Bishop ChrisASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): The House has resumed. When the House broke for the dinner hour the House was considering Government motion No 2. And I see Chris Bishop seeking the call.CHRIS BISHOP (National): Thank you Madam Speaker and I want to start by just apologising to the House for I think it'd be fair to say an unseemly little spat just before the dinner break which involved a bit of a tête-à-tête between myself and the chief Government whip and also the Minister moving the motion Minister Sepuloni.I want to explain why I got a little bit perturbed by what the Government was doing and that is that what the House is doing here is very important. We are approving far-ranging significant orders under public health legislation that impose onerous duties on many New Zealanders. We only need to look at a couple of hundred metres from this House to see the level of upset that some people have with those duties and it behoves the Parliament to take that job seriously. And unfortunately we had a Minister moving the motion that has no relevant public health portfolio responsibility in the Parliament nor was it the Minister for COVID-19 Response or indeed the Associate Minister or even the Minister of Health. I thought that was regrettable because it's very important that Parliament give these issues due consideration. And frankly the speech from the Minister was cursory at best. I think we got 90 seconds or potentially two minutes in relation to what the House was being asked to approve. That was why I was annoyed and—I think I was annoyed but I do want to apologise for the bit of a set-to with the chief Government whip.I do just want to start by making that point that what Parliament is doing here is very important because the motions that we are being asked to consider are the first motions made under amendments to the public health COVID Act last year which relate to obviously the traffic light framework and the various duties that come with vaccination and COVID vaccine certificates or vaccine passes under that Act. So it's very important. The Regulations Review Committee has done a very thorough job investigating that and I want to echo the words of the Minister who moved the motion and say thank you to them for their hard work.One of the things that we said last year in relation to the passing under urgency of the COVID public health Act amendments was that there were mistakes that would be made that legislating in such haste would present problems down the line that the Government would have to fix. And unfortunately that has proven to be exactly the case. I would draw the House's attention to the very thorough report of the Regulations Review Committee which has examined the orders that the House is being asked to consider. There are four concerns that the committee had with the orders. I'll just read them out because I think it's instructive as to the haste with which the Government both passed the Act and also promulgated the orders.The committee says: We have four concerns about this order … Unclear relationship between COVID-19 orders". Secondly "Consistency with the Act?" Well that's pretty big. Consistency with the Act—that goes through the whole legality of the orders that have been promulgated. Consistency with the Act is pretty fundamental actually. It goes to whether or not an order is vires the empowering legislation. Thirdly—it gets worse—"Not in accordance with the objects and intentions of the empowering Act". So in other words the Minister—in this place the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety who I see is in the House—has promulgated an order that is potentially not in accordance with the empowering Act. And fourthly "Drafting error with significant consequences". A drafting era with significant consequences.Now some of these things have been fixed through the process of the back and forth between the Regulations Review Committee and the Minister and that's a good thing. That's a very good thing. But I think it speaks to the urgency and the hurry that the Government moved on all of this last year. But the Regulations Review Committee has done a good job.One of the interesting things about these orders is—and this speaks to the first point which is the unclear relationship between the various orders. One of the points that some of us made during the debate on the empowering legislation or amendments last year was the high degree of confusion in relation to the various orders. Now I accept that this is a technical and a complex area but the Regulations Review Committee has echoed some of that criticism. So we've ended up with a situation where there are two different orders that do slightly different things but had the same purpose. And the committee notes "We are concerned that having two orders with the same purpose is unclear and confusing." One relates to public health rationale and one relates to orders in the public interest.The other point is that as the committee notes "the amendments made to the Act in 2021"—these are the amendments in December—"to provide for the making of section 11AB orders may not be sufficiently clear as to the intended interrelationship between the orders made under sections 11 and 11AB". Now the good news is the Regulations Review Committee is doing an inquiry into the regulation-making powers in the vaccinations legislation and the public health response order. And that's a good thing because there is definitely an issue here that requires ventilation and definitely an issue that requires the House's attention.We will approve the orders made because ultimately the Government has made them and placed them before the House for the approval of the Parliament and we are satisfied that the committee has done a good job in tidying up some of the issues with them as the committee always does. But I want to warn the Government that there is going to come a time when some of the various orders made pursuant to this legislation will have to expire. As I said to the House in December last year the big issue in 2022 is going to be the temporal nature or otherwise of mandated professions mandates generally and the issue of vaccination passes. And that issue has only become more pressing as Omicron spreads throughout the community and we can see the clear division in our society at the use of mandates and passes.So I said in December and I repeat again that we are going to have to have a thorough conversation as a community and as a society about those issues. It is not good enough I believe for the Prime Minister to simply say "Yep they're going to go at some point but we won't tell you when and we won't tell you under what circumstances and we won't tell you how." The House deserves more than that and the House deserves a thorough and serious conversation around that. I said in December that that would be an issue this year; here we are in February and it is definitely becoming an issue. And so we are going to have to have a look at that. I note today that the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet (DPMC) told the Governance and Administration Committee that there is a review pursuant to Cabinet direction under way as to the traffic light framework and how it works in light of Omicron. We welcome that review because the thing about Omicron—as we've discovered from overseas but also we're now experiencing here in New Zealand—is it's highly infectious and busts through vaccination. And actually most of the cases in the last two days of people who have contracted Omicron—or we assume it's Omicron—are vaccinated. Are fully vaccinated. And they're getting it in places where COVID vaccine passes are required—cafes and other places.That does raise serious issues around the utility of passes. Passes under Delta made sense because the transmission effects were so significant. When the transmission benefits are much more diminished because of the infectiousness of Omicron the utility does diminish and we deserve a conversation around under what circumstances passes and mandates will be required and indeed where they're useful. I understand that the DPMC review that will be going to Cabinet will be looking at those issues. Those are not easy issues. The science and the evidence is emerging on that and we can look overseas to some of that evidence and see what's going to happen in New Zealand because our trajectory is not that much different to other countries in terms of case numbers. And so we'll look at that and we welcome that review. That's an issue that the House is going to have to grapple with in 2022. Thanks Madam Speaker."