Seymour DavidDAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): I move That the House take note of a matter of urgent public importance.There are countries in the world that are more isolated than New Zealand. There are countries in the world that have a more spread-out and younger population than New Zealand. There are countries in the world that have a more civil society and a higher standard of living and healthcare. But there is no country on Earth that went into the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 and now 2021—no country that entered this saga with the suite of natural advantages that New Zealand enjoys. And it's important to start any debate on our current circumstances by acknowledging those facts.We have had in the run-up to this outbreak and this restriction on New Zealanders' freedoms a Government that has been high on self-congratulation. Even while the city of Auckland was locked down in level 3 the rest of the country operating at level 2 the Government triumphantly announced that it had just landed enough vaccine for 30000 people. That's enough for 0.6 percent of the team of 5 million. That is the kind of activity that we get from this Government. No matter how bad the facts are the comms the spin and the self-congratulation is available in—I think the word they like to use is an abundance. The alternative was continuous improvement. And continuous improvement adding to our great natural advantages opposing COVID-19 adding real sophistication to our defences our technology and our policies—that could have saved some great costs. And we need to acknowledge what those costs are to New Zealanders particularly in my home city of Auckland but actually every New Zealander who is integrated into the New Zealand economy.We have people who have run their businesses through the first lockdown of last April who were shocked and disappointed but rolled up their sleeves and got through the second lockdown of August and they said We can't take another one. We've used up our reserves of capital in every sense of the word. If they do it to us again if our Valentine's Day meals get cancelled then this hospo business is on the ropes and potentially going broke."—leaving jobs and leaving sometimes lifetime dreams of people who built those companies destitute. That is the cost economically but it's not just that. We know people who are scheduled to have healthcare who have seen what previous lockdowns meant—for example after the first lockdown there were 400 women in New Zealand statistically who did not know they had breast cancer. We could make similar arguments for prostate cancer. We can make similar arguments about people who were separated from seeing their first child born or worse separated from their partner miscarrying because lockdowns have enormous effects on human welfare other than the effects of COVID-19.Then there's education. I just presented awards to the International Baccalaureate scholars this weekend. What an extraordinary group of children who managed to make it through with stoicism even though they were studying right up to the last moment without knowing if their examinations would go ahead. These are the costs that New Zealanders face when there is a lockdown. But actually the facts are it is necessary to have one if the rest of the Government's defences are as weak as what we have at the moment.The problem is that instead of continuous improvement we have sat still. A sitting duck praying for luck while the Government congratulated itself for months on end.Hon Grant Robertson: Absolute nonsense.DAVID SEYMOUR: And somebody who doubts that—I hear "Absolute nonsense" from Grant Robertson. Well Grant Robertson might like to stand up and take a call and perhaps he could explain. Of the complaints that were found in the Simpson-Roche report how many of them are actually being fixed? Because as far as anybody can tell nothing has changed. And here's the other problem with this Government's response: New Zealanders don't mind being treated like adults. You know we can handle adversity so long as the facts are put before us and we can choose for ourselves. But what did this Government do with the Simpson-Roche report? Did it put it out and accept: we have made some mistakes and we are going to get better and we want all of you team of 5 million to feel like and be treated like adults so that we can actually do this better together. Is that what they did? Does anybody know? I can tell you what happened. Actually they released the Simpson-Roche report the damning report that said every stakeholder found it difficult to work with the Ministry of Health that said there was confusion and inconsistent rules at the border the report that said almost nothing was going right after the initial battle for eradication of COVID. That report was released on 18 December. It was released on a Friday afternoon before Christmas. Why? They'd had it since 28 September and they waited almost two months till 18 December. The cynicism of dumping a critically important report about this country's defences against COVID-19 is breathtaking. It should've been released.Well the good news is that there is a better way. This country can maintain elimination. New Zealanders can be safe from COVID-19. New Zealanders can continue to look after their economic and healthcare and educational welfare as we battle this disease if only the Government changes up the way it operates. And what the ACT Party has said is that first of all when someone else is doing better than you round the world what we should do is ask why that is and what can we learn from them. And the numbers are simple. Taiwan has had 12 times fewer deaths per capita than New Zealand despite being an island 150 kilometres off the coast of China where it all started despite people living on top of each other—23 million people on an island about the size of the North Island—despite all that they've had 12 times fewer deaths than us. And the ACT Party's been saying since last August that New Zealand should be looking to adopt five principles from Taiwan so that we can maintain elimination get our way of life back and have no more lockdowns.And the first one comes from the