Hipkins ChrisCOVID-19 RESPONSE (VACCINATIONS) LEGISLATION BILLFirst ReadingHon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister for COVID-19 Response): I present a legislative statement on the COVID-19 Response (Vaccinations) Legislation Bill.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I move That the COVID-19 Response (Vaccinations) Legislation Bill be now read a first time. New Zealand's preparing to move to the next phase of our response in the fight against COVID-19 a global pandemic that has confronted the world and presented a series of challenges around the globe that are unprecedented in our lifetimes in terms of the public health response that has been required. The next phase of our response here in New Zealand focuses on the framework that allows for much greater freedom due to the success of our roll-out of the vaccination. The vaccination programme is the greatest public health tool that we have now in our fight against COVID-19 and it is the most effective way for us to open up the country again safely without the need to resort to the restrictions we've had in the past. It is worth at this point very briefly recapping where we found ourselves just under two years ago as we were grappling with the onset of the global pandemic. There was no vaccine. There were very few treatments available that had been proven to be effective and therefore the best way of keeping New Zealanders safe was to stamp COVID-19 out completely and to keep it out of the country. And that has been our focus for most of the last year and a half since we found ourselves in that first position.The vaccine roll-out has changed things. The arrival of Delta the new variant that has proven to be almost impossible to stamp out in every country that has experienced an outbreak of Delta has also changed things. And so now we enter into the next phase. So this bill clarifies the framework for the management of COVID-19 in our community—and we have to accept the reality that COVID-19 is here in the community to stay. The bill includes the ability to make orders that differentiate between people who are vaccinated against COVID-19 and people who aren't and so to achieve that the bill amends the order-making provisions in the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act. The orders that will be made will provide for the issue of COVID-19 protection certificates to use within New Zealand which will be known as My Vaccine Pass. It'll allow us to specify the information required in the process for people to get a vaccine pass. It will prohibit people from entering certain places if they're not vaccinated or exempted from vaccination—i.e. if they don't have a vaccine pass. It will specify that proof of vaccination can't be required for accessing certain life-preserving services—so the ability to go to the supermarket to go to the pharmacy to access core educational services compulsory education services to access health and disability services or Work and Income support. We will be preventing people from requiring vaccination in order to access those critical services and we will have orders that specify the COVID-19 vaccination exemption criteria that will exist under the framework.Provisions have been made in the bill for enforcement officers to direct the production of evidence to demonstrate compliance with an order. That's important. The bill will support our future vaccination mandates where there's a strong public interest in doing so rather than solely for public health reasons—and this is something that employers have asked for clarity and greater certainty on for some time now and we've been working very hard to provide them with that greater certainty. So to do this the bill will allow for the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety to make orders regarding vaccination and testing for specified work where it's in the public interest to do that. But vaccination is a really important tool for mitigating the risk in workplaces and we're seeing greater demand from employers who want greater clarity about their ability to require vaccination or not and we're also seeing a much greater demand from workers who want to see that requirements are put in place so that they know whether or not the people that they are working alongside have been vaccinated. So employers need the ability to manage the risks associated with COVID-19 and this bill goes a great deal of the way to giving them the certainty that they are looking for. It will assist employers to decide whether they should require vaccination for their workers. The bill provides the framework for an assessment tool that will help them conduct individual assessments for their businesses and their circumstances to determine whether vaccination is warranted for the work that is being done. The tool will be prescribed further in the regulations and we will have those in place as soon as we can. The bill amends the Employment Relations Act. It provides important certainty for employees in situations where their work could end up terminated because they have not been vaccinated and they have made the decision that they don't want to be vaccinated but where a vaccination requirement for their workplace is in place. So the changes to the Employment Relations Act clarify the requirement for a paid four-week notice period in these situations if employees aren't vaccinated. If they get vaccinated before the end of the notice period the termination notice is cancelled unless it would unreasonably disrupt the employer's business—and we had a conversation about that in question time today. These amendments also seek to support employees to be vaccinated by providing reasonable paid time off for the purpose of being vaccinated. That will apply to all COVID-19 vaccination rounds including future booster doses of the vaccine and that'll help to increase our vaccination rates amongst people in less flexible working conditions or working in less flexible workplaces so that they can make sure that they can get vaccinated if they can't get vaccinated outside of the work hours.Cumulatively these amendments create the framework that we need to provide better protection for New Zealanders in a variety of different settings as we move to a less restrictive environment in the way that we are managing COVID-19. They'll bring greater freedoms to us. They will ensure that those who are vaccinated can be recognised for the extra protection that their vaccination is providing to themselves and those around them. These restrictions will help us. They are justified given the situation that the pandemic and the public health response requires. They'll help us to better manage the public health risks that are caused by those who haven't been vaccinated because the reality is now the key thing to bringing greater freedoms for us all is to encourage those people to be vaccinated. My hope is that all eligible New Zealanders will take up the opportunity to be vaccinated and I hope that while we disagree on many aspects of the COVID-19 response as we have done over the course of the last year and a half Parliament will remain unified in its very strong message that all parties in Parliament have sent so far that the vaccine is safe it is effective and everybody should make the informed choice to be vaccinated. So I want to acknowledge the effort of all New Zealanders in the fight against COVID19. I want to acknowledge the 91 percent of eligible New Zealanders who have been vaccinated so far with at least one dose of the vaccine and send an encouragement to that last 9 percent to come forward and to do that. The bill creates the new legal framework that will allow us to transition into a world that is more open that has fewer restrictions and that recognises that vaccination is the greatest tool that we have in the toolkit in our fight against COVID-19. ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): The question is set the motion be agreed to.