Woodhouse MichaelHon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): Thank you Mr Chair. Mr Seymour's questions around the breadth of the bill was one of my questions and the Minister has answered that satisfactorily. This is not just about Pfizer; it's about all of the vaccines that have been approved so far although I note that Pfizer was the only one mentioned in the regulatory impact statement which is rather unusual and probably reflects a degree of influence of and breadth of the use of that vaccine.What I then heard I think David Seymour ask was about the potential for vaccines to be administered to children between the ages of 6 months and five years. I may have misheard the Minister's answer but it seemed to me that he was saying to the committee that when this bill is passed that could happen under a consent granted by the Minister under section 34A(1)(a) which seems quite surprising and a bit concerning to me because what I thought we were doing was extending the number of doses to people in an age range and with certain conditions like being immunosuppressed who have already had the dose. Now at six months to five years they haven't had the dose yet and it surprises me—if I heard right and I think we need to have that clarified—that this Act could then enable the director-general to authorise the administration of Pfizer vaccines for example for that age group when (a) Pfizer hasn't applied for it and (b) they haven't previously had that. And I think that takes us into a realm that I wasn't expecting. So some clarity on that—if I misunderstood—would be helpful.The second question I have is around the immediate modification orders (IMOs) and the rather extraordinary comment in the regulatory impact statement that basically said that Ministers didn't think that an IMO was an option. I think we need to flesh that out because I have previously heard the previous Minister for COVID-19 Response giving the country a bit of an expectation that we were going to be in orange for the foreseeable and certainly past the winter period that we are concerned about right now.Two things: what was the nature of the discussion between Ministers that had formed the regulatory impact statement and what is his level of confidence? Has he had an exchange of views with either the previous or the current Minister for COVID-19 Response about the likelihood that the epidemic notice which actually expired last week was renewed? I didn't see any press release on that. I think it was due to expire on 17 June which was four days ago. If it didn't that may answer my question. Was it extended and if so why wouldn't an IMO have been appropriate? And in fact if it wasn't extended why not? Why are we still in orange if the epidemic notice wasn't extended?The third question relates to the question of page 3 of the regulatory impact statement which is around the benefits. Firstly there's been no financial data on this at all. How much is it going to cost and how much is it going to benefit? There's a pretty standard equation in a regulatory impact statement. We know there are more than 800000 doses expected to be administered once the bill passes. What is the cost of that administration for both vaccine and the fees to the people who will be administering them? And then at the bottom of page 3 it talks about the benefit which is basically a reduction in the risk of infection and severity of the illnesses—approximately two to four times less likely for those aged between 60 and 100 years and a 78 percent lower mortality rate from COVID than those who only received a third dose. I wonder what the research was. How much is that in quantity of the reduction in harm? That's usually pretty easily able to be measured by QALYS or quality-adjusted life years or some other kind of metric. And did any analysis take into account the fact that many of those people would not only have had three doses but would've also had COVID and therefore by dint of that would've had a boosted natural immunity which may have the same effect as a fourth dose? That for me I think actually underscores why the World Health Organization were pretty equivocal about the benefits of the fourth dose.But my question really is: what analysis if any was done? I don't want to bring it down to dollars and cents—this is actually about benefits as well as the cost. But what analysis at all was done or was this just done on a whim and emotion?