opinion but just a humble electrical engineer's version of how it works for people who may be concerned. Messenger RNA is inside us; it's everywhere. It's the way that our body internally communicates stimulates ourselves to create proteins. And the way that this vaccine works is that it takes some of the messenger RNA that is in COVID-19 or at least identical to it that stimulates the growth of the spike proteins. And when that mRNA enters the cells of a human as it entered mine last Friday the immune system of the human says Hello hello we've got something here like this. I'm going to generate a response to destroy it." And the immune system learns to destroy those spike proteins. Now within a few days all of the mRNA that came in the vaccine is gone. It's very unstable. That's why it has to be refrigerated at minus 80 degrees. The spike proteins that your cells produced upon receiving the mRNA have been destroyed by your immune system. The only thing that remains is a memory in one's immune system of what it's like to fight something that looks like COVID-19 and if COVID-19 spike proteins do appear in your body your immune system's ready to fight them. I actually think that's pretty cool. But it also shows that you have absolutely nothing to fear because all you're left with is the memory of how to fight it. I just ask the good doctors on the other side of the House if that's roughly what happens and they say yes that's actually a pretty good description. I'll make a few other comments. This whole saga has led me to ask: why on earth does New Zealand have Medsafe? And some people might say "Oh you've got to have Medsafe." Well let me ask the question: has Medsafe ever assessed a medicine that's been approved by the Food and Drug Administration and by the Australians by the British and said "Oh no no the rest of the world's got it wrong. New Zealanders can't use it." Has that ever happened? I don't think it's ever happened. And the question is: is it necessary for New Zealand to have its whole process and rigmarole which has brought us into this House tonight to retrospectively change legislation in order to delay the access of New Zealanders to pharmaceuticals that were funded offshore long ago? You see the sad fact is that due to low productivity growth and an aversion to putting funds into medicine we actually are usually at the back of the bus the last in the queue to get new pharmaceuticals. So by the time we get them they've already been signed off by a bunch of other countries' similar authorities. And I just wonder if we shouldn't be automatically accepting their approval. It's not that humans are substantially different in New Zealand from humans in other countries—not as far as I'm aware. So that's the first question but it's particularly acute in the case of this particular issue. Now we're here changing the law in order that the COVID-19 vaccine and some other medicines can be used in New Zealand. And where are we? Well we're at a stage where many other countries have reached 60 70 percent vaccination rates. We are just getting started and the Government's only just found out that its scheme for approving pharmaceuticals under the law that it had was actually illegal. The Attorney-General got up earlier in this debate and he said "Actually we were given no advice that this might happen." Two questions: number one what were the officials—Crown Law and the Ministry of Health—doing that they didn't tender the advice that maybe this would be a problem? And number two what were the Ministers doing in a governance capacity if they never thought to ask the question? You know this whole vaccine thing which is basically our strategy to get out of lockdown to open up New Zealand and to end a pandemic or at least an epidemic within New Zealand—you know that thing—is it legal? Did any Ministers think to ask that question? It would have been a pretty smart question to ask but none of them bothered to ask it. That's why we're here doing it under urgency.But indeed the vaccine roll-out has been so shambolic and chaotic that we heard in question time today that we are now second to last in the OECD for the roll-out. And why is that? It depends which week you ask which answer you get from the Government. One week it's because we decided to be kind and let other countries have it. And then the Government is asked "So was that actually a conscious decision that was made?" "Oh well not sure. It's just good that we're here now." OK and then we're told—this was Stuart Nash on ZB this morning—"The pharmaceutical companies decided not to give it because other countries needed it more than us." Oh really? So that was the conversation and the Government accepted that? "Oh well we're not sure about that." And then the answer is "Oh well you know we have it but we don't have the capacity to distribute it. We didn't think to ask pharmacists to be vaccinators." This Government literally can't organise a vaccination at a pharmacy. So then it's "We've got the vaccine but we don't have the distribution network." It depends which week you ask which answer you get. This latest legal snafu is just the latest in a series of mistakes where we have chaos and disorganisation in the roll-out of a vaccine. And the reason that this is such an egregious breach is that vaccination is New Zealand's exit strategy. It's the only way that New Zealand has to get out of locking people out and locking people down because we have no other response. We had to go into lockdown fundamentally because our healthcare system couldn't handle any greater outbreaks. We've had to close the border because it's so risky to let people in because our contact tracing and our testing aren't up to it. The vaccine was the last line of defence and yet even the roll-out of the vaccine has been so shambolic and chaotic we either don't have it can't distribute it or we're just being too kind to take it off anyone else because we're so great—depends which week you ask which answer you get. And yet now we also find out the Ministers didn't even think "Hey this big strategy we've got is it even legal?" No and so of course people went off to court tested their rights and now we're here in Parliament retrospectively changing the law. I have to say the ACT Party much like National is happy to support the change. It's something that should happen. It has to happen in this circumstance. But like so many circumstances in which this country and this Parliament have found themselves throughout the COVID-19 response it is a Government that is fundamentally reactive and never proactive always on the back foot fixing the thing that happened two weeks ago instead of actually treating New Zealanders like adults taking us into the confidence and the honest conversation about the future of the COVID response so that we can all be part of it. That would be a better way for this Government to respond but instead here we are under urgency cleaning up another mess. Despite that the ACT Party commends this bill to the House. Thank you very much.Motion agreed to.Bill read a second time.DEPUTY SPEAKER: This bill is set down for committee stage forthwith. I declare the House in committee for consideration of the Medicines Amendment Bill."