Dean Jacqui; Watts Simon; Hipkins ChrisClause 4 Schedule 1 amendedCHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): The question is that clause 4 stand part. Honourable Simon Watts—not—SIMON WATTS (National—North Shore): Oh well not quite. CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): —yet. Simon Watts.Hon Member: It's only a matter of time. SIMON WATTS: Only a matter of time. But anyway let's not get distracted because this is an important phase of committee. Look thank you Minister for—I'll just wait because I know he is occupied probably getting a little bit of advice about some of the questions that he knows I'm going to ask because there is a lot of depth in terms of some of this. Look I want to have a conversation. I want to get a few answers. I've got a good eight or 10 questions here that I want to go through this morning so I'll do that in a couple of phases. But in terms of the next aspect I would like the Minister to clarify exactly how many people are affected and impacted by this change and just articulate the manner in which as an Opposition we can be confident that the numbers that have been quoted today are accurate and are substantiated. I don't think I got much confidence this morning in what was probably a 3½-second quote in terms of the number and what sounded to me like an estimate and the fact that we've had 21 days give or take since this issue was identified to get to where we are today. I'd really appreciate it if the Minister could give us a little bit more background around that. The second aspect that I'd like the Minister to provide some clarity on is this. My colleague in front Dr Shane Reti mentioned when looking at the departmental disclosure statement there's a heck of a lot of gaps in terms of transparency disclosure and information. So what I'm interested in particularly on the basis that we've unlawfully taken about $3 million off Australians as a result of this mistake in legislation is what advice if any has the Minister had from Crown Law in regards to this. I'd appreciate it if he could share the responses to those questions and then I'll be back with more. Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister for COVID-19 Response): In answer to the latter part of the question: yes I have had advice from Crown Law and the only person that can share that is the Attorney-General. That's the standard practice if we're releasing advice that's privileged—only the Attorney-General can do that—but yes we have received advice. In terms of the number of people that could be affected it is difficult to calculate because it would very much depend on the circumstances of each individual. Someone might have come into the country and have not paid a fee so that will account for the majority of people who have come from Australia to New Zealand during the time in the question. Some will have come as a health worker and they would have had to pay a lower fee. Some will have come as an essential worker and they would have had to pay a higher fee. Those are consistent with the fee-making decisions that the Government is talking about which fees apply to people. Just to the very rough numbers that I have been given: about 4600 Australian citizens have travelled to New Zealand during that time. The vast majority of those were normally resident in New Zealand so therefore would not be covered by this. Around 1700 Australian citizens applied for a border exemption. The advice that I've had based on the estimates and again I just want to be clear that these are estimates because without going through every individual application and then trying to identify exactly what has happened it could be around 600—so 650 people. That sort of range is the number of people who could be affected.