Hipkins Chris; Mallard TrevorWEDNESDAY 8 DECEMBER 2021(continued on Thursday 9 December 2021)COVID-19 PUBLIC HEALTH RESPONSE ACT 2020ContinuationHon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister for COVID-19 Response): I move That the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act 2020 is continued and that the relevant period under section 3(2)(b) of that Act is the period ending 30 June 2022.The COVID-19 Public Health Response Act was passed in the early stages of the global pandemic. It is the law that gives the Government of the day the ability to issue orders around things like vaccination around testing around quarantine at the border around pre-departure testing and around all of those other things that might be required to manage the ongoing effects of a global pandemic. Because of the sweeping nature of the powers contained within that legislation additional safeguards were built into it. One is that the law itself expires. It has a sunset provision which means that the Government will have to determine—and that sunset provision's currently set for I think mid-2023. The Government would either have to come back to the House with another bill to renew that legislation or it will disappear. It also has a requirement for periodic renewal by the House. That means that roughly every six months the Government has to present to the House a motion like the one we are presenting now which allows for the Act to be continued. So we are currently proposing that the Act be continued until the middle of next year by which point we will either have to pass another motion to continue to extend it or again it will expire. The global pandemic has created huge disruption around the world and here in New Zealand. I think there are many people myself included who look forward to the day when the global pandemic is over and life can get back to normal and we can all get back to doing the things that we all love and enjoy. The reality is that the global pandemic is not yet over and we don't know when it will be over. There is still significant uncertainty and particularly uncertainty around the potential for new variants. Omicron has appeared and we still have yet to fully understand it. We do know that it's likely to be more infectious. More people are likely to get it. Anecdotally we're seeing evidence that more fully vaccinated people will also get it. What we don't yet know though is what the effect of that will be. Is it more viral than earlier variants? Does it have a greater health impact or does it potentially have less of a health impact? That is still a big unknown question and we'll learn more about Omicron over the coming weeks and months. So we need to be ready to adapt and evolve depending on what that new information what that new research and what that new evidence tells us. In the meantime New Zealand is incredibly well placed. So we have very low rates of transmission in the community. We have a very high rate of vaccination. We have good surveillance testing and it's encouraging to see that our surveillance testing rates are remaining very high and so we are well positioned. Next year we do want to be able to early in the year open up the international border and see much greater movement in and out of New Zealand again and we've set out a pathway to do that. Many of the things that we are doing now still require this legislation to be in place. For example the requirement at the most basic level for people to be either vaccinated or to get a pre-departure test—so for New Zealand citizens they will need a pre-departure test before they come home to New Zealand; for non-citizens they will need to be fully vaccinated. Just that requirement alone depends on this Act continuing to be in existence. The traffic light framework which New Zealanders are all now becoming familiar with requires this legislation to be in place. The vaccination requirements that exist for our front-line border workers and for many of those other workforces require this legislation to be in place. So we are not yet through the global pandemic and therefore the need for the powers that are in this legislation to remain in place still exist. I do want to say as I've said on many occasions in the House that I acknowledge that these are extraordinary times and that this is an extraordinary piece of legislation. It is one that in an open and liberal democracy we should aim to have on the statute book only as long as it is absolutely essential to have it. This should not be seen as the beginning of a different way of doing things for New Zealand and is certainly not the way the Government views it. We view this as being a necessity at this point but it should only be available to the Government for as long as it is an absolute necessity. As soon as more regular decision-making processes can resume we should absolutely be doing that. So I have a mixed degree of emotion in moving this motion in the House today because as the person who has the weight of the responsibility of making orders under this legislation sitting on my shoulders I am very much looking forward to the day when that will no longer be the case. Unfortunately that is not today. So that is the reason why the Government is proposing to extend the life of this Act. SPEAKER: The question is that the motion be agreed to.