Bishop ChrisCHRIS BISHOP (National): Thank you Mr Speaker. Can I echo the comments of the Minister for COVID-19 Response and just note that this is a critical part of the rule of law and I think it's proven to be an excellent exercise. Can I also just thank the Regulations Review Committee—which I was sporadically a member of at moments of this year—for their hard work. It's one of those committees where it's really a geek's committee I think it would be fair to say; lawyers love it and the good news is that Chris Penk who is an excellent lawyer is the chair of the committee. We also have Rachel Brooking on the committee who has made an outstanding start to her parliamentary career examining the various orders. It's a committee that works in a bipartisan way and does seek to uphold the rule of law and consider the vires nature of the various orders that the Minister makes. He makes a lot of them and we're looking forward to examining them when we come back in the new year. We don't have any particular objection to many of the orders. The Regulations Review Committee has done a good job in examining whether or not they comply with the primary legislation.I do want to flag for the House that we have significant concerns about the COVID-19 Public Health Response (Isolation and Quarantine and Maritime Border) Amendment Order 2021. This is the one that came into effect on 16 November. The significance of this order is that it lowered the amount of time that people had to spend in managed isolation down from 14 days to seven days. The point I want to make to the House is that there is no reason in our view—the National Party—that we shouldn't be looking to extend that order even further. Managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) has become a lottery of human misery it is wilful State-sponsored cruelty on an industrial scale. Right now we have 42 active cases of COVID in MIQ out of around 4000 rooms and 2000 people with COVID—or their close contacts—isolating in the community. It's a real perversion of Government priorities to have people who are fully vaccinated with no COVID taking up quarantine rooms that could be being used by people who are currently in the community with COVID. And as I revealed yesterday in the House since 23 August from Australia there have been zero cases of fully vaccinated travellers testing positive for COVID in New Zealand; not a single person—zero. But yet this order means that someone coming from Australia has to spend seven days in MIQ plus an additional three days in self-isolation and have a polymerase chain reaction test before they can go into the community.So our view is that we have the risk weighting completely around the wrong way. When the risk indicates you take a different approach then the Government should take a different approach. We believe that there will be people sitting at empty Christmas tables this Christmas as a result of this order. It should go far further than what the Government has done so far. The Prime Minister likes to refer to these people as cumulative risks"; actually they're Kiwi citizens who have legal rights under the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. MIQ is legally dubious. We know that the Government has had legal advice to the effect that the MIQ regime is probably inconsistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990 in particular the right for New Zealand citizens to return to New Zealand. The Bolton case has demonstrated that and there's a legal case that will be heard in the new year and it will be very interesting to see the outcome of that. Our view in relation to legality is that this order should go further than what it has done already and shorten down that MIQ time preferably down to zero days altogether. So with those brief remarks thank you to the Minister for bringing these orders to the House and we approve them other than the one I've just mentioned."