Bishop ChrisCHRIS BISHOP (National): Well thank you very much Mr Speaker and we will be supporting the Government motion No. 1 but I want to take the opportunity to say a few things about the various orders that have been presented to the House. And can I just start by saying thank you to the venerable Regulations Review Committee for their excellent consideration of these orders—David Seymour: What does venerable mean?CHRIS BISHOP: Well honourable I should say—maybe venerable. Certainly they've done a good job. But I do want to go through the various orders.So the first one is in relation to the COVID-19 Public Health Response (Air Border Isolation and Quarantine and Required Testing) Amendment Order 2021. All the words are very similar but Part 2 of this order that I'm talking about relates to the provisions to give the chief executive of the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment operation of managed isolation allocation system specific responsibility for ensuring the system does not allocate more confirmed spaces in managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) than the system's capacity. Fine on its face—we support that.I want to take this opportunity to make the point that at the moment on average there are 1717 rooms on average in MIQ vacant every day. And at the moment we have a group of people out there living in New Zealand who have been split from their families who are being denied entry to New Zealand because of the immigration system and because the Minister of Immigration and his officials will not take action to reunite those families whilst the Minister for COVID-19 Response sits there with over 1500 rooms per day on average sitting vacant that could be used to reunite those families. I think that is disgraceful and it is time the Government got a move on and finally provided a pathway to those families.These are people who moved to New Zealand in good faith. In fact in some cases they were incentivised to move to New Zealand. They were told that they would come to New Zealand and provide a better life for their families and fulfil skills shortages in New Zealand. In the case of Cameron Conradie in the Hutt Valley he moved to the Hutt Valley to become a maths teacher at Hutt Valley High School where he's doing a great job. His family are ready to come to New Zealand but because of our border restrictions they cannot. He sits there split apart from his wife and his children for over 450 days now and he quite rightly looks at the spaces in MIQ—as I say 1717 in the last week alone—and says Why can the Government not move?" And there are hundreds of people in his situation. We're not saying let them all in straight away we're not saying let them all in all at once but what we are saying is the Government must provide a pathway for these split migrant families to come to New Zealand and they can do that by virtue of Part 2 of the order and I encourage the Government to finally take action.The second point I want to make is in response to the COVID-19 Public Health Response (Air Border) Order (No 2) Amendment Order (No 2) 2021 in relation to the Indian travel ban which then got extended to other high-risk destinations. I'm really pleased that the Regulations Review Committee investigated whether or not the suspension of travel was wider than necessary because of the open-ended time frame that applies to the restriction. I just want to put on record here that I encourage the Government to continue to review that suspension of travel regularly and I'm heartened by the Regulations Review Committee's exhortations to the Government to do that. We support the ban—we supported the ban on people from high-risk destinations coming to New Zealand at the time and we continue to support it—but we also support the regular review of that because it's a pretty big thing for the New Zealand Government to say that New Zealanders cannot come to New Zealand. We consider that it needs to be regularly reviewed. The Government has said that they will do that but we want to make sure that actually happens. So that's the first two things I wanted to say. In relation to the COVID-19 Public Health Response (Required Testing) Amendment Order 2021 that was made on 13 April and presented on 16 April I do want to say a couple of things. The first is in relation to saliva testing because this is the order that enables the taking of saliva for the purposes of testing and medical examination. I want to place on the record now how frustrating it is that it has taken this long for the Government to move on saliva testing. Let's remember this was something that was recommended to the Government in September 2020 by the Roche-Simpson report. So the Government's own report that they commissioned into the debacle that went on at the border in August said all efforts should be made to roll out saliva testing as quickly as possible in September. The Government sat on the report it finally got released in December and here we are on 1 June 2021 finally getting on with saliva testing. Except it won't happen straight away because as we now know the Government's just given a contract to Asia Pacific Healthcare Group but that will take many weeks to roll out. So it won't be until July that we actually have saliva testing at the border.This is something that should have been happening months and months ago. The advantages of saliva testing are well known. It allows for increased regularity in terms of testing it means you can pick up COVID earlier and of course it's way more comfortable for people. I've taken a saliva test. Rather than just keep talking about it I thought I should put my money where my mouth is—well not so much actually I didn't pay anything—and at least see for myself exactly how it worked. I had one at Rako Science last week: a very good experience and I can see absolutely why people would want to do it. It just beggars belief quite frankly that it has taken the Government so long to move on saliva testing. This is something that we should have been moving on many months ago.The other thing I wanted to note about this amendment order is in relation to the compulsion for persons conducting a business or undertaking to enter records of testing and medical examination on a register. Now the Minister said in a very matter of fact way—a reasonably sterile way actually—that this was all very straightforward. But of course what he did not advert the House to is the controversy behind this register. The reason the register has finally been made compulsory and mandatory for people operating at the border to use is because it was not beforehand and people were not using it. And of course what happened there was we had the situation where the Government did not know how many people were not complying with the mandatory testing requirements that have been set up by various other orders pursuant to the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act 2020.We had the ridiculous situation a month or so ago of a security guard—case B at the Grand Millennium—who was not tested for five months. The Government sat on that information for six days before they deigned to tell the public about it. And the only reason that we actually know about it is because I asked the MIQ officials twice at the select committee as to whether or not that person had been tested and how long they'd gone. Unsurprisingly the Government continues to block the officials from ever turning up to the committee ever again. And we have not actually had any of the officials including Dr Bloomfield and Megan Main from MIQ before the committee because Labour members led by Dr Liz Craig quite disgracefully have continued to block repeated motion after motion to allow us in the National Party and the ACT Party to question officials about what's going on at the border. We have myriad questions we want to ask not particularly political but all designed in the spirit of continuous improvement.Well this is all about continuous improvement and actually making sure our border response is as good as it can be. It's been good—I don't deny that. It's been good. We are COVID free—that's fantastic but the question is can it be better and can it be great as Christopher Luxon says and of course it can be better and of course it can be great. One way to make it great would be to roll out saliva testing. One way to make it great would have been to make the border register compulsory six months ago and that's what we're talking about here. So we agree with making the border register compulsory we just don't understand why it didn't happen many months ago.Then finally in the minute I've got left I want to turn to the last order which is in relation to the vaccinations order. This essentially means that people who work at MIQ or airports can't do that unless they are vaccinated. It's very sensible it's reasonably controversial with some including some employees but I think most reasonable New Zealanders would say this absolutely makes sense. If you work in MIQ it's not unreasonable for the Government to say you have to be vaccinated given the risks that these people are incurring essentially on behalf of other New Zealanders. It probably should have happened sooner. I think the next question that we're going to have to consider as a House and that's for the Government as well is whether or not if you are working in a DHB you should have to be vaccinated as well. And that is something that the New Zealand Herald adverted to last Friday and that I hope the Government is turning its mind to in regards to further orders that may come pursuant to the Act. That I think is the next question; it would be good to hear more from the Government in relation to that."