McLellan TraceyDr TRACEY McLELLAN (Labour—Banks Peninsula): Thank you Madam Speaker. It's a pleasure to take a call on this particular inquiry. I want to start my remarks by saying thank you and showing appreciation to the Regulations Review Committee which is chaired by the Hon Judith Collins and I thank the previous chair Chris Penk. I know from my colleagues on this side of the House who have been fortunate enough to be on the Regulations Review Committee that it's something they feel very passionate about and it's something that we often hear about from them.On the one hand it seems like an awfully long time ago that this pandemic broke out and yet on the other hand it just seems like yesterday. I think if we cast our mind back to that time in early 2020 when we were—via our television screens mainly—looking at how the rest of the world was coping with what seemed to be going to turn into a global pandemic. It seemed frightening and just unreal to us on this side of the world but nevertheless these were the images and this was the information that we were dealing with. We were watching the spread and the mayhem overseas and it became very very clear that a fundamental strategic decision had to be made in relation to our inevitable experience of this pandemic.As we watched every country grapple with the COVID-19 pandemic it was very clear that some responses were not necessarily what we thought would happen. Some responses seemed to be somewhat chaotic. There clearly wasn't an exemplar out there that showed us what a playbook would look like; it was clearly going to be up to us to define our own rules. When the country faces a significant crisis be it a war or be it any kind of natural disaster—in this case a pandemic—the Government does have to move very quickly. As my colleague Vanushi Walters previously talked about those were the circumstances that we found ourselves in. We did do a good job and I don't think that's something we should lose sight of. We had a fantastic response to COVID-19. We had fewer cases we had fewer hospitalisations we certainly had fewer deaths than many other countries in the world and we maintained economic resilience at the same time. So it was a world-leading response. But that is not to deny the fact that it also had a huge impact on people. One of the reasons why that happened is when we look at population measures and the normal distribution of what we need to do as a population it often impacts on the individual. That's just what happens but that's not to minimise it.So although the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act was necessarily and properly passed under urgency and as we've heard because the stakes were high and because lives were at risk—so it was a scenario worthy of that—there was a social licence that held for some time. But we also adopted a number of suggestions from those legal experts who have been named today and thanked and from the Opposition including to immediately put the Act to a select committee for scrutiny via its inquiry function. But it's now critical that we compile what we learnt so that should this ever happen again we've taken those lessons and we've made good use of them.What the report found was that there was an appropriate balance and I think several people have talked about balance and that clearly was the aim although the vaccination legislation perhaps should have been stand-alone legislation and the traffic light regime probably should have been primary legislation as well with that precise sort of detail set out in secondary legislation.Parliament including the Regulations Review Committee was also found to have capably performed its role in scrutinising that emergency legislation and the use of an existing select committee rather than setting up a new one was found to be preferable. It's true as my colleague Toni Severin mentioned that some of the legislation was difficult to navigate particularly the protection framework order and people's tolerance can be tested when things aren't as clear as they possibly can be. So that's an important thing for us to learn.So in summary I'd just like to again thank the Regulations Review Committee for all the insight they've garnered through this process and through this inquiry. I welcome other speakers to make additional comments.