Bishop ChrisCHRIS BISHOP (National): Thank you very much Mr Speaker. I want to make two prefatory points in my contribution before I move to the specific case we're talking about. The first is that I want to acknowledge that the Government has done a good job generally in responding to COVID-19 and we should be proud of that as a country. To use the language of the Prime Minister the team of 5 million has done a good job and we need to acknowledge that. But we can do better and it is not sacrilegious or treasonous to point that out. In fact it is in the public interest to try and seek a better response from Government. That's the reason we have a democracy and that's the reason we live in a society governed by the rule of law. The second point I want to make is that the Government's response to the most recent community case in Auckland that we found out about on the weekend—and the Minister opened his remarks by talking about getting a call from Dr Bloomfield on Saturday. I think he meant Sunday. I—Hon Chris Hipkins: I did mean Sunday. CHRIS BISHOP: Good he's clarified that. There was some alarm over on this side of the bench so it's good that the Minister has clarified he meant Sunday. The Government's response to that we think was the right decision. With a real absence of information and acknowledging that Governments and officials are always dealing with imperfect information when it comes to these situations the decision to adopt a cautionary approach—or I think some people have called it a precautionary approach—is the right thing to do because unlike the case of the Northland example where the person who had left managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) had not spread COVID in this situation the person at the centre of it or the person we think is at the centre of it—the laundry worker at LSG Sky Chefs if indeed she is case zero—had infected the husband and her daughter. So in those situations we have a spreader and some travel that the person had undertaken and of course as it transpires a more transmissible variant of COVID. So we think it was the right thing to do. We will continue in the Opposition to ask questions about the Government's broader response to COVID and the reason we will continue to do that is because we have an obligation to New Zealanders to ask the tough questions alongside the media about the response of the Government. The consequence for New Zealanders of Government failure or Government omission or Government lack of oversight is very real and we have an obligation to try and improve public policy in New Zealand. So it's not about being political and it's not about necessarily going after the Government for the sake of it; it's actually about trying to improve things for all New Zealanders. A good response does not mean it cannot be better and a response that is good does not mean it cannot be great and that's ultimately what we are interested in on this side of the House. I want to echo the remarks of the Minister in saying thank you to all of our hard-working staff at the border and in MIQ and all of the nurses out there some of whom are working around the clock—as we discovered a couple of weeks ago—to do all the polymerase chain reaction testing in our MIQ facilities and out in their community. I do want to echo the words of the Minister and say thank you sincerely on behalf of New Zealand for all of that hard work. They are literally at the front line doing the heavy lifting on behalf of New Zealanders to make sure we stay COVID-free. I do want to talk about the most recent outbreak in the context of our border incidents more generally. It was very interesting to hear the Minister talk about public health experts who should know better". Wasn't that an interesting phrase because one of the things the Government has been very keen to do has been to rely on public health experts and we now have a member of the House—Dr Verrall—who was one of the experts relied on by the Government in the initial months. She provided expert testimony to the Epidemic Response Committee in a very good report which has been—well at least the Government says it has been implemented fully which is the Verrall report as it's become known. It was very interesting I thought to hear the Minister then get very worked up actually about public health experts who should know better and I wonder if he will have cause to reflect on that remark. I suspect the reason he is worked up about it is because for the first time in a while public health experts are saying things the Government should be doing that they are not doing and they are pointing out things that are uncomfortable for the Government. To give you an example the paper by Dr Grout and Professors Baker and Wilson published four days ago on the Otago University website to do with border control failures is not a particularly great read for Government Ministers because the professors there outline that since we have implemented the MIQ facilities we've had 10 border control failures—they say nine in MIQ and one at the port—and five what they call MIQ facility failures. The Minister likes to—well he doesn't like to but the Minister disputes the language but there have been incidents at the border out of MIQ and they make a series of suggestions for how the border can be improved. In fact there's 12 of them in the paper and one of the things that we want to be doing on this side of the House over the coming weeks and months is just exploring in a very methodical and comprehensive way what things the Government will be advancing and adopting and what things they won't be and we want to know the reasons for that. One of the things they recommend is mandatory daily saliva testing for example. This is not something that the National Party's just invented as an idea; this is something that public health experts Professors Baker and Wilson and Sir David Skegg have said for quite some time now. Again it's not a new thing; this is something they've been saying for months now. In fact it's in the Brian Roche - Heather Simpson report which the Government got in September—it was finally released in December but they got it in September. They said it should be introduced as soon as possible—ASAP—and it's something that happens in New South Wales and in lots of other countries. We think on this side of the House it makes sense to do it. The argument's pretty simple which is that it's less invasive because you're not shoving a thing up your nose and it's quicker and it would mean that you could scale up very quickly and do much more testing than you're currently doing. At the moment in the case of the most recent case these workers are subject to fortnightly testing. If you could do daily testing that would mean better identification of risk at the border and better identification of cases. Now the Government says that the testing's not as accurate—well that's disputed for starters. Actually there is evidence that the tests are just as accurate as the pharyngeal swabs. But even if it's the case—in fact the Prime Minister admitted this this afternoon in question time—that they're not as accurate by the repetition of the tests and by virtue of the fact that you are doing it daily of course you can be more accurate and pick things up more quickly. So we want to see saliva testing and we're going to continue to push home that point. Let's talk about this most recent case. There are I think real questions as to why laundry workers in particular are not included in the public health order and it's good to hear that the Government is looking at that. It doesn't make a lot of sense we think to have baggage handlers included in the public health order so that they have to do the fortnightly tests but not to have laundry workers who come into contact with napkins cutlery and blankets that have been used on flights. The Government's argument is that there is a distinction between airside workers and non-airside workers and I'm not sure that really holds because baggage handlers—yes they work airside but they do not come into contact with passengers. People who work in laundries who may not be airside but who work in and around the airport—if they are dealing with things like blankets and napkins clearly they come into contact with passengers albeit indirectly. So there is a real question there around the risk calculus that the Government has concluded around the breadth of the public health order and the testing. We want to dig into that and it's good to hear that the Government is looking at that point. So to summarise the Government has done a good job and they should be congratulated but that does not mean they can't be better. Our job in Opposition is to make them better and we're going to continue to push home on things like saliva testing and ask more questions about this most recent case. We owe it to this Parliament but most importantly we owe it to New Zealanders to ask the tough questions to make this Government response better. Thank you."