Penk ChrisCHRIS PENK (National—Kaipara ki Mahurangi): Thank you very much Mr Speaker. May I begin by congratulating you on your elevation. Others have noted your popularity. I think I'm right in saying it's universal among the House so I think the only danger of anyone objecting to your elevation to your current role would be yourself.Hon Member: Ascension.CHRIS PENK: Ascension no less.I do want to take at least a brief call on these COVID orders. I mostly want to make some remarks as the chair of the Regulations Review Committee. If I do make any comments in my capacity as a National Party MP I will make that distinction clear. As others have noted something very interesting and I think actually really helpful has happened in the House today and I think it's a significant moment in our public law history in this country. I don't wish to overstate it but as you can tell I'm rather excited sir at the interplay that we've seen before—a discussion between the shadow Leader of the House Chris Bishop and the Leader of the House Chris Hipkins in relation to the non-presentation or the non-inclusion of a couple of orders.Let me take a step back first of all by noting that the Regulations Review Committee is known as a collegial committee. That's how we operate internally so to speak but it also marks our interactions with other key players—for example Ministers of the Crown or in a broader sense hearing complaints with complainants of course but also relevant Government agencies and so on. But I do also want to acknowledge an element of collegiality or comity—which is often the specific word used—in relation to the committee as a creature of Parliament and the comity or collegiality of Parliament with the other branches of Government. So in this case we're acknowledging the fact today that Parliament has recognised that the court has made a judgment that is in a similar sphere to the substantive policy basis of a couple of COVID-19 orders and Parliament has respected that the court had the right to make that determination on the facts in a case that was particular to the complainants so to speak before it and the Government has respected that by removing the orders in relation to the Police and the New Zealand Defence Force members who had brought that motion. So I don't really want to talk too much about the case specifically but I do want to commend the Government for recognising that appropriate separation between the powers of those respective branches of Government. So that's I think an interesting development and I think it's very appropriate. On a similar but slightly different note we've seen that the orders that the Government first saw fit to promulgate—and the Regulations Review Committee agreed albeit in a narrow way considering as they do orders' appropriateness—were appropriate at the time but are no longer appropriate according to the court. And it struck me as interesting that it would be possible to say quite rightly that an order is appropriate at one moment but later when facts change—not the order itself; but when facts change and in this case the transmissibility of COVID being the Omicron variant as opposed to the Delta one—that actually changes the suitability of the order. In judicial review terms that might speak to the reasonableness of the decision maker's judgment—with a lower-case j" not to be confused with a court's judgment—and in Regulations Review Committee terms that's of course going to the degree to which human rights are impacted or the extent to which the order might be said to be consistent with the objects and intentions of the Act and so forth.A number of orders have nevertheless been presented. I've spent a lot of time talking about those that weren't but I think it's worthwhile to note that a number obviously have been presented. They were relatively uncontroversial although the committee in its usual diligent way as excellently advised provided some feedback to the Minister on various ways that we thought these could have been expressed more clearly. In a couple of cases we're yet to hear back from the Minister which is reasonable I think given the time frames and the busyness in the real world of further orders that are being made along the way in the way of a global pandemic. So for that reason we have an interim report. So that's just explaining to anyone who's following along and wondering why we might have only done an interim report well that's the technical answer for that—that we need to hear back from the Minister give him and it is him a chance to respond to concerns that we'd raised in the report.I won't dwell any further on those and I'll conclude a relatively short call by just noting as well the mandate orders that were not presented to the House. I've given kudos to the Government for not seeking to present them and putting Parliament in the position of having to seek to confirm that which the court had in a sense overturned. But I do want to speak briefly with my different hat on—as a National Party MP—and at the time the order was put in place as the National Party defence spokesperson. It seemed to me that it was inappropriate that the mandates should remain in place such that members of both those uniformed services should be told that they would not be welcome to remain in the service while there was litigation going on. I did write to the Minister of Defence at the time and made that suggestion. He declined to accept that suggestion and I feel a sense of vindication that in fact if he had taken that advice then we wouldn't have the messiness that we do now with people having been let go from employment from service and now as a result of a very recent court order are effectively having that put on ice.My other comment would be with a different hat on again—shadow Attorney-General. I did write to the Attorney-General some time ago asking for the release of advice around the balance of rights considerations for a number of these different orders. He declined—in fact he outright refused—to release publicly that legal advice which I would've thought would be a helpful exercise for the sake of transparency for the sake of ventilating to use the phrase of my colleague and friend Chris Bishop some of these issues which are now unfortunately the subject of uncertainty given the court judgment interacting and indeed contradicting the will of Parliament or at least the Government in the making of the orders.So that concludes the remarks that I did want to make. I don't know how much of it made sense to anyone but me but I think other fans of public law and constitutional issues will think that today—Greg O'Connor: Just the usual.CHRIS PENK: Mr Greg O'Connor says it's just as usual I think so I'm sorry that he didn't enjoy it as much as I did. But in any case thank you Mr Speaker and before I get any other expressions of support I'm going to stop there. But thank you for the opportunity to comment on these orders and again congratulations to you in this role."