Seymour David; Hipkins ChrisDAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Thank you very much Mr Chair and thank you to the Minister for appearing. I've been really interested to listen to the Minister and particularly how candid he's been saying that there's great uncertainty caused by new variants but the Government is openly considering its options even whether or not elimination is the right option. That's what I think I heard him saying. That is quite a big thing for the Minister to say but it's not unwelcome that he would be laying out different options; some of the options might be unwelcome but having that more open discussion is very welcome. I think people really have a yearning to understand what New Zealand's options and possible pathways and strategies are. Given this is an Estimates debate I just wonder what sort of cost-benefit analysis the Government is doing on different options when it thinks about what our future might look like in relation to the border and the level of elimination of COVID-19. I put it this way: when the Government thinks that the costs of saving a quality-adjusted life here from COVID is it weighing those up against what it is prepared to spend to save a quality-adjusted life here from other things? Because in normal times just about every day that we meet here in the House it seems like there will be a group of families of patients who would love to be able to get their hands on a particular pharmaceutical but because of the envelope that Pharmac has to fund them they can't and often they face real suffering even at their lives' end. Everything that we spend on fighting COVID we can't spend on doing that. The Israeli Prime Minister gave a similarly frank speech. What he said was Everything we spend on COVID we can't equip our soldiers with anti-aircraft guns." I'm just so happy that New Zealand doesn't have those sorts of trade-offs—at least not for now. But we do have other trade-offs. You drive around New Zealand unfortunately it feels sometimes like just about every corner some family has put white crosses up because somebody died there. There is constant pressure on the Government to improve the safety of the roads. We could go on but two of our biggest killers—car crashes and cancers—every dollar we spend on facing COVID we can't spend on fighting car crashes and cancers. So I wonder: is the Government doing—since this is an Estimates debate; this is a Budget-related debate—robust analysis of what some of the pathways are? Now we know that the world will change. We know there could be some crazy new breakthrough variance of COVID—in fact arguably there are some already. But is the Government at least based on what it currently knows doing scenario planning to say what our strategy might be what sort of interventions the Government would have—whether they're testing or tracing or vaccination or movement restrictions like lockdowns—and is it then working out what they cost? And ultimately what does it cost to save a year of life from COVID knowing and being fully conscious of the fact that when we spend a dollar on that it's a dollar we can never spend on something like cancer or car crashes or other things that threaten New Zealanders. I'd be very interested to hear the Minister's answers. Thank you.Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister for COVID-19 Response): There's quite a lot in that contribution from the member. But I do just want to say that the Government at this point is still committed to an elimination strategy. Elimination strategies can take many different forms. Now in the early part of our COVID-19 response the best way to achieve elimination was once we had done the first wave of elimination to keep it out of the country in the first place. That's not always the response that we take with elimination strategies. We have elimination strategies for other infectious diseases and we do that without necessarily needing to restrict movement at the border. So we can maintain potentially an elimination strategy without necessarily having to say to people that there's a limit in the movement of people at the border. David Seymour: Vaccines are much better.Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Vaccines are certainly a part of that. Requirements around vaccines for people to come into the country I think are in our not too distant future—I hope would be in a not too distant future.In terms of the hunger for certainty I think that's evident in the member's comments—I think we all want to know what the world's going to look like in the future. If I could perhaps use an analogy and it's not a neat analogy but it is one that I think is partly appropriate. After September the 11th there were massive queues at the airport for airport security because suddenly every airport in the world had to stand up a whole lot of security that they hadn't had before. International aviation was massively reduced there were huge queues and there were huge delays. The world adjusted within a short period of time to a new normal and now we just accept that that is part of international travel. I think that there will be a new normal when it comes to things like international travel in a pandemic era. We don't know what that's going to look like yet but we need to be in those conversations and ready to adapt quickly to whatever might come along and that is absolutely where the Government's focus is at. So things like vaccine passports—no it's not feasible for New Zealand to develop its own vaccine passport system; it would be futile to do so if no other country could read it and interact with it. We want to be part of a system that's global; that means that people can share that information seamless and instantly; and that New Zealanders can share their vaccine information their testing information and so on as part of the prerequisite requirements to travel internationally. So we've got to be right in there with those conversations. So there isn't certainty here.In terms of the other question from the member around the cost-benefit analysis I can tell him that I'm responsible for a very large part of the Government's spending at the moment across the two big portfolios I've got—education and COVID-19 response—and I would absolutely love to have the volumes of money that we're spending on COVID-19 response to spend in education and every other Minister around the Cabinet table would say the same thing. So inherent in all of the discussions we are having is that constant trade-off about you know we want to make sure that we're investing in New Zealand's future. This is a particular point in time and we need to respond to the needs in front of us now. But of course we also need to think about how we maximise our options for the future.Chris Bishop: Mr Chair?CHAIRPERSON (Rt Hon Trevor Mallard): Chris BishopChris Bishop: Is that me?CHAIRPERSON (Rt Hon Trevor Mallard): Yep that's you.Chris Bishop: Sorry I just couldn't—the mask.CHAIRPERSON (Rt Hon Trevor Mallard): Yep all right. Mr Bishop."