Seymour David; Mallard TrevorDAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Thank you very much Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of ACT in support of ratifying these orders that have been reported back from the mighty Regulations Review Committee. I want to offer my congratulations to Chris Bishop for his second term or tour of duty as he might call it on the Regulations Review Committee. People joke about it being the highest of the high. I actually believe that we don't spend enough time on regulatory responsibility in New Zealand politics. It's an extremely important committee and I know that our member on that committee Toni Severin has found it to be extremely engaging and important work.How brave are the Green Party? Yesterday being here was life-threatening; today Jan Logie just spent the first minute of her speech talking about how dangerous it is to speak here. I will return very shortly to the topic but you have to say the difference between Logie and logic may only be one letter but isn't it a vast gulf when it comes to the quality of speeches?The ACT Party's very happy to support these three orders. The second two are the most perfunctory I think; really technical matters of what exactly is a quarantine-free travel (QFT) person ensuring that they're properly defined and giving exemptions for certain people to be able to be exempt from quarantine or from managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) those people being in the case of consular corps diplomats and some military people so that New Zealand can maintain its external links. I think those are all good and well. Similarly the requirement for vaccinations for certain essential workers we support that because it is just so critical. We understand there's a range of issues around personal choice some people are sceptical about vaccination and hesitant to get them but we also know that from the point of view of New Zealand—as I said earlier I fear for our small country—we need to be able to maintain relative safety. We don't want people to die from this virus. For people that say it's not dangerous you only have to look at Scotland: 8000 more deaths than usual in the last 18 months. So don't worry about whether we're properly diagnosing them; 8000 more people than expected died in Scotland whose population similar to New Zealand is 5.4 million.We also need to stop the hospitals from being overwhelmed. New Zealand's hospitals are already overwhelmed. They cannot support many more patients from COVID. That's why we support this idea that people who are right at the front line where COVID may come into New Zealand should be vaccinated because we know that it is the most significant protection we have at the moment from people getting badly infected passing it on and ultimately people being hospitalised or dying.So that's all well and good but I think if this House is going to be asked to ratify these kinds of powers then we should also be asking the Government what it's doing to follow through. You know I was astonished to read I think it was 9 August not so long ago about three or four weeks ago that after this order was put in place on 30 April—so May June July 9 August—about 14 weeks passed and still 60 percent of border workers in the Bay of Plenty at the Port of Tauranga not vaccinated