SpeechHon TIM MACINDOE (National—Hamilton West): Thank you Madam Speaker. I won't take a long call either because it's encouraging to detect that there is general consensus for the spirit of the motion that has been brought to the House by the Attorney-General. But as the Hon Gerry Brownlee noted a short time ago we wouldn't have known that we were going to be having this discussion even 15 minutes ago because we were totally unaware of the motion at that point and therefore there's been no opportunity for the parties to have a discussion as often happens outside this Chamber to reach agreement on some of these finer points and in particular as to where the responsibility for the scrutiny in a select committee should lie. And I thank the Rt Hon David Carter for his intervention. I think it's utterly disingenuous for Michael Wood to say that the only reason that the Finance and Expenditure Committee is so busy is because leave was denied for a meeting one day yesterday—Rt Hon David Carter: We met twice yesterday; he's wrong.Hon TIM MACINDOE: They met twice yesterday so it's even more disingenuous. The fact of the matter is as Mr Carter has noted that particular committee will be meeting—I think he said—four days in the next week which isn't even a sitting week of Parliament. So that shows that they are extraordinarily busy and it would not be appropriate for such a serious responsibility as this to be put in their direction.I am speaking as the shadow Attorney-General. The National Party opposed this bill as vigorously as we could in the very short space of time that was available to us. We hadn't seen the bill—and even then it was in a draft embargoed form—until Monday night. We were debating it the following day. It was enacted the day after that. There was no select committee process. That is always a matter of concern whenever any bill is being considered but particularly one which does attack the civil liberties of New Zealanders one which gives the police powers without warrants to enter private dwellings and the like. So this is not a minor issue. It's all very well for Mr Wood to suggest that his party is a defender of civil liberties; they certainly weren't on that occasion. I'm indebted to David Seymour the ACT Party leader for pointing out while he was speaking that in fact the Finance and Expenditure Committee does not have permanent representatives from all the parties in the Parliament. So I think that is a very important reason also for endorsing the amendment that has been moved by the Hon Gerry Brownlee for this bill to go to the Epidemic Response Committee. But of course there is another matter. The Finance and Expenditure Committee of Parliament has a Government majority. The Epidemic Response Committee was set up because Parliament was being suspended to ensure that the Opposition could carry out its very important constitutional function to hold the Government to account. And it remains in place because it's considering COVID-related legislation that has been dealt with. We are talking about a COVID-related bill here in this particular motion and therefore I would suggest to all members that not only should we support the overall spirit of the motion for the bill to be able to have scrutiny but that it must go to the Epidemic Response Committee because that is chaired by the Leader of the Opposition. It has conducted itself very responsibly and I think as consensually as possible during the process of the lockdown. I just want to close by making the point that members of Parliament have been receiving a huge volume of correspondence phone calls to our offices text messages social media posts and so on because many people were opposed to the passage of the bill. They were very very concerned that there was going to be no select committee process. Therefore this at least belatedly gives us the opportunity for select committee scrutiny. But also many have pointed out that they only heard about it when it was a fait accompli. Because there was so limited opportunity for the media to cover this issue they simply didn't know that it was happening and now they are saying Good Lord! Has a democratic country like New Zealand passed a bill of this nature?" We've had that debate; I'm not relitigating that one now. But I am strongly urging members of this House to support the amendment of the Hon Gerry Brownlee to ensure that the committee that can deal with this that has been set up—the Epidemic Response Committee—can do its work appropriately. And then we will support the scrutiny that the Attorney-General is calling for."