van Velden BrookeBROOKE VAN VELDEN (Deputy Leader—ACT): Thank you Madam Speaker. It's a pleasure to rise tonight on behalf of the ACT Party in opposition to this bill. But firstly I'd like to acknowledge the passing of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. She did mean a lot to a lot of New Zealanders. I think in part that's because every time you went to the supermarket or to a bookstore and saw a magazine you saw the face of the Queen or you saw a face of a royal member. When you've seen that so many times you feel an attachment to these people that a lot of people have never met. But we've seen what's been happening in their lives and how that affects New Zealanders. So people in New Zealand feel a strong attachment to our royal family and to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.But it's also in part because the Queen over seven decades visited New Zealand many times and touched the hearts of countless New Zealanders through personal interactions and through going through small towns up and down New Zealand. And we should acknowledge the life of service that the Queen had and gave to people. But I don't believe that Queen Elizabeth II would have wished for her memorial or for a reflection of her life of service to the people of the Commonwealth to negatively affect other people that she so cared for.I think in this debate in particular but in passing this law to pass a one-off holiday for Her Majesty the Queen we are forgetting about the effect that this will have on the lives of people—real New Zealanders. And we've heard that businesses have really really struggled through the COVID pandemic. They have really struggled with this Government in particular passing more and more regulations more costs and more public holidays on to businesses. That's made it so hard to get up in the morning and create a living for people their own families and their business. This holiday is estimated to cost another $450 million to our economy and to businesses up and down New Zealand. But on top of that—and this is the aspect I would wish to speak to tonight—is the effect that this will have on people who have medical conditions people who are trying to access our healthcare system.We have heard from people within the medical community that passing this one-off holiday is going to cause chaos in hospitals and GP clinics up and down New Zealand. The Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners chief Dr Samantha Murton said It is going to make our lives much more difficult". I spoke last week just to one GP who said that they are having to cancel 120 booked appointments because of this holiday. That has a flow-on effect not only for that 120 lot of appointments but all of the appointments booked for weeks and months in the coming future. We know that this will have a flow-on effect for people who've been waiting—for months and months even—within our hospital system. At the end of June just this year 7500 people have been waiting over a year for non-urgent surgeries. This will come as a blow to some of those people that will be told that their scheduled appointment will now have to be rescheduled because the Government has decided that there needs to be a full public holiday in commemoration.I want to point to one particular area of the country which is the Wairarapa. Now the Te Whatu Ora district director for Wairarapa has said 488 disruptions to appointments and surgeries will happen in Wairarapa alone because of this. How large will this problem be across the whole country? This will have a detrimental effect. To the person that I spoke to who's had their scan cancelled there's a feeling of anxiety of people not being able to access the healthcare that they need when we already know that our healthcare sector is overstretched and over-burdened. This places another burden on those hospitals and those clinic staff who now have to rebook countless numbers of people and postpone even further people who may have been hoping to get their appointments done in good time in the months ahead.Another quote that came from the Association of General Surgeons from Rowan French said "We normally plan about two months ahead so two weeks is a very short time to make any changes". Hospitals are racing to cancel the operations that they have planned to reorganise theatre spaces and to recreate schedules. We are extremely short-staffed in our hospitals at the moment. We know that there are thousands of New Zealanders who haven't been able to get their surgeries because of COVID because they've only been doing those very very acute surgeries rather than the non-urgent surgeries and this will be having an ongoing detrimental effect in people's lives.The last point I wish to talk about was the fact that you know we should pay tribute to Her Majesty the Queen. She has done a life of service and is of huge importance to us all. But this one day off—this one particular day—has been scheduled just so the Prime Minister can come back and be here for this holiday. There is cynical timing about why this particular day has been chosen. We shouldn't allow this holiday to allow health to come to a grinding halt and I don't believe that Her Majesty would have wanted people to miss appointments and healthcare options for a day of commemoration. You know New Zealanders are feeling the loss of Her Majesty the Queen. She really was a true leader and she selflessly served the Commonwealth every day of her life. But this is at an enormous cost—not just to businesses and children who are missing education but the patients who will be missing their appointments. It is possible that the Government could commemorate this day in a better manner. They could introduce legislation that allowed for people to have a public holiday but to use their annual leave rather than forcing businesses to use their own money.While we do respect the Queen there is no way that the ACT Party could in good faith vote for this piece of legislation. Thank you Madam Speaker."