simple observation that how you organise is how you execute. The Ministry of Health has some fine people and a very charismatic leader but the facts are they are a policy shop completely unable to organise the response to a pandemic. In order to respond to a pandemic many things have to be done. Clear rules of the game have to be made new technologies have to be evaluated and adopted logistics have to be carried out to get personal protective equipment (PPE) to the right place at the right time—and wasn't that a fiasco—far out what a fiasco we had with PPE during the lockdown. The Ministry of Health is singularly unable to do that. Last August ACT came out and said we should follow Taiwan's example—that they learnt from fighting severe acute respiratory syndrome in 2009 by the way—and actually have an epidemic response unit that is multidisciplinary public and private sector. Little did ACT know that only a few weeks later the Simpson-Roche report would come out and make exactly the same recommendation. But what has happened with this Government's organisation? Nothing. We have been a sitting duck praying for luck unwilling or unable to improve and sophisticate our defences against this virus so that people can get on with protecting their lives their healthcare their education and their livelihoods with no more lockdowns while keeping eradication.After having an epidemic response unit the second thing we said is the Government should be a referee not a player in the game. This Government obsessively tries to do everything itself. It is unwilling to step back and make clear rules of the game in order that the private sector can get on with it. We saw examples of this during the first lockdown. The Government failed to even make the law so the lockdown was legal—SPEAKER: Order! I'm just going to interrupt the member now sort of less for the member but more to make the point that I'll be making to members afterwards. This is a debate about a specific matter of public importance and that was a decision that the Government's made and that is to be the focus of the debate and the member is to tie his responses or his speech back into that. And it's a signal to other members that this is not a general debate about COVID.DAVID SEYMOUR: Well thank you Mr Speaker and I'm sure you'll appreciate that I was using examples that form a theme in this Government's response before tying them to a more recent example.The Government failed to make the rules correctly for the first lockdown. The separation between butchers bakers and greengrocers on the one hand and dairies and supermarkets on the other side never made sense but it also never made sense to be testing some but not other people who were exposed to risk at the border and that appears based on the evidence we have right now to be very much the reason that we are in our current difficulty putting those costs on to New Zealanders. So we said we have to get the Government focused on being a good rule maker rather than trying to do everything itself.And the third thing we said is that those rules should be related to risk. Again if the Government was to ask itself what risks are being taken people working at the border—whether they're airside or just work in a room that airside people come and go from—would've been an obvious example of somebody to test if the Government was making its policies proportional to risk but they didn't and here we are. Once again the Government has spent a huge amount of effort quarantining everybody—people from Western Australia and Samoa where there's been no COVID for months and months and months; I think WA may have had one case in the last seven months. Those people were quarantined were in greater danger of catching it than being saved by it by being put in quarantine. And yet because they tried to quarantine everybody they haven't been able to focus on the real risks and here we are.But we also said number four that we need to have a technology-driven response; the Government needs to augment its response with better technology. And haven't we heard that over the last 48 hours with the Government's reluctance to use saliva testing. The Government that says it follows the science is seriously trying to conduct an experiment which could only be to see if New Zealanders' spit is different from spit of people in other countries because it can't be what the Prime Minister said at question time. She tried to argue that it's different in New Zealand because we don't have the same concentration of COVID so saliva surveillance testing won't work. Well she should tell that to New South Wales or Singapore or Taiwan where they use it. It doesn't seem to be a problem there. If we're serious about following the science we need to stop blindly accepting the advice in Cabinet of the Ministry of Health and actually look to the evidence because the evidence is saliva testing around the world is just as accurate as putting things up people's nostrils which they don't particularly enjoy.The final principle that we advanced was that there should be a commitment to continuous improvement. Never rest always look for ways to strengthen our defence so that we can do better. The fact is that it's very difficult to see—and I hope the members can get up and explain it but I don't think they will—what is different in New Zealand's fundamental response or defence against COVID-19 than say six months ago. It's very difficult to see what of the Simpson-Roche report has seriously been implemented that would have prevented this outbreak. It would seem that nothing has.So I think it's important that the House take note of this matter of urgent public importance. The costs to education healthcare and livelihoods of New Zealanders are severe and they have occurred against a backdrop where the New Zealand Government had the easiest job fighting COVID-19 of any Government in the world and yet has managed to let it through now for a third time. And we need to demand better not to beat up on the Government or criticise them but to adopt a culture of getting better so that New Zealanders do not have to suffer from the horror of COVID or the cost of the restrictions designed to prevent it. Thank you Mr Speaker."