Hipkins ChrisCOVID-19 ORDERSApprovalHon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister for COVID-19 Response): I seek leave to revise the wording of Government notice of motion No. 2 to correct the title in one order by inserting the word requirements" after "self-isolation" in the order COVID-19 Public Health Response (Self-Isolation and Permitted Work) Order 2022 (SL 2022/46). Just to explain what I'm seeking leave for it was discovered earlier today that there was a typographical error in one of the titles of the orders to be approved by the House and so this leave is simply correcting the title of the order in the motion before I move the motion.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ian McKelvie): Is there any objection to that course of action being followed? There is none.Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Thank you Mr Speaker. I move That this House approve the following orders made under the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act 2020: COVID-19 Public Health Response (Protection Framework and Other Matters) Amendment Order 2022COVID-19 Public Health Response (Protection Framework and Other Matters) Amendment Order 2022 Amendment Order 2022COVID-19 Public Health Response (Vaccinations) Amendment Order (No 2) 2022COVID-19 Public Health Response (Isolation and Quarantine and Maritime Border) Amendment Order 2022COVID-19 Public Health Response (Isolation and Quarantine) Amendment Order 2022COVID-19 Public Health Response (Self-Isolation Requirements and Permitted Work) Order 2022COVID-19 Public Health Response (Air Border) Order 2021 Amendment Order 2022COVID-19 Public Health Response (Isolation and Quarantine and Other Matters) Amendment Order 2021 Amendment Order 2022COVID-19 Public Health Response (Air Border) Amendment Order 2022COVID-19 Public Health Response (Isolation and Quarantine) Amendment Order (No 2) 2022COVID-19 Public Health Response (Testing for COVID-19) Order 2022.This is a regular fixture for the House at the moment as we deal with a global pandemic and as we particularly enter a phase of the global pandemic where things have been moving and changing at a fairly steady clip. Under the COVID-19 public health legislation the Government is able to move quickly in order to put in place and in order to remove certain restrictions certain rules and certain processes that are required for our management of the COVID-19 response.This motion today approves 11 orders that have come into force on various dates between 3 February and 2 March this year. Though none of these orders are more than two months old it is worthy to note that some of them have already been amended or replaced. A significant number of the provisions in the orders that we're confirming today are actually now obsolete which I think shows how nimble and flexible and responsive our overall response to managing COVID-19 has been and how it will continue to be.We are moving pretty rapidly through the post-peak plan and life is starting to return to something that feels a lot more normal. So aspects of the response that are covered in the orders today include changes around the rules for face coverings—those still largely remain in place; reductions in period of isolation and quarantine—most of those have now been superseded; changes in some of the rules for people who are self-isolating—some of those do continue in place; the loosening of some travel restrictions—in fact there has been a much much more liberal loosening of travel restrictions since those orders were put in place; and the lifting of the requirement to self-isolate or for managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) for some travellers arriving in the country—and I would note that in fact again there's been a significant extension of that since those orders were put in place.So the great majority of the amendments that these orders brought about were to ease restrictions as part of our managed transition as we wound back many of the restrictions and many of the aspects of our COVID-19 response. There are some other significant ones still to come before the House including removing vaccine pass requirements removing vaccine mandates and the changes that we've made to the traffic light system. Those will be covered in a subsequent motion; they've yet to be reviewed by the Regulations Review Committee.I do want to acknowledge the work of the Regulations Review Committee in very conscientiously going through all of the orders that I have made under the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act and identifying a range of very useful questions some of substance some of style but all of them I think underpinning that the committee has not in any way regarded this as a rubber stamp exercise. It has been a very important part of our continual review and improvement cycle. Often issues that have been identified by the Regulations Review Committee have been picked up on the next iteration of the orders in question. These orders have regularly been amended regularly been updated and are regularly changing; so the suggestions and the feedback from the Regulations Review Committee have often been incorporated.The committee was particularly concerned for example—just to highlight a few of the examples but to highlight one—that a provision that was designed to mean that you wouldn't necessarily need to turf someone out of an MIQ facility in the middle of the night could result in people having to stay at an MIQ facility for longer than they might otherwise be required to and that wasn't the intention of the order. The intention of the order was simply to make sure that if somebody had nowhere else to go they were able to stay there because under the old order they would have had to be turfed out. So what we had to do was make sure that we got the balance right there between saying "Yep you can stay if you need to stay for a bit longer but you're under no obligation to do that." So I think with the exchange that we had with the committee we were able to actually provide even better clarity in the next iteration of the order which of course is now superseded because no one's going into MIQ now in the way that they were before. So I think that is a really good example of how the committee was able to contribute constructively to the process in order to keep improving these orders.The orders—I do want to again acknowledge that they were often drafted and put in place with a sense of urgency because they were responding to a particular situation a particular series of events and so there has been ongoing regular improvement as the opportunity has allowed.In regard to the COVID-19 Public Health Response (Self-isolation Requirements and Permitted Work) Order of 2022 the committee was concerned that people who had to go into quarantine because they were unable to self-isolate in appropriate surroundings might face greater restrictions than they would if they were in self-isolation. We were able to explain that this may reflect the wider public health circumstances of why the person needed to go into MIQ facilities in the first place and there are provisions there that allow for them to leave early as that is required. The good news is that most of that as I said is now redundant because we've moved to a new phase where the use of MIQ now has significantly diminished and in fact for most of those in MIQ—and there's very very few—it is because they are in a particular category. So for those who are interested in MIQ as of today it's a couple of hundred people; mostly refugees people who are coming from other parts of the world where they need a place to land when they get into the country effectively—that is who MIQ are accommodating in their facilities at the moment.The Regulations Review Committee I think in their diligent scrutiny looked right at the detail of some of the orders including I'm told a detailed discussion of what "contactless delivery" actually is. I can say that the Cabinet committee had very similar conversation as we've unfolded our COVID-19 response over the last two years. So I welcome those kinds of conversations.In May—so we're not far away from May now—it will be two years since the House passed the bill that became the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act of 2020. The powers given by that Act have given the Government the ability to move quickly to respond to the challenges that COVID-19 has brought about and we've continued to evolve as the response to the virus has needed to evolve. It has been a big part of us being able to come through the global pandemic in a very strong position. We've got a strong economy we have record low unemployment levels and we are now in a very strong position to accelerate our recovery from COVID-19. It has been the orders made under the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act that have put us in that position.But I also want to acknowledge given that—I'm hoping—there may not be many more of these motions in the House that there have been some really difficult trade-offs that have been involved in the response. There have been limitations on people's rights and freedoms—there's been no question about that. For many people that's resulted in some hardship. So I want to acknowledge that and I also want to acknowledge that I think everyone is feeling a degree of relief that we are getting to the point where our restrictions are much fewer than they have been for much of the response. We are returning to something that is much more normal. I look forward to continuing along that particular path."