Seymour DavidDAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Thank you Mr Speaker. There is one absolutely certain way to know that an issue has turned and that is when the Green Party start taking sensible positions on it. What we just heard from Julie Anne Genter—that there should be risk-proportionate exemptions for New Zealanders in COVID-free states of Australia to travel here without managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ)—is the surest sign that the tide is turning towards sanity on this issue of COVID-19 that I've seen since I first heard of COVID-19 last January. This is a very momentous day for this House and our country's journey with COVID-19 policy but we're here just to examine a few of these COVID-19 Public Health Response Act amendment orders—three of them—all of which the ACT Party will support. The first of those says that Fiji should no longer be considered a low-risk country. Now of course for people who are listening at home this is retrospective—these orders were made much earlier; we're just confirming them—but when Fiji got into some difficulty with Delta it was the right and proper thing to do to say that aircrew traveling to Fiji should have to take more precautions than previously and that we shouldn't consider that Fiji was a low-risk country to go to any more sad as that may be. It's a good example of a risk-proportionate approach: that we don't use broad-brush restrictions on people's freedom to go about satisfying other aspects of their wellbeing; we actually assess the level of risk and then we respond proportionately. Another good example of that is what Julie Anne Genter from the Green Party has just suggested in relation to allowing quarantine-free travel from Australian states that have no community transmission and similar arguments can be made for Pacific Islands such as Samoa and Niue that have never had COVID-19. It seems madness that we put those people when they come here in more danger of catching COVID-19 than at any other time of their life—that is when they go into an MIQ facility in New Zealand. The further orders—one sadly removes Australia as a quarantine-free travel destination. As I say it's one of those times: when ACT and the Green Party are agreeing you know that an issue is turning. We've been saying this all year. We shouldn't be saying that people from a state like Western Australia that hasn't had a community transmission case for a very long time—people should be able to just come because the costs of not allowing people to come are absolutely enormous.Hon Julie Anne Genter: I still think they should isolate at home.DAVID SEYMOUR: And Julie Anne Genter has just piped up for people who may not have their microphones highly tuned at home that she still thinks people should isolate at home. It may be that she's been reading ACT's COVID 3.0 document which says very similar things—Chris Bishop: No she's got a leaked copy of ours.DAVID SEYMOUR: —and Chris Bishop says that he's got a leak from that document. We put it there precisely for him. In case he was preparing to release anything himself we wanted to make all of the details available because we know that in the past his party has relied on ACT policy to inform its own and we'd like that to continue far into the future.SPEAKER: Order!DAVID SEYMOUR: Mr Speaker I will now as you say narrow towards the COVID orders being debated but I agree that's very important.Other than the change in risk profile for aircrew going to and from Fiji and also removing Australia—all of it; not just some states with problems—from the quarantine-free travel provisions we also have another welcome but really quite late change and that is allowing saliva testing in a very narrow range of instances. It is true that saliva testing or the lack of it really epitomises the problems with this Government's COVID response. It was said to be an urgent priority by Brian Roche whom the Government paid to advise them last September and what do we have now? Just a few trickles of saliva tests in the Government response being widely adapted by private enterprise and you have to feel a little bit sorry for the Minister. You know he comes into Parliament believing in the essential goodness of State action thinking that he's going with the might and power of the New Zealand Government to change the world and he discovers the practical reality that with the tools and advice of the Ministry of Health he hasn't been able to roll out a better technology. It's been used overseas used by the private sector—championed by a world expert who is a Kiwi in the form of Dr Anne Wyllie from Yale and he hasn't been able to get it contracted rolled out and implemented in a year that it's being recommended and the sad story about how that's come to pass will come out sooner or later. I could spend the rest of this speech filling in a few details but it's all going to come out and we're going to understand why it's been just so difficult for the New Zealand Government apparatus to absorb a new technology.That's why the ACT Party has said consistently that instead of having minimal amounts of testing rolled out in this piecemeal fashion we should have far better partnership with business. In our COVID 3.0 paper we've said that we should have a series of sprints where everyone is brought around the table all of the team people brought off the bench to figure out how we reduce transmission rates at least cost—better faster testing would help with that—how we reduce hospitalisation at least cost and how we reduce deaths. Those should be the goals and those cannot be achieved if we don't have a way of getting better technology absorbed into our system. The poor Minister for COVID-19 Response hasn't been able to implement it with the apparatus he's given and in his frustration when his policies are questioned he says that the questioners are somehow attacking every New Zealander. Well that is total illogic. People are able to criticise the Government policy and its failings without it being an attack on front-line workers or the team of 5 million or anyone else. In fact it would be undemocratic if New Zealanders were not able to have healthy debates about which Government policies were the correct ones without being accused almost of treasonous activity.So these orders are good and proper but it needs to be acknowledged that they are occurring in a context of too little too late and of enormous failings by this Government to do basic things that would have allowed New Zealanders to respond to COVID while looking after their overall wellbeing and being able to provide for their needs with much greater freedom than if we're able to do basic things like get a few contracts and roll out some saliva testing. Thank you Mr Speaker.Motion agreed to.Orders approved.SPEAKER: I declare the House in committee for consideration of the Counter-Terrorism Legislation Bill and the Social Security (Subsequent Child Policy Removal) Amendment Bill.