Hipkins ChrisHon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister for COVID-19 Response): Thank you Mr Chair. Can I begin with the Attorney-General's comments and thank him for that contribution. Yes he is correct around the New Zealand Bill of Rights vet. They are often updated and dated relatively close to when the bill is introduced to the House. That is very common.In terms of the issues that he's raised around the courts he is quite correct that it raises a variety of quite significant dilemmas both for the executive for the Parliament and for the courts themselves around access to justice confidence in the independence of the judiciary and the independence of court proceedings but also some of the dilemmas that the courts themselves will face from people who are reluctant to participate in court proceedings if they are having to do so alongside people who have not been vaccinated. This is particularly the case in jury trials where we could face a situation where vaccinated jurors are unwilling to serve on a jury with unvaccinated jurors. That is something that I know the courts are particularly attuned to the risk of and is something that they have been turning their minds to. These issues haven't been resolved and I think it's important that we don't rush to resolve them. The best way to do that is to continue an open dialogue with the courts to make sure that whatever agreements are reached whatever arrangements are put in place we can preserve the independence of the courts.One of the factors that has been raised with me which I think is a really important one is if the courts are to use a provision around requiring mandates when they themselves are having to consider whether those requirements are in fact justified that could potentially undermine the confidence in the court's impartiality when it comes to that and of course these mandates are being challenged in the court. So there's a dilemma for the courts there that I think we just need to step our way through very carefully not rush decisions about that and make sure that we get that right. So the bill does not specifically reference courts. It is possible—it is possible—for requirements to be put in place around courts. The Government would certainly not do that without the agreement of the courts and so that is something that we'll have to work our way through carefully.In terms of a couple of questions that were raised both this morning and earlier in terms of the definition of vaccinated" one of the reasons that that has been delegated to the director-general is that there is a potential that that will change in the sense that additional vaccines will come on to the market and we need the ability to be able to add additional vaccines to that schedule. We need to be able to add different combinations of vaccine to that as the research continues to evolve there and we need to be able to factor in booster doses and frequency of booster doses as the science around that becomes clearer. So allowing that definition to be updated as necessary through a delegated power to the director-general is the sensible way of doing that.In terms of the purposes of sections 11AA and 11AB in clause 7 and how they're different from the current section 11 and why in particular in exercising these provisions the Minister "may" consult with the Director-General of Health as opposed to "must" consult with the Director-General of Health as is required under the existing section 11 provisions it is because sections 11AA and 11AB as inserted by this bill have a slightly different purpose to the original section 11. So section 11 was about a public health response and it meant that any requirements there were justified based on public health grounds. Sections 11AA and 11AB actually expand that wider to include "the public interest". There can be other factors other than just public health grounds that are taken into consideration in imposing those and so it may or may not be appropriate to consult with the Director-General of Health. One of the examples that actually came up in the debate last night was if the Director-General of the Ministry for Primary Industries was to introduce a requirement based on international trade obligations it would not necessarily be necessary or required to consult with the Director-General of Health about that because it wouldn't be a public health ground upon which such a requirement would be introduced. So hence there is a "may" requirement rather than a "must" because it won't be appropriate in all circumstances to consult with the director-general on those.In terms of advance notice around people and around the requirements we made some announcements on 26 November that indicated how the Government intends to apply vaccine requirements at different levels of the COVID protection framework so people have had notice of this. Yesterday we announced that workers in these businesses will need to have had at least one dose of the vaccine before they go to work under the COVID protection framework—so they've had advance notice of that—and they've been told that they'll have until 17 January to have their second dose. How we give effect to those is through amending the existing COVID-19 public health response vaccinations order. As I indicated yesterday it is through the amendments to the vaccination order that's currently in place made under section 11 of the Act and this bill now allows for the requirements under section 11 to be broader than just exclusively public health grounds. It is through that existing vaccination order that we will through amendments to that order introduce the extra vaccination requirements under the COVID protection framework which I think addresses the question that Chris Bishop was alluding to last night."