Seymour DavidDAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Thank you very much Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of ACT in opposition to this COVID-19 Public Health Response Amendment Bill (No 2). This is a bill that refines and extends the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act. That is the law passed by this Parliament I think it was last May or maybe a little later in the year that allows the Government to do things like set alert level restrictions. It allows the Government to require people to be tested at borders it allows people to be fined it allows the Government to operate managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) and a range of other policies that it's put in place as part of the COVID response to date. The reason that we oppose it is that at this point 18 months into the COVID-19 pandemic you would hope that the Government would have a bit more ambition than continuing the status quo. It's a status quo that can best be described as a policy of eradication of COVID-19 by lockdown with the dividends of being able to enjoy relative freedom with our oceans protecting us and allowing there to be no COVID-19 in New Zealand. There's only a couple of problems with that strategy and those are the reasons why we oppose this bill extending the length of the status quo.The first problem with that strategy is that it requires New Zealand to be almost completely isolated. The restrictions on entering New Zealand the requirements to have managed isolation and quarantine have meant a 99 percent reduction in the number of people that come through the New Zealand border at airports and seaports. In normal times it's about 20000 people each and every day. MIQ when you average it out barely manages to process 200 people a day—that's about 3000 spots 14 days of stay gets you a bit over 200 people. Now that reduction in people entering New Zealand is something that cannot be sustained. In so many ways it is dividing families. It is preventing people coming home to say goodbye to dying loved ones. It exposes us to what has been termed the hunger games" where 26000 people try to get in an electronic queue for 3000 MIQ spots. It means people who need to renew and build additional commercial relationships by meeting people offshore don't have the possibility of doing that. It means that our industries that depend on people coming—I mean forget tourism even just something as simple as export education—are unable to function. Those are the costs of a status quo that relies upon New Zealand's isolation from the rest of the world.But then there's the strategy of using lockdowns. Lockdowns have been effective in an Alpha variant environment. New Zealand managed to eradicate COVID-19 from its shores actually have no COVID in the country three times: first in February of last year; again in August of last year; and then with a Valentine's outbreak again in February of this year. But things have changed and that's why it is wrong to have this bill that continues the same strategy not just into 2022 but into 2023. What's changed is that against a Delta variant we see a long tail of infections that have kept Auckland locked down now for seven weeks and counting. With 45 cases on the 43rd day it is clearly time to change the strategy. I looked 43 days into the original 2020 lockdown there were zero cases. In fact they actually reclassified one case there were negative one cases 43 days into that lockdown. Today—Chris Bishop: Negative?DAVID SEYMOUR: Yeah that's right Mr Bishop. They reclassified a case as not being a case so therefore there was actually negative one cases that day 43 days into the March April May lockdown. This year today with this lockdown a lockdown aimed at beating Delta 43 days in 45 new cases and no end in sight. That's why the strategy has to change and that's why putting in place a law to lock in the status quo is fundamentally wrong.The bill then goes on to extend the penalties that people pay if they transgress the rules. Now that in and of itself is probably not an entirely bad thing. The penalties for breaking the rules should be sufficient to deter people from breaching them. I think it's reasonable to say that some of the penalties in the low hundreds of dollars for a lot of people haven't been a reasonable consideration for taking risks that would have a widespread community impact. But of course you only need to do that if the intention is to double down on a strategy based on isolation and lockdowns. Locking down and locking out isolating New Zealand from the world that has become completely unsustainable. There's got to be a better way.Then there's the question as we've heard in previous contributions of what's not in the bill. If we were to have a progressive approach to COVID-19 we might instead of extending the status quo and toughening the restrictions and giving the Government more power be asking where are there things we could do to liberalise and improve the flexibility that all of the team of 5 million have to fight COVID? Well actually it should be the team of 6 million because we seem to have forgotten a million citizens currently not in New Zealand. Some of the things that a better policy might include is the simple idea of allowing rapid antigen testing. Not only has the Government not included rapid antigen testing in its response it's actually prohibited New Zealand citizens from importing even the materials for any kind of testing technology that would allow New Zealanders to better respond to COVID to more rapidly detect it to more rapidly isolate if they had it and to be reassured that we are not in danger of widespread transmission and widespread hospitalisation or worst of all death. But that's the contrast.We've got a piece of legislation where a Government that's been completely caught off guard by Delta not knowing what to do has decided to rush legislation through the House because it doesn't know what else it could possibly be doing. It was simply unprepared. We heard it today in the tetchiness of the Prime Minister when she was asked why she wasn't prepared why her Government's response was not prepared for Delta. She asked you "Do I even have to answer the question?" That is one of the central problems with this legislation. It's not just the contents of it it's not just the extension of the status quo that it brings about it is also the nature of it the timing of it the way that it's been introduced. The Government is essentially saying "We don't really have another plan. We don't know what else to do but we anticipate that we could have the status quo of locking down and locking out for another year or more. So we're going to give ourselves some insurance by putting in place the tools of central control of orders of what New Zealand citizens can do inside and if they're outside the country and we're going to increase the penalties that we apply to people if they transgress them." It's the lack of imagination the lack of preparedness and forward thinking that is so depressing for New Zealanders who are stuck suffering under the strategy of locking down and locking out that are running out of money to keep their business afloat that see no certainty. What this legislation says to them is "You know what? We've got a long long way to go no light at the end of the tunnel and no ideas for a better tomorrow." That is why the ACT party opposes this legislation. Thank you."