Bayly Andrew; Salesa JennyANDREW BAYLY (National—Port Waikato): Thank you Madam Chair. First of all I just want to acknowledge that fine contribution from my colleague Mr Bishop because I think you are raising—and I'm talking to Mr Bishop here—a very strong point about the legality of this bill.I also just want to ask about the same clause clause 7 which inserts new section 11AA. I note that the Minister may make a COVID-19 order under new section 11AB in accordance with the following provisions: the Minister must be satisfied the order does not limit or is a justifiable limit to the rights or freedoms of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and the Minister must have consulted with the Prime Minister the Minister for COVID-19 Response the Minister of Justice and the Minister of Health but may have consulted with other Ministers. But before making the order the Minister may consult with the director-general and must be satisfied that the order is in the public interest.So I just want to clarify: as I understand it we haven't yet had a bill of rights consideration of this bill and I'm just looking at Mr Bishop there. It is one of the issues I would have thought that was pretty paramount. When you are talking about a Government that is looking to make quite significant changes to an operating framework for businesses and individuals I would have thought that raises quite significant issues.So one of the questions I'd like to put to the Minister is: given these overarching powers to create new regulations on the hoof in effect why was consideration not given to specifically make any changes subject to consultation? And it may be a must" or a "may" but I'd prefer if it would have been a "must". First of all the Chief Human Rights Commissioner Professor Paul Hunt would have been a natural person to specify in that case as a way to make sure that any of these provisions are actually appropriate for New Zealand and for New Zealanders who some are quite naturally—and I know that my good colleague from the ACT Party is very much on the same line of thinking here that people do have freedoms. I think it's important that they are protected and that bills like this do not overreach and actually unnecessarily impinge on people's activities to be able to go about things that they like to do on a day-to-day basis. And the second one is: why wouldn't the Opposition be subject to consultation on this? Why wouldn't the Leader of the Opposition and maybe the leader of ACT but certainly Opposition parties be at least consulted on this? It may not mean that they need to be involved in the actual determination but at least the requirement that the Opposition parties be consulted about some of these far-ranging elements that could be passed under these regulations. And the third one is: why wouldn't the Office of the Privacy Commissioner John Edwards be part of that consideration? That is really important because privacy issues are again a major consideration around COVID issues. I think I would like to ask the Minister just to respond why none of these issues or parties were deemed to be appropriate. The last point I want to do before closing out because I'm very conscious that we're getting close to 10 o'clock—but why is it before making the order the Minister "may consult the Director-General of Health"? I would have thought of all of them that there would have been a requirement for "must". So why is it only a "may"? Because all we've heard from the Government over the last 18 months is that they listen to science and of course the science has been provided in advice from the Ministry of Health. So that's been the underlying reason why the Government has chosen to take certain actions because in essence it's been subject or as a result of advice provided by the Ministry of Health. So why the sudden change of plan? Why does it become appropriate that Ministers think that they can now do whatever they want without having regard to the Ministry of Health? And so I am very much looking forward to the Minister at least discussing these issues because I think it cuts to the core of what New Zealanders want to know and they want to make sure that regulation is not slipped through at the dead of night at three minutes to 10 which is what's happening tonight and that their positions are protected and they can go about doing their daily work as they so wish.CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): The time has come for me to suspend the committee for this evening. The committee will resume at 9 a.m. tomorrow morning.Debate interrupted.Sitting suspended from 9.58 p.m. to 9 a.m. (Wednesday)."