Bishop ChrisCHRIS BISHOP (National): Thank you very much Madam Speaker. I want to start by saying that the process this bill went through was a very good one—a very shortened process—and I will say that we in the National Party in the Opposition were a little bit uncomfortable about the process that was originally envisaged by the Government for the process of this bill which was essentially to put the bill through without any time at the select committee. Our view was that that ran uncomfortably up against our traditions of spending time at a select committee running through the bill properly and just getting to grips with the precise nature of what we were dealing with. That's not to say bills can't skip the select committee process. Clearly bills can and bills will continue to have that happen to them in the future. But for something important like this—Parliament essentially legislating the authorisation for a fourth dose or at least the authorisation for the director-general to allow a fourth dose—we're a bit uncomfortable around doing that holus-bolus without any select committee scrutiny. So I want to credit the Government for acknowledging that and stepping back a bit and saying Yeah we'll send it to a select committee for a short amount of time."I was in isolation last week so I haven't had a chance to sit on the committee but I'm aware that the committee has done a good job very quickly getting to grips with the issues behind the legislation. I think a couple of points come out at me. The first is that a fourth dose is going to be useful for some people—probably not everyone and it will be voluntary—and I'm already getting emails from a few people who are saying they're really keen to go and get a fourth dose. I'd encourage those who are eligible and who would find it helpful to go and do that at the appropriate time which is not too far away. I think the science is relatively clear. The issue that I had in particular when it came to considering the bill at the start was whether or not we had to legislate and whether or not we had to pass an entirely new Act of Parliament and whether or not there could be an immediate modification order process gone through to authorise this so that the Parliament didn't have to sit. Look reasonable people can disagree about this. At the end the committee has determined that the bill should proceed and we're not going to stand in the way of it. I think it was a pretty collegial process so we will support it.I'd just note in passing—and perhaps in closing—that we are going to have to come back to the Medicines Act. This is one of these important architectural pieces of legislation and by that I mean the framework with which our health system operates. It's not political to be honest—it's not party political. It's just important that we get the law right and it's important that the underlying legislative framework that the health system operates in is well-constructed and look the Medicines Act 1981—there'd be a few members of the House who were around then; I certainly wasn't. So it's now 40 41 years on and we're going to have to come back and do a thoroughgoing review of it. It may be this Government that does it. I suspect it will end up being the next National-led Government but that's OK. We will do the work as and when it is required.The other point I'd just finally make in closing is that I was struck by the fact that every submitter to the bill was in support of it so this is not a particularly contentious issue. This is a bill where we quite rightly said "OK let's just hold fire for a week. Let's send it to a committee just to make sure we're really doing the right thing here. Let's just ventilate the arguments. Let's just ventilate the issues a bit. Let's kick it around for a week." We sent it off to the committee—David Seymour: Love a bit of ventilation.CHRIS BISHOP: What was that?David Seymour: Love a bit of ventilation.CHRIS BISHOP: Love a bit of ventilation yeah. If we'd had a bit more in the managed isolation and quarantine hotels we might not have had the Delta outbreak. But anyway I digress. We kicked it round at the committee and every submitter was in support of it and of course the hard-working health officials gave their support as well. So we're very happy to continue to support this bill all the way through the House and I don't think the House need spend a huge amount of time on it in the forthcoming couple of hours. Thank you."