Bishop ChrisCHRIS BISHOP (National): I thank the Minister for the elucidation in relation to the motion around the continuation of the Act. Having opposed the original Act in the first place the National Opposition will without too much rancour not vote for the continuation of the Act again. But we do want to note for the House that generally we have been happy with the way in which the Minister has exercised his powers under the Act.I was on the Health Committee for almost the whole time that we were considering the motion in relation to the continuation—sadly I'm not on the committee any more. But the Minister is right: we did have a good discussion through the committee and he was kind enough to come and address us and we had a good chat.I just want to make a quick comment around the rationale for the extension of the Act until December 2021. I take on board what the Minister says around the necessity of extending it to that point but not going beyond if necessary. My experience is that the Leader of the House is someone who is very conscious of the constitutional obligations upon the Government around not taking as much power as is necessary—or only taking as much power in extraordinary circumstances as is necessary to give effect to any action that is required pursuant to that emergency. I understand and know that he appreciates that.I for one would like to see a situation towards the end of the year I hope where a more tailored and narrowly crafted piece of legislation could be passed and I suspect a more narrow piece of legislation—I'm looking at my ACT and Te Paati Māori colleagues on this side of the House—could be one that the Opposition parties could support. I think that is really important in so far as it's possible to have some degree of unity and partisanship over extraordinary legislation such as this. I give my assurance on behalf of the National Opposition that we will work diligently when the time comes to craft an appropriately tailored piece of legislation that responds to the circumstances as they are at the time but that also doesn't take too much power for the Government.So we are where we are. It will extend into December 2021 and I hope as he says that we will have a better understanding by then as to what is required. And in some ways the situation in December could potentially look quite radically different to where we are today. One of the lessons I think that we have learnt over the past year or so is that things can move very quickly and I just reflect on the various alert level changes that we have all had to grapple with and endure at various points. Time has slowed down for many of us in the Parliament at various points—you know time certainly slowed down during the lockdown to some extent but time has also sped up. So it's been a strange old time. But I think by December we should have a better idea because the vaccination programme we hope will be in full swing. In fact we hope it will largely be over although the odds of that are not great I have to say. But we will be able to better craft and tailor a response.Just a couple of brief remarks around the interrelationship and the interaction between the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act and the Health Act 1956: I think—and we canvassed this briefly during the committee process—that the most recent February outbreak was handled poorly from a legal point of view and I do want to put that on the record. We had this situation where the legality or at least the legal authority around the instructions given to people asked to self-isolate and get tested were I would say at best unclear. And we had of course the reasonably unedifying example of the Prime Minister and people who worked at KFC engaged in essentially a debate. One person had a pulpit the other person had a journalist so it was hardly a fair fight. We had a reasonably unedifying exchange around what people were and weren't told.I think one of the root causes of the confusion there actually goes to legality because Dr Bloomfield as I understand it maintains that orders or instructions given by public health officers are done pursuant to the law and I think there is possibly some debate around that but I think it is beyond doubt that the eventual section 70 order made under the Health Act 1956 was promulgated too late. It wasn't gazetted as we now know from the written questions and it should have been and it should have been much more widely publicised.So I do just put on the record that I think—I mean no one wants to have this situation happen into the future but in the event that we do have to have a similar incident in the future like the one that was sparked by the LSG Sky Chefs Valentine's Day cluster in Auckland or anywhere actually we need to be much more expeditious when it comes to the promulgation of not only orders pursuant to the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act but we also need to be cognisant of the promulgation of orders under the Health Act 1956 as well because that information should be able to be easily found and that goes to the rule of law. People need to know easily what they're required to do and they should be able to find that and it shouldn't have to be done orally by the Director-General of Health a week or so after the actual order is made. That issue was canvassed to some extent in the committee; I did just want to put that on the record.So thank you to the Minister for referring it to the committee. I thank colleagues on the committee at the time for the diligence with which we considered it. We won't be supporting it but we recognise the reasonable way it's been used by the Government up to this point. Thanks.