Seymour DavidDAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Thank you very much Mr Chair. I thought this committee made a very good start last night but there are many questions remaining for today and one thing we've noticed is a pattern here which is that it's not the questions the Minister answers that are important; it's the ones that he either doesn't answer or hesitates to answer. One of them that I was getting to last night was what is the purpose of this bill in relation to the traffic light system because the Government's had nine months to get this ready and employers have 10 days until the traffic light system comes into being. I put that question to the Prime Minister yesterday and the Prime Minister said Oh the member misunderstands. We don't need this legislation for the traffic light system. It's optional." or at least the safety assessment tool is optional for the traffic light system. Well a lot of people think this legislation is necessary so that the traffic light system could come into being and the question is that if this legislation is not necessary for the traffic light system why is it in urgency and if it is necessary for the traffic light system why wasn't it done nine months ago when the Government started vaccinating people? So I think the Minister needs to explain exactly why we are here under urgency. The Minister gets up and he says "Oh a select committee would just be pontificating." I find that ironic for two reasons: number one since when was parliamentary due process pontificating? The second thing I want to say—and Scott Simpson of well-educated stock will know this—is that that's a derivative of a Latin word coming from the Minister who got rid of Latin from the curriculum. You know next time he'll say that "Select committees are just bridging." because he won't have that background or richness of language or at least the next generation won't. We need to understand: is the Prime Minister correct when she says that actually we don't need to have this in place for the traffic light system to work because the safety assessment tool is optional? It would be helpful for the Minister to tell us when the safety assessment tool will be set down in regulation as this law allows and then maybe he could get up and tell us how long's that going to take and why has it taken so much longer and why the safety assessment tool isn't in the legislation so that people could use it now. It's no good for the Minister to stand up and say "Oh they want us to go faster and they want us to go slower." What we wanted was a Government that was organised months ago—that's the difference. Of course we want it to be ready now. The criticism is not that we're rushing now; the criticism is that the Government wasn't prepared nine months ago when it stared vaccinating people. The criticism is that people will need two different apps on their phone: one to show they're vaccinated and one to show that they have scanned in with the COVID-19 tracer app. It's about a Government that has had months and months has spent it doing a little dance and it didn't get organised to have things like this in place and it's now making a mockery of democracy saying "Going to a select committee to hear from the people would be pontificating."—there's that word again. So I want the Minister to stand up and say how much of this legislation is necessary for the traffic light system to work how long employers will have to put it in place and why the Government didn't get ready earlier so that we wouldn't be rushing under urgency desecrating democracy in this House today. Those are the basic questions that people want to know about because I can tell you the phones are ringing off the hook. The email in-box is dinging with people up and down this country asking "What is this Government doing in Parliament? Why has it taken them so long to get themselves organised and why did they leave so little time for us to get organised?" Those are the sorts of questions the Minister should be getting up to answer.Is this Government still committed to democracy or should we take from the fact that they didn't even do a proper regulatory impact analysis they didn't compare this bill with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and get it signed off there—does that mean that they don't really care about civil liberties? This stuff matters because we need to show that free and democratic societies can deal with pandemics consistent with freedom and democracy as their values rather than throwing those away because the Government wasn't organised. That's what we need to do. That's what the Minister needs to get up and answer because it's always the questions he hasn't answered that are more revealing than the ones he does. Thank you Mr Chair."