Bishop ChrisCHRIS BISHOP (National): Thank you very much Mr Speaker and thank you to the Minister for COVID-19 for that long or reasonably long explanation as to the various orders that the House is approving. For those listening who perhaps are not so au fait with the procedure here what the House is doing now is actually a very important constitutional role. Pursuant to the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act the House has given the Government quite extraordinary powers to promulgate various orders and restrictions on people's movements and make people do a variety of things—for example if you work at the border you have to get a test regularly and other things.So Parliament has given the Government extraordinary powers and now Parliament is exercising its constitutional duty to make sure that the Government is exercising those powers responsibly. As is its wont Parliament has given the Regulations Review Committee the heavy burden of doing that work and the Regulations Review Committee as the Minister has indicated does a very good job in doing that. We take that job seriously we do it conscientiously and we do it diligently and I want to extend my thanks to the very hard-working team who support the Regulations Review Committee. Basically what we are trying to do is to make sure that the powers exercised by the Government in the orders in the legal parlance vires—so in other words they are legal and they follow consistently with what the powers that Parliament has given to the Government are.So in that regard I want to indicate that we'll be supporting the motion moved by the Government to approve these orders but I do want to make four particular points around four of the orders.The first is in relation to the variety of orders to do with saliva testing and I want to put on the record from the National Party point of view the great concern we have still with the way in which saliva testing is dealt with by the Government. So COVID-19 Public Health Response (Required Testing) Amendment Order (No 5)—and you'll forgive me sir if sometimes we get the exact number wrong there's so many of these orders—that relates to saliva testing and amends the COVID-19 Public Health Response (Required Testing) Order 2020. We believe that saliva testing is not being utilised to the extent that it should be in our managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) facilities and I want to place on the record our great concern at the Auditor-General's report released last week—well not report I should say; it's more of a letter to the House or I think it was actually to the Rt Hon Winston Peters and others—in relation to the procurement process for saliva testing generally this year. That report is of grave concern and at some point we are going to have to have a reckoning as to what has happened with saliva testing in New Zealand.We are concerned that still if you are in MIQ you cannot take a saliva test as part of the mandatory testing in MIQ as a returnee. The trial that was meant to be under way already has been suspended by the MIQ operators for reasons that are not fully understood and so we are concerned about that.The second order I want to deal with relates to the COVID-19 Public Health Response (Alert Level Requirements) Order (No 12) Amendment Order (No 6). This was the one that was presented on 12 October 2021 in relation to the alert level decision by adding Northland as a new separate part of the alert level 3 area. The concern here and this was recognised by the Regulations Review Committee was clause 15 inserted a new Part 3 in Schedule 3 of the principal order and it described the Northland part of the alert level 3 area as the area within the boundaries of Northland Region as shown on LG-01-2019-Con-1." which is a text-based numerical description I think of—it's essentially a map reference. But the point that the Regulations Review Committee made was that that is not readily accessible to most people. I didn't really know what it meant—it's a rule of law issue which is that people should be able to work out what the boundaries are of the travel restrictions and simply saying "LG-01-2019-Con-1" is essentially hieroglyphics basically for most people in fact 99.9 percent of people unless you're familiar with how to read maps; most people would have no idea what that even means.So that goes to a rule of law issue and that has now been fixed and the Regulations Review Committee has done a good job in highlighting that but that is not the way these things should be done and the Regulations Review Committee wrote to the Minister saying that there needs to be a reference to things that people know about—so roads rivers geographical markers that ordinary reasonable people can identify so they know what they can and can't do. That's perfectly reasonable and that is an example actually of the committee doing its job to improve the order.The other issue I want to pick up is in relation to the COVID-19 Public Health Response (Alert Level Requirements) Order (No 12) Amendment Order (No 7) which is the issue to do with the prohibition on people travelling to a secondary home or place of residence after a Government announcement of the alert level change and the Minister made reference to this. So it's after there's an announcement of an alert level change but before the changes come into force. The committee's noted that this is an unusual provision. It imposes an obligation that relies on a subsequent oral announcement. Now the Minister didn't have a lot of concern with that—or I think he indicated that he didn't really agree with the concern—but that is unusual. So for the Government to impose an obligation on someone that relies on a subsequent oral announcement—and the committee's noted: "Although the main part of the obligation is in this order elements of the obligation only exist when an oral announcement is made."—that places a reasonably heavy burden on people to actually listen to the oral announcement and again from a rule of law point of view that is I would say suboptimal. Things should be as clear as possible in writing so that people can follow the law and follow the rules. So I respectfully disagree with the Minister in his disagreement with the problems with that order.Finally I want to deal with the issue of the COVID-19 Public Health Response (Alert Level Requirements) Order (No 12). This is the one that was presented on 23 September that moved Auckland and the Upper Hauraki to alert level 3 and kept New Zealand at alert level 2. This is in relation to the rules regarding the obligation to carry evidence of a COVID-19 test. So the existing obligation at the time was to carry evidence for a COVID-19 test taken no more than seven days before a journey. It then introduced an obligation of no more than 72 hours before a person's journey. The point I want to make is that with Delta 72 hours is actually arguably still too long a time—that for the imposition of these requirements on people we really should be moving to rapid antigen testing as I think David Seymour said.So members will be aware of the truck driver—this is a while ago now but we're dealing with things from a while ago—who left Auckland went to Palmerston North and tested COVID positive. He was only on a weekly testing cycle and yep 72 hours is better but how good would it have been if we had rapid antigen testing in the country and he could have taken a daily test before he started work? Now it's likely—we don't know obviously but it's likely—that that test would have picked up the fact that the truck driver had COVID on the day he took the trip. As it was he went four more days without testing positive for COVID and as I'm sure the Minister and other people would agree how quickly you pick up COVID particularly with Delta is critical. You've got to pick it up as fast as you can and unfortunately the Government's failure to move fast enough on rapid antigen testing has meant that this order—we'll approve it but it could be so much more and it could be that if we made use of the technology that we have available we could have imposed an order that said evidence of a negative COVID test or rapid antigen test on the day of or for people working through the night in the 24 hours before.That would have been a better order I think more consistent with public health and actually I would say more consistent with the science because as Professor Jackson's report makes clear from the COVID-19 Testing Technical Advisory Group—in his words—we've been too slow on rapid antigen testing. I know the Government's got an aversion to it but we really should be using it more and that's what this order should have contained. But we will approve them and thank you to the Minister for the explanation."