Woodhouse MichaelHon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): I move That the words be disestablished" be replaced with the words "remains for as long as the alert level remains at or above level 2 with consequent restrictions on the operations of Parliament and the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act has not been repealed and that the committee convene weekly." I shall be tabling for the Clerk a written copy of that. There are two main reasons for this proposed amendment. The first is simply this: this House this motion is not the place to disestablish this committee. The committee was established by agreement between the parties at the Business Committee as I understand it—I'm not a member of that—with the agreement of the Business Committee.Hon Chris Hipkins: No it was an agreement with a phone call between Gerry Brownlee and I.Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: Well the member may be right but the reality is—[Interruption] hang on; I think this is important—these are important matters that are discussed between the parties and usually at the Business Committee a committee that runs on consensus. There is no consensus that the committee be disestablished and therefore the Government is going to do exactly the opposite of what the committee was set up to do and that is use its majority to crush it.But here is the second reason why I propose this amendment which effectively continues this committee: the work has not concluded. Normal transmission in terms of our parliamentary democracy has not been resumed. We have had—I'll start with the positives. This committee has worked extremely well. I'm sure colleagues on all sides of the House have had positive feedback about the manner in which that business has been conducted and indeed I think it was Derek Cheng of the New Zealand Herald who wrote an op-ed piece quite early in the committee's time saying effectively if oral question time is the measure of our parliamentary democracy then we should be very very worried but if the Epidemic Response Committee is a measure of our parliamentary democracy and the way in which MPs interact with each other then we should be greatly encouraged by what is going on.Now that I have to say was very early on in the committee's process and I remind members where we were at when that committee was established. We were obviously in lockdown. This place was closed and I have to tell you I was one of those members that opposed that course of action—that if we were going to ask our supermarkets our hospitals our police our ambulance other essential workers to continue through that lockdown why should we not?SPEAKER: Order! Order! Back to the motion and the amendment.Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: Well this is very important in laying out the reasons why this committee is so important Mr Speaker. We have heard from experts that this place wouldn't otherwise hear from. At a time when the Government didn't even have all the questions much less all of the answers the committee called on experts. Professor David Skegg Peter Gluckman the economic experts Cameron Bagrie Phil O'Reilly came and provided information—the submissions that we got so that we could understand exactly what was going on in corners of the country that were essentially locked down by executive fiat. Indeed there remain questions about the legality of that lockdown that have not been adequately answered by an Attorney-General that came to the committee and said "Trust us. We know what we're doing." Fine that's good; show us the advice you got—"Nope can't do that."So that is the contest that needed to go on. But then of course we had I think the two most extraordinary contrasting speeches I gave within an hour and a half of each other on about 13 May: one commending the Government; the other condemning it for the use of the Epidemic Response Committee to scrutinise in very short order two important pieces of legislation that thanks to that scrutiny came out of the committee in better shape and are now in law and then another piece of legislation that was outrageously pushed through this Parliament in a matter of 18 hours without any public input or parliamentary consideration through a committee.Now then came actually the biggest slap to the Epidemic Response Committee. Often Acts have reviews in them and it's usually between two and five years after the Act is passed. Twenty-four hours after the Act is passed the Attorney-General comes to this House at the death of urgency and moves a motion to have the scrutiny of the very bill that didn't have scrutiny before it was passed. But which committee does that go to? A committee with a majority of Government members on it that is already busy enough and that has nothing to do with the bill that had been passed bypassing this committee that was set up to do exactly that. That was the start of the snub that included the Minister of Finance the Minister of Tourism and the Associate Minister of Health thumbing their noses at the most important oversight committee this Parliament has ever established. Why? Because things were getting a bit hot for them. There were some questions—[Interruption] Well OK here's the alternative—they scoff at that. So that means they're just too busy and important carrying out executive decisions without stopping and being subject to the scrutiny that a strong democracy requires of it.I have spoken—and I do intend still to write; it's on my list of things to do—about my experience at the World Bank Parliamentary Forum on 25 April where the chatrooms were full of descriptions of the executive fiat that was being exercised around the world in the lockdown and the description of those countries as having weak democracies. They're not just developing nations they're not just former autocracies; they were countries like Italy like other Western European countries and I'm sitting there watching that thinking "We could be one of those weak democracies but at least we have the Epidemic Response Committee." Only the same executive fiat the same Government muscle that was being used to ignore the source of scrutiny that would be appropriate is now being used to shut down the only committee that this Parliament has specifically designed to scrutinise the actions of the Government during the worst pandemic in 100 years the worst economic crisis in generations.Democracy works not for the good times. Our Standing Orders the rule of law the constitutional separation between the executive and the legislature and the judiciary is important not in the good times but when things go bad and we are on a war footing. That's when it matters the most. I understand the need for the Government to act quickly and decisively—frankly we've been there through things like earthquakes and it's hard to get that balance right but balance it we must. We must ensure that this place continues to scrutinise executive decisions. And yes we're back—we're back and it feels like we're doing what we used to do—and yet we've got that sort of legislation last week going through under urgency. Tomorrow we go back into urgency to pass more laws without public scrutiny on COVID and by the way we're going to throw in a few other things—SPEAKER: Order! Order! For the last 30 seconds can the member get back to the motion.Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: This is why this committee matters Mr Speaker. It should be scrutinising these legislative changes. It should be scrutinising the sorts of decisions that the Government continues to make on behalf of New Zealanders who frankly are in some kind of political Stockholm syndrome at the moment. That will change and when it does the Epidemic Response Committee will be as important as it has been in the last 10 weeks. I strongly support and ask colleagues to support this amendment."