Bishop ChrisCHRIS BISHOP (National): Thank you very much Mr Speaker. I want to signal that the National Party appreciates the reasons for the bill but we will oppose this legislation and there are a few reasons for that. That's not to say that there's not some useful things in the bill. There are—it's definitely true—and there are particularly improvements to the rule of law actually because as the Minister has highlighted some of the operational protocols of managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) as the legislative framework document prepared by the ministry notes create a lack of transparency and a lack of accountability and this produces benefits. But the reason we will oppose it is primarily one of philosophy and principle which is that the bill locks in the status quo which is a highly restrictive regime in which New Zealand is locked away in splendid isolation at the bottom of the world. Some have called it the hermit kingdom metaphorically I think—although various commentators actually regard it as a literal description; I think it was a metaphor—but splendid isolation is not something we can continue for ever. I want to signal up front that the Opposition has concerns around the time frame in relation to the bill. This is a bill that the Minister should have introduced earlier than now. I think I know what happened in the Cabinet Office legislative drafting process which is the Minister quite rightly said probably earlier this year We're going to have to update the Act because there's a variety of sensible and useful amendments we need to do." and then all the agencies involved in the COVID response—the Ministry of Health the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment (MBIE) the Ministry of Defence and everyone—all inputted into the process. Then every time they thought they'd sort of finalised a draft somebody would say something like "Oh what about this? We just need to add a little bit extra." and the time lines kept getting pushed out and so we've ended up with quite a chunky piece of legislation. Maybe you can make an argument that that was the right thing to do but I think it would have been better to have seen it earlier because the committee is going to have quite a compressed time frame. I think the Minister signalled a flag for 11 November and the Health Committee chair here Dr Craig—she knows we're a pretty busy committee. We really are—we've got a lot on. We've managed to send the abortion safe areas bill back to the House or we soon will but we're a pretty busy committee. So it's going to be tight. It's going to be tight but we will get on with it because we're a hard-working committee. Some of the amendments in the bill are very sensible. I've already signalled some of the clarity around the operational practice of MIQ. That's a good thing to put that into primary legislation because if you actually read between the lines of the officials' advice it's been a bit unclear the legal basis of some of what's been going on in MIQ. I don't make a big deal about that but I'd just note that because we had to stand it up really quickly and everyone acknowledges that we do need MIQ. But it's better to have that stuff as clear law. I think one area the committee is going to want to get into is the issue of fines. Now the Minister made a bit of a song and a dance in the media around saying he's massively increasing the fines. It's really interesting to read the regulatory impact statement (RIS) because it goes through quite rightly the range of options the Government considered to increase the maximum penalties and I think everyone acknowledges that the penalties should be higher than what they are. The officials recommended a 25 percent increase so an infringement fee of $1250 and a court-imposed fine of $3750—that was option A—and they said that anything else would have "equity proportionality and consistency implications". Option C was 100 percent higher than the level in the bill which is an infringement fee of $2000 and a court-imposed fine of $6000. It notes here "The Minister's decision to propose an increase in penalties beyond what is set out in the draft bill was not the preferred option recommended by the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet." and so what they've actually gone for is $4000. It's currently $300. The draft bill that was produced proposed increasing it to $1000 and now we've ended up with $4000. So this is a real increase in fines and it may well be warranted. But it's really interesting that it's gone well beyond what the officials recommended was proportionate and equitable and I think that is an area we're going to want to get into at the select committee. I mean I'm all in favour of tough penalties for MIQ rule breaches. I mean we've been on the record saying that—absolutely. But let's get into exactly the reason for why they're so vast and why there are proportionality implications. The other really interesting thing just in relation the operation of MIQ is this little nugget which I notice the Minister didn't mention which is the bill will allow—in fact the bill will propose a requirement in the Act—for people undertaking MIQ to provide MBIE with contact information so that MBIE will be able to contact them once they've left MIQ for invoicing purposes. Now what does that say? I think what it says in the very austere language of the officials is that up till now or up till the bill passes which will be some point later on in this calendar year—up until that point officials haven't had the ability to require people to supply their contact information. Because of that they haven't been able to invoice and now I know why there's $25 million at last count of MIQ fees that are outstanding. Now the Minister keeps saying "Oh the IT system's problematic and we've had to have all these different databases and they have to correlate and MBIE does one thing and Health does another thing and the exemptions are really hard." There's been a variety of different excuses given over the months as the overdue numbers keep racking up but actually it turns out when you read the RIS it turns out that the major reason is that no one has been actually asking on a legal basis for the names and email addresses for people in MIQ so that we can send them an invoice. I don't know if people have wised up to this but it may well be that people just have not bothered to do it and because there's no legal requirement to do it there's no ability to follow up so presumably people have just been not supplying their names and email addresses and not supplying their addresses and you can't invoice people. So that explains why the millions of dollars that people who have gone through MIQ owe to the New Zealand taxpayer have not been paid. The last time I looked which was to be fair a couple of weeks ago it was up over the $20 million mark and there are people who have stayed in MIQ in August last year—August 2020; so a year ago—and who owe money to the Crown who haven't paid. Now the amounts are 2000 bucks or something for the August amount and I'm not saying that the Crown should go after them because they'd spend $2000 drafting up the enforcement action to go after them. So that would be a waste of money and I'm a fiscally prudent guy. I don't want to waste Crown money but when you're talking about $25 million then we'd get the debt collectors in and one thing we will be interested to do is to see whether or not the bill allows for that to happen because every now and then when there's a media story around the debt owed to the Crown the Minister says "Oh we're going to get tough." etc. etc. There's been talk of debt collectors—and in fact I think even the Prime Minister said they were going to use debt collectors—and we'll wait and see whether or not the bill that we're passing allows for that to happen. So let's wait and see. The other couple of things I wanted to mention were what's not in the bill and that goes back to where I started which is the philosophy behind it—so rapid testing for example. In a world in which New Zealand begins to open we're going to need rapid testing and I know the Government has got the technical group looking at it but I think it's tolerably clear that we're going to need some form of rapid antigen tests in a new world in 2022 when the borders begin to reopen because let's remember that that's ostensibly Government policy as well. The Government wants to reopen the borders as well so with all the heat and light about National's plan to gradually very safely allow double-vaccinated travellers to come back—you know all the heat and light today of "National wants to kill people!"—it's actually Government policy to reopen the borders. Let's not forget that and that means COVID in the community so let's remember that. We are going to need rapid testing. One good use of it right now would be at the Auckland level 3 boundary and look it's just ludicrous. These truckies are coming and going once a week they get tested once a week they could have COVID for six days in the meantime and spread it to literally thousands of people and no one would know until they do a nasal test. So we should be doing rapid testing and I accept that they're not as accurate as the nasal test of course. But when you do it on a daily basis as Shaun Hendy and various other experts say that makes up for it. So the bill says nothing about that. We should legalise them. Through primary legislation the bill should legalise rapid testing. It's currently banned by dint of an order pursuant to the current Act. The bill should legalise it. The second thing is that the bill should make provision for purpose-built managed isolation and quarantine. That's been something that we've been talking about for a long time and that goes to the philosophy underlying the bill. So there are some good things in it. There are some good things in it and we'll consider it with due alacrity at the Health Committee but we object to the time frame and we object to the philosophy. Thank you."