Hipkins ChrisCOVID-19 ORDERSApprovalHon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister for COVID-19 Response): I move That this House approve the following orders made under the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act 2020:- COVID-19 Public Health Response (Vaccinations) Amendment Order 2021- COVID-19 Public Health Response (Air Border) Order (No 2) Amendment Order (No 7) 2021- COVID-19 Public Health Response (Air Border) Order (No 2) Amendment Order (No 8) 2021.Once again I'm before the House asking for orders made under the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act to be confirmed. To recap for those who are unfamiliar with this particular process the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act authorises me as the Minister for COVID-19 Response or the responsible Minister to use the correct term to issue orders requiring people to do things or requiring people not to do to things in response to COVID-19. Those orders can have almost immediate effect—this is something that we absolutely require in dealing with a global pandemic—but they do need to be subject to scrutiny. The process that we are involved in now is exactly how this unfolds. When I put an order in place I then have to bring it to the House within a certain period of time to be confirmed. If it is not confirmed within that period of time then the order that I've made expires. When I put a motion on the Order Paper for an order to be confirmed it's referred immediately to the Regulations Review Committee who can then review the order make sure that it is in compliance with the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act make sure that it is not using that Act in a way that is inappropriate. They can also make recommendations both back to me as the person who signs the order but also to the House. Their report then comes back to the House and then I have the ability to move the motion which I've just moved to confirm the order.In terms of what this particular motion confirms it confirms three—so first of all I should probably say thank you again to the Regulations Review Committee. I've had a very constructive relationship with them. They have asked questions of me and of my officials. They have made suggestions. In some cases we have subsequently adopted those suggestions because they have been good suggestions in continuing to improve our COVID-19 response framework.I do want to just acknowledge too though that many of these orders are put in place very quickly at short notice. Undoubtedly there are improvements that can be made and that's why we'll see that some of those orders have already been amended many many times both to deal with the emerging situation but also in some cases to tidy up and correct not necessarily errors or mistakes that have been made but inconsistencies or orders have sometimes lacked the clarity that we would aim for if we had a longer period of time to put them in place. So some of the amendments that we approve in this House fall into all of those different categories.So the three that we are confirming: one is quite a significant one and the others are relatively small points of clarification. So the COVID-19 Public Health Response (Vaccinations) Amendment Order 2021 extends the vaccination requirement for our border workforce to a broader number of people. We have had in place a requirement that those working in our managed isolation and quarantine facilities have to be vaccinated in order to undertake the work. That's been in place for some time and many of our front-line border workers have had to be vaccinated. Again that has been in place for a period of time. We are now expanding that to a wider range of people and that is what this order confirms. It is important that we provide the greatest layer of defence using vaccination in our border as possible. We've been working to achieve that over the course of 2021 since vaccines became available. This order extends that to a broader number of people.The COVID-19 Public Health Response (Air Border) Order (No 2) Amendment Order (No 7) 2021 makes some relatively minor clarifications around quarantine-free travel and who's eligible to participate in quarantine-free travel and the requirements about that. I would foreshadow at this point that of course all of our arrangements around quarantine-free travel are under review during this time where the bulk of quarantine-free travel is paused. In fact the only current quarantine-free travel we have at the moment that could still be reactivated is Cook Islands and at the moment it's paused at their end for very good reason. So we have a much more limited scale of quarantine-free travel at the moment so we are using that opportunity to review all of the orders we've got in place around that.Then the final one is the COVID-19 Public Health Response (Air Border) Order (No 2) Amendment Order (No 8) 2021 which makes some clarifications around the treatment of diplomats consular officials and certain New Zealand Defence Force members when it comes to the relationship between those people and quarantine-free travel just so that all of the requirements that are in place for people coming into the country are as clear as they possibly can be.So like I said the first of the orders is a relatively substantive one. In my view the second two are tidying-up orders making the arrangements as clear as possible and tidying up any inconsistencies or ambiguity that exists within the orders. I do want to acknowledge the way the House functions when it comes to these orders and the degree of goodwill that is shown across the House to scrutinising them appropriately through the Regulations Review Committee something that I regard as very very important. I hope that that process will continue in that spirit.