Allan KiritapuKIRITAPU ALLAN (Labour): We have gone hard and gone early to unite against COVID-19. When the Prime Minister addressed the nation and implored New Zealanders to stay at home and save lives we all looked to the impacts COVID was wreaking around the world and we did exactly that. We stayed at home and we did save lives. New Zealand's response to COVID has been applauded internationally and almost every single day I receive commendations thanking the Prime Minister for her leadership and courage. We are one of the only countries in the developed world that is on track to eliminate COVID-19 and we all owe gratitude to each other and in particular to those in our communities who are our essential workers: our supermarket workers our food producers and transporters our police our civil defence workers our cleaners our healthcare workers our ambulance operators the gas station workers our Whānau Ora providers our volunteers who are out shopping for our elderly and the NGOs who are looking after our most vulnerable. To those people that have had to front up every single day in the media stand-ups the gallery journalists asking questions on behalf of New Zealanders and to our most senior and trusted public servants and most notably the ever-present leadership from Dr Ashley Bloomfield on behalf of all New Zealanders we owe you a note of gratitude and we thank you.But while we have seen some of our nation's best characteristics of caring for each other it is with some concern that today I feel like we are starting to see the seeping actions of egregious acts in a cause for the Opposition to become relevant. This morning the Epidemic Response Committee charged with inquiring into the Government's response to COVID-19 issues by a majority vote of Opposition members issued a series of summons—SPEAKER: Order! Order! I just want to make sure that this has been publicly announced.KIRITAPU ALLAN: Yes it has been publicly announced sir and public press releases have gone out. SPEAKER: OK thank you. KIRITAPU ALLAN: By a majority vote of Opposition members it issued a series of summons to senior public servants including those who most of the country have upheld for their leadership: the Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield; the Commissioner of Police Andrew Coster; and the country's most senior independent legal adviser the Solicitor-General Una Jagose. The summons would require that we force the hand of these senior public servants to waive their right to legal privilege and if they fail to do so potentially force them into a position where they may be in contempt of Parliament. The Epidemic Response Committee has been credited internationally as a significant constitutional check and balance on the executive's lawful albeit wide-reaching powers whilst we are under a state of emergency. Both sides of this House agree that in order to maintain public trust and confidence in our political institutions questions should be and must be put to those entrusted with the power to make decisions on our collective behalf. But as Professor Andrew Geddis one of New Zealand's leading constitutional academics observed today the issuance of a summons to public servants sets out an extremely worrying precedent to waive that legal privilege. He has said that it isn't for a parliamentary committee to determine whether or not legal privilege should be waived but that this is an issue for the courts. This is a disgraceful use of a coercive power. It undermines the independence of the Public Service and it also risks undermining the fundamental precipice of the separation of powers.However on a more positive note as we look towards kick-starting the economy and we turn to recovery from the disruption COVID-19 has done and continues to do to us as a nation I want to highlight the Government's response to rural and regional New Zealand during this pandemic. This is evident in the central government's response to invest $28 million to redeploy forestry workers in Te Tai Rāwhiti prior to the lockdown when it was a region that had already been impacted by the global impacts of COVID-19. I want to applaud both regional and iwi leadership in the response to COVID whether that be through iwi working alongside local authorities and the police to ensure whānau and community are fed and kept safe through voluntary running of community checkpoints and all of those in our regions that have spent hours preparing their Crown investment proposals—we thank you. We aren't out of the woods yet. We have a big task—SPEAKER: Order! The member's time has expired.