SpeechHon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): Thank you Mr Speaker. That could be a member's bill. I am recalling Dr Cam Calder's laser bill. Perhaps we need a Kris Faafoi Light Bill".Honestly I think I'm in some kind of hermetically sealed parallel universe listening to the speeches—Hon Kris Faafoi: You are—it's your caucus.Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: —that are coming from the other side—and Mr Faafoi agrees with me—because if there's anything that underscores how arrogant and out of touch this Government is it's in the Prime Minister's statement. It was 23 pages of "Aren't we great and best in class and oh what a great job we've done with COVID." and yet the reality is something very very different. In my 40 years of adult life I cannot remember a time where there has been more division more despair or more anxiety anger and frustration as there is right now and I don't excuse the protesters who are outside this place but on a level I can understand it. They want to know what this Government is going to do to restore their freedoms and to live their lives free of unnecessary interference from the State and they're not getting those answers.We've acknowledged year one pretty solid—not perfect by any means—but year two and now we're into year three things are falling apart and I'm not even sure what we're trying to do here. Who are we trying to protect? Are we trying to protect the vaccinated? No they're vaccinated. The likelihood of them being seriously harmed by COVID is extremely low. Are we protected the unvaccinated? Well remember the initial target was 70 to 75 percent. We're now at 94 percent and those few New Zealanders who have chosen for their own reason to be unvaccinated don't want the Government's protection. So here's what I think they're trying to protect: they are trying to protect the health system and they're trying to protect a health system that they have failed to build capacity in. There is no extra capacity no extra beds no extra ICU places no extra staff—goodness knows the Minister of Immigration couldn't get off his chair to get the doctors and nurses we need in and in fact it's worse than that because the ones we did have have left. It's a scandalous reality that at Dunedin Hospital a 12-bed extension to their ICU was completed nearly 3½ years ago. How many patients have been in that unit? Zero. It's a Yes Minister moment. It's an ICU with no patients because there are apparently problems with heating and ventilation. Well I've run a hospital. I know that is a complication but in the UK where some of those hospitals are 400 to 500 years old those buildings they're able to do it. Why can't we in the middle of a pandemic find a solution and get a unit that we have spent millions developing actually open so we can respond to a COVID outbreak if those beds are needed?I have been having a look at some of the data. I hear and it's even in the Prime Minister's statement—how many times have we heard this—the best economic response is a strong health response. Well I argue that even through the narrow lens of COVID the health response has not been strong. But I also am very very concerned that that lens is so narrow because not a single member of this House has avoided the heartbreaking stories of the cancers that have gone undetected of the heart disease—of the heart attacks where people with chest pain have stayed at home because they're afraid to go to hospital probably at a cost of their lives.Now researchers are able to equalise those impacts and they can do analysis on what they call QALYs—quality-adjusted life years—or wellbeing years and they can measure the costs and benefits of different interventions. We know a lot about the costs of COVID through the lockdowns and the Government crows about how many lives they might have saved but how many have been lost? How many life years have been lost by the heartbreaking stories of cancer and heart disease? You know we've lost some older New Zealanders. How many New Zealanders have not been born because IVF treatments were stopped? There is the maternity care where the partner has to be prevented from going into the hospital and the self-harm that's gone up in our rangatahi—about a third more self-harm in the last two years—and how much of that is attributable? The analysis that I have seen indicates that the non-COVID costs to our health and wellbeing may exceed the benefits of the COVID response by two and a half to five times. Now that's got to be international research because we as far as I can tell have not done that research. The lens is too narrow and I think that's why countries like Sweden Morocco Israel the UK and the USA have said enough. It's not because they've necessarily defeated COVID but they know that the costs of carrying on the way they were are so much greater than that and they're doing that at 73 to 74 percent vaccination rates but they are opening up they're dropping the restrictions and they're flooding their countries with rapid antigen tests. That is a scandal in my view: the fact that we have had nearly no access to rapid antigen tests months after so many countries used them as a screening tool that would stop what's about to happen in Queenstown where it's not hyperbole to say that that town could well collapse by the weekend because of the COVID outbreak and the requirements of staff to self-isolate rather than actually get a rapid test that could conclude very quickly whether or not they and their clients and colleagues were at risk.But what about that economic response? I left a Government that grew wages at twice the rate of inflation. Now we have inflation at twice the rate of wage growth—that's a scandal. Inflation is now touching 6 percent. The Finance and Expenditure Committee was told this time last year that it was going to be temporary and would max out at 2.7 percent. Well I think they were right based on the information they had but they had no idea of the spending binge that this Government was going to go on in an overinflated economy. You don't even need to know fourth form economics to know that when you pump that much money into an overcapacity economy inflation will grow and I predict it's going to keep growing. It's certainly hitting those people who are least able to afford that growth in wages the hardest. Food prices are out of control. Housing costs which we've talked about—in Dunedin it's gone up 40 percent under this Government. The average price of a house in Dunedin is now something like $731000. Mr Parker goes "Oh apparently it's flat-lined."—no. It went up 20 percent last year in Dunedin 27 percent across the country and they still pour billions more into the economy. The people who are going to have to repay that debt have not even been born yet.So when they say they're best in class when they look at themselves in the mirror and say "Aren't we great?" look at the whole costs. Look at the non-COVID health costs look at the future costs of the legacy that we are leaving for our grandchildren and our great-grandchildren and then ask this: strong though that initial response was for how long can we continue to do this? They say "Oh we don't have a plan." Yes we do: flood the country with rapid antigen tests that are a reliable indicator of who might be at risk protect the most vulnerable maintain very strong constraints on those immuno-compromised and elderly New Zealanders who are most at risk even of Omicron even if they're vaccinated and let the rest of the country get on with its life. We cannot continue to go on the way we are. That protest out there is going to be a Moutoa Gardens—79 days that lasted. Well what are we at—day eight or nine? I think we're a long way away from not moving them but easing the anger frustration and anxiety that brought them here in the first place. It's got to stop. This Government does not have a stated plan to get us out of the restrictions that they have put us in. They said they would govern for all New Zealanders. Well most New Zealanders don't feel as though they're part of the team of 5 million any more and this statement really smacks of the arrogant and out-of-touch Government that they are."