3. Question No. 3—Prime MinisterHon JUDITH COLLINS (Leader of the Opposition) to the Prime MinisterQuestion No. 3—Prime Minister3. Hon JUDITH COLLINS (Leader of the Opposition) to the Prime Minister: Does she stand by all of her Government's statements and actions? Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN (Prime Minister): Yes. In particular I stand by this Government's decision to offer a one-off resident visa for skilled for settled and for scarce migrants currently in New Zealand. This change gives certainty to many of our migrant families who have been in New Zealand through the pandemic and it will provide certainty to New Zealand businesses so they can better plan for the future. It's estimated that this includes 5000 health- and aged-care workers 9000 primary industry workers and more than 800 teachers. These are members of our team of 5 million and they've played an important role for our country and now they can have the certainty they need to continue their lives here in Aotearoa New Zealand. Hon Judith Collins: At what vaccination rate will fully vaccinated Kiwis returning home from low-risk countries be able to self-isolate at home? Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: There's two stages to us moving to a model like that. The first is the use of the self-isolation pilot which as the member will know we announced this week which trials the use of self-isolation for double-vaccinated New Zealand citizens travelling abroad. The second area where we're looking to modify our border settings is the use of shortened isolation periods. We're looking to draw on data from overseas countries as to the safe exit point for shortened managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ). On both those fronts we're looking to use those varied border settings from the first quarter of 2022 in keeping with our reconnecting New Zealand strategy based on the public health advisory work of Professor David Skegg. Hon Judith Collins: Why has her Government not delivered purpose-built MIQ facilities outside of the central business districts 18 months into this pandemic? Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Well obviously we do have managed isolation facilities who do sit outside of those areas and we've found that some of the ones that we've used throughout the pandemic have been very successful—one of which is the Jet Park which has been our primary managed quarantine facility and has worked well. One thing I would acknowledge is that regardless of where they're placed what matters is also where you draw your primary source of workforce from and so the proximity to airports matters but also proximity to workforce. So having facilities that—yes—meet all of the standards you need around ventilation and so on is important but you also do need rigorous tests in place to ensure that the workforce continue to be safe because they will live in proximity and around communities which presents risk. So all up we've used facilities quickly that we've been able to access and lease. We are saying that we will vary up potentially whether we purchase those going forward. We are exploring whether or not in the future it would warrant having additional purpose-built. But as I've just said we're now trialling things like self-isolation and shortened MIQ so there will be a change to the way we use MIQ in the future. Hon Judith Collins: When will booster shots be available for those people in group 1 who received their vaccine over seven months ago? Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: When our experts advise us that that is a space that they recommend us moving into. You'll see that—yes—some countries have made decisions for older individuals or immunocompromised individuals but this is still quite a hotly contested space. What's important for us in the meantime is to preserve our position to do that. If our experts advise us we should we are all ready to go. We do have additional vaccines that we would have available in the first half of next year in part due to the fact that for five- to 11-year-olds should they be granted in New Zealand the authorisation to be vaccinated a paediatric dose is a third of—at this stage—an adult dose. That gives us extra quantity and also the shelf life for our current Pfizer vaccines which we'll have surplus of is now nine months rather than four. So we will have additional capacity for booster shots should that be recommended. Hon Judith Collins: Does the goal of the current Auckland lockdown remain elimination? Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: As I've said many times before our strategy all the way through has been a stamp it out" strategy—a zero tolerance for COVID cases—but that does not mean we will have zero and so we have said all the way through that we maintain that strategy while we are vaccinating New Zealanders. Hon Judith Collins: Did the Prime Minister just indicate that when vaccination rates are high enough she will not be maintaining an elimination strategy? Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I've actually said many many times that we intend to move away from the alert level system that has often had to use restrictions in alert levels 3 and 4 in order to maintain a "stamp it out" strategy. So we've always said that with a vaccinated environment you wear your individual armour. It means that you don't have to isolate yourself away from COVID in order to maintain a strategy of stamping out COVID-19. It's often been others who have interpreted elimination to be something more like eradication; that has not been us.Hon Judith Collins: Does she then agree with University of Auckland epidemiologist Rod Jackson who said today that elimination is "always … a short-term strategy but what Delta has done [has] made it much [more] shorter-term"?Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I actually really wish the member perhaps would engage in some of the dialogue that we've been having daily with New Zealand on this very point. We've long said that the reason that we're maintaining this strategy in Auckland right now is because we need to vaccinate New Zealanders. Once you are vaccinated New Zealanders you have the ability to change the way that you deal with outbreaks substantively and so that is what we have been saying for quite some time. But for now we continue to operate in Auckland with very clear public health protocols isolating cases and using the heavy restrictions that we have because we do not have a fully vaccinated population.Hon Chris Hipkins: Can the Prime Minister confirm that New Zealand has over a long period of time maintained an elimination strategy for a range of infectious diseases where vaccination is available and has been widely taken up by New Zealanders without the need for alert level escalations and border restrictions?Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Yes and some of those tools are the ones that you're seeing so widely in use now. Public health units have the ability for instance for even the management of flu to shut down some health facilities if they need to. For the measles they use contact tracing alongside other tools. But I guess the point that I would again make referring back to the last member's question is a number of health professionals have been talking about the extra capacity the vaccine gives you to change the way that you deal with outbreaks as have we.Hon Judith Collins: Does she agree with epidemiologist Dr Rod Jackson and Professor Shaun Hendy who today agreed: "Auckland is going to be in level 3 until we don't have mystery cases"?Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: The judgments that we make around the movement of restrictions we base on the public health assessments that come through from the Ministry of Health. What I have said today is that there are a range of analyses that we'll make to different restrictions and consider whether or not those can be eased safely and that's the same consideration we make every time when we look at our alert level framework: what can we do safely to ensure that we maintain control of the outbreak that currently exists in Auckland?"