Woodhouse Michael; Hipkins ChrisHon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): Thank you I appreciate that answer. I think I heard the Minister say that there were around 4600 Australians who had travelled to New Zealand at that time many of whom were normally resident". Now if one looks at the Immigration New Zealand website for the special circumstances that apply to Australian citizens they are granted a residence visa on arrival but I'm pretty sure it also says that when they leave the residence visa lapses. So if they have not gained New Zealand citizenship and they leave the country under the residence visa that's granted then they're no longer New Zealand residents. So your comment about "normally resident in New Zealand" is true but from their visa status perspective if we do this belts and braces correction then anybody that you thought wasn't eligible to pay for the fee because they were normally resident in New Zealand may be captured by the net of this legislative change. So it would be helpful for us to get some clarification on that—and I understand the Minister is getting some advice at the moment. I do have a really really important second question about process and a suggestion—and the Minister is back in so I will give that second question. I think the process was that anybody who was given permission to come into New Zealand during this period was issued what was known as a critical purpose visitor visa and that visa for some contained work rights—so it was a bit of an oxymoron I think that it would be called a visitor visa but it had work rights—and that would include Australians who would not normally have to apply for a visa before departing in almost all circumstances but would be given a visa on arrival and that was the residence visa that we're having problems with.Wouldn't an easier way to have fixed this to simply have been to amend the regulation as to timing—the person's visa status at the time the critical purpose visitor visa was issued—and amend that criteria then? Effectively what we're saying is that they're not residents until they arrive then they're residents and they get that status in the few minutes between picking up their bag and going to the car that's taking them to managed isolation and quarantine. It seems like an odd window and wouldn't a better way to have fixed this simply to have been to change the definition of persons in respect of whom charges are payable by simply putting in a timing clause rather than a status clause? That timing clause would've been the timing of the issuance of the permission to enter which was the critical purpose visitor visa. Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister for COVID-19 Response): I think both of the questions the member asks are interrelated to one another and they turn on the same point. The issue is not so much how people are treated under immigration law but how they're treated by the regulations. So the intention behind the regulations was that if someone had been living in New Zealand and had left and gone back to Australia and then come back to New Zealand they would be treated as if they were ordinarily resident in New Zealand. Therefore they should be treated that way depending on what conditions they came back in. So someone who was coming back for a short period of time may have been charged; someone who was coming back to stay probably wouldn't have been charged. The intention was that for people who were coming from Australia as a health worker or as a critical worker they should be charged. That's the way the regulations were intended that is the way that they have been applied and the issue is then the inconsistency between the law and the regulations around the way that the visas convert on arrival. So the reason for bringing a bill rather than simply changing the regulations is in keeping with longstanding practice. Where the Government is validating something that has already happened it is done by Parliament not by Order in Council."