Hipkins Chris; Rurawhe AdrianCOVID-19 PUBLIC HEALTH RESPONSE AMENDMENT BILL (NO 2)Second ReadingHon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister for COVID-19 Response): I present a legislative statement on the COVID-19 Public Health Response Amendment Bill (No 2).SPEAKER: That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can found on the Parliament website.Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I move That the COVID-19 Public Health Response Amendment Bill (No 2) be now read a second time. The bill makes amendments to the COVID-9 Public Health Response Act a piece of legislation we've already just had a bit of a debate about in the House in terms of the orders that have been made underneath it. The overall goal of this is to ensure that we can continue to respond to the pandemic in a flexible and agile way as our response to COVID-19 continues to evolve in the coming months. I would like to thank the chair and the members of the Health Committee for their diligent consideration of the bill. I'd also like to thank those who made submissions on the bill.I want to comment on some of the substantive issues that were raised and I think it would be fair to say that one of the things that generated the most debate about this particular legislation was the changes to fines and infringement notices and the potential maximum level of fines and infringements. When this legislation was first established it wasn't entirely clear exactly what the sorts of orders that we may need to make under it would be. And so the level of fines and infringements that were provided for in the original Act that we're now amending were relatively low. What became clear as we were heading through operationalising different orders that were made under the Act is that those levels of fines and infringements could be regarded as somewhat trivial relative to the consequences of people deliberately and knowingly trying to get around those rules.So for example if we rewind back to when we had to reimpose restrictions on those coming trans-Tasman from Australia to New Zealand in order to try and prevent COVID19 Delta in particular getting into New Zealand—recognising that our current Delta outbreak that we're dealing with now in multiple parts of the country actually originated in Australia—in our attempts to try and stop that we had to reimpose travel restrictions. The reality is for people deliberately breaching those restrictions the infringements available to us were trivial: $300 or a maximum of $1000. Given the consequences that could be generated by people who brought Delta into New Zealand which we've now seen what those consequences are—although in this particular case that person was not at fault; they were a person who went through managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ)—but someone who was what we'd describe as a border averter: so someone who travelled from an Australian state that they weren't allowed to travel from to an Australian state that they were allowed to travel from and did not tell the truth about their travel history. That person could have been creating a world of pain for New Zealand and the ability to impose a proportionate fine or infringement upon them did not exist under the legislation. And so that's why we reviewed that and I have brought this bill before the House to increase the maximum levels of fines and infringements.I want to be clear here that the Government's intention from this point onwards is effectively to create a sliding scale of potential fines and infringements under this law that will allow for low-level risk to be dealt with by the existing kind of low-level fines and infringements that are available now. It would only be those where the consequences of the offending of the people breaking the rules was at the sort of more extreme end that we would impose the maximum fines and infringements.The second issue that was raised and I know that it's one that generated a debate amongst members of the select committee was regarding the potential to make orders relating to medical testing laboratories. The bill allows for orders to be made for a variety of purposes in relation to testing labs but particularly would allow for the Government to make the best use of the national COVID-19 testing capacity in the event of a severe outbreak of COVID-19 including by requisitioning testing consumables or requiring that testing laboratories undertake testing solely for the public health response.The Government does recognise that these are substantial powers and they would have a particular impact on the owners of testing laboratories. It's for that reason that the bill provides for compensation or payment for those services should those powers be used. I would note that these powers are not unprecedented—these powers are not unprecedented. There are already provisions in the Health Act of 1956 that make similar kinds of provisions. These ones however are tied specifically to our COVID-19 response. They were in a piece of legislation that has to be consistently and regularly renewed by Parliament and that will expire. So by tying them to the COVID-19 response—yes it is an infringement on the freedom of those businesses if you like potentially but it would be a very high threshold to use that. The reason for it is simply this: if we're dealing with a severe outbreak testing is critical and we have to make sure that we can make the best use of all of the testing available in the environment where supplies around testing are very constrained internationally—so our ability to get testing supplies on a large scale into the country continues to be constrained internationally so we've got to make the best use of the ones that we have available.David Seymour: What about legalising rapid antigen testing?Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I'll just pick up a couple of other things. In terms of—the member asks about legislating for rapid antigen testing. That is allowed for under the orders that have already been made under this legislation. In terms of the other issues that were raised during the debate on this—David Seymour: Can I go to the shop and buy one?Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Oh the member wants to be able to buy rapid antigen tests. It is still—and I think we may well get to that point in the future but it is important that actually rapid antigen tests are understood for their strengths and weaknesses and actually—David Seymour: Testing's so important but you can't buy it at the shop.Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Well no actually reliable diagnostic testing—and everybody around rapid antigen tests would agree that they are not a diagnostic test. They are a surveillance test not a diagnostic test. So the provisions in this bill deal with the provisions around diagnostic testing which is critical in a severe outbreak. The issues around rapid antigen testing are different and it does have a significant role to play in reducing the pressure on our diagnostic tests because if we are using rapid antigen tests to do some of the surveillance testing—which we are moving to doing more and more of them; that's already happening—that means that it frees up our PCR labs effectively to make sure that they're being used in the best way possible.Other issues that were raised during the select committee debate on this were around the role of MIQ and whether we need to have a more developed framework for our managed isolation and quarantine facilities which the bill allows for. I would note that there are some in the House who believe MIQ's time is done and we should simply stop isolating or quarantining anybody at the border. That is not the position of the Government and therefore we do still need a robust arrangement for MIQ in place at the border and we're likely to need that for some time for those who are higher-risk people those who are unvaccinated and to make sure that we don't end up in a situation where we get hundreds of additional cases coming into New Zealand across the border seeding in the community and therefore triggering a very large-scale outbreak.So we want to manage the reopening of the border in a careful way so that we are continuing to suppress COVID-19 in the New Zealand community so we don't have massive flaming outbreaks of COVID-19 that cannot be controlled. There is a balance to reach here. And yes we will see more movement across the international border in the coming months but we'll be doing that in a way that is careful so that we don't end up being overrun by COVID-19. Because bear in mind as we do start to liberate settings at the border many many more people will come into the country. So it's not fair to look only at the positivity rate of those who are being tested in MIQ because we potentially would be multiplying the number of people coming in by many many fold and that does create additional risk of COVID-19 taking off in parts of the country where it would be very difficult to control and to contain.So ultimately these amendments are ones that I think are sensible. I do just want to mention one further amendment that's been made by the committee with the full support of the Government and that is to provide additional privacy protections for people's QR code data and for data that they share as part of the COVID-19 response to our contact tracers. I've always been confident that the systems in place to protect that information are very robust. There has been some concern though that there could be additional measures put in place. Some of the amendments made by the committee do further strengthen the level of reassurance around the protection of people's data and therefore I think that they are welcome.DEPUTY SPEAKER: The question is that the motion be agreed to.