Goldsmith PaulHon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): Thank you Mr Speaker. Look we are here back in Parliament because of the extraordinary circumstances of a renewal of the COVID-19 pandemic here in this country. We've seen our largest city going back into lockdown—and maybe the Deputy Prime Minister could carry out his conversation elsewhere rather than in the House—and we're trying our best—SPEAKER: Order! Order! The member will resume his seat. I will say to the Deputy Prime Minister that he's not allowed to use cellphones in that way in the House. I'll start the member's speech again. Hon David Bennett: He does it all the time.Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: That's very kind of you Mr Speaker. So we're here at this extraordinary time and many New Zealand families—SPEAKER: Order! Order! The member will resume his seat. David Bennett will stand withdraw and apologise. Hon David Bennett: I withdraw and apologise. Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: —where a lot of New Zealand families are under intense pressure. We know that in the sense that more than 70000 New Zealanders have joined the unemployment benefit queues since March and many more will have lost their jobs and haven't gone on benefits. The prediction is that many more tens of thousands of New Zealanders will lose their jobs over the next couple of months and that is largely a result of the economic crisis brought on by COVID.The worse thing that the Prime Minister said could happen would be for us to yo-yo back into lockdown. That's why as we recall back in April when she extended the original lockdown—those extra painful weeks—it was to ensure that we didn't go back into lockdown and yet here we are and now we see the consequences of that in terms of hundreds of millions of dollars being wiped off the economic face of the country and more jobs being lost. An estimate today from Auckland Council is that 250 jobs are being lost a day—who knows? We know that at least 40 percent of Auckland businesses are operating at less than half capacity right now according to the Auckland Chamber of Commerce—real pressure.So the obvious thing that people will be asking though given the consequences of going back into lockdown is that surely the Government would be absolutely focused on trying to do everything they can to reduce the risk of having to go back into lockdown. Yes nobody can be absolutely sure and there's no perfect risk-free environment. There's always going to be as we've seen people coming into this country from offshore with disease but the critical thing is how to contain it and make sure that it doesn't get out into the community.That's why nobody can understand why the Government has been so slow to ensure that those people who are working at the border and in the quarantine facilities are being tested regularly. We have this extraordinary situation still where the Prime Minister—our Prime Minister—insists that the Government thought that they were all being tested and that the Government had somehow been misled by officials and yet the Minister of Health has said that there was a clear policy decision by that very same Government not to make it compulsory that those people be tested. So you can't put those two things together and add them up. There is total inconsistency in the heart of the Government's policies and answers around that.So people are being let down by our Government taking far too long to get the people that are working in that area who were mixing and working alongside people who have the disease and who are going home to their community in the evening going to the local shops being with their family going to the local churches and potentially spreading the disease—it just stands to reason that you would test those people on a regular basis and would have invested in an effective tracing mechanism. I was down in Christchurch on the weekend using the app. I went to a store that has a different app—a different QR code that doesn't work with the Government's QR code. They still after months haven't sorted out the testing and tracing system. Then we see the Minister of Finance here today recognising that given this incursion and given this failure at the border and we're back at lockdown we're having to spend another $1.6 billion of borrowed money for further wage subsidies. Yes we have to do that—we have to support those businesses who were closed down because they can't trade—and yet today he couldn't give me simple answers to real confusion within the business community about how the wage subsidy works. On the Government website they say that yes you can get the wage subsidy and you can pay your employees and if you can't pay your employees the full salary because you're not trading well you can pay them the wage subsidy rate which is $580-odd but that happens to be less than the minimum wage. Then we've the Employment Relations Authority saying Well hang on. That's not right. You need to pay"—Hon Andrew Little: Not what they said—not what they said. Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: —"the minimum wage." That's what they said. In that particular instance they said that if the 80 percent of salary is less than the minimum wage you need to pay the minimum wage and you have to make that up. That's the case and who knows whether it will be clarified by the Employment Court? But the real question is that there are many businesses out here now just with another piece of uncertainty that they are having to face. Are they going to have to make those back payments? When are we going to go back into lockdown? When are we going to know whether a greengrocer or a butcher can trade? Am I going to have to wait 4½ hours to get my goods over the border in Auckland?Anybody would have expected that a Government which stands up—the Minister of Health stands up on his hind legs in this Government and says "We have prepared and planned for this." and yet everybody looks around and sees there has been very little preparation and very little planning for this state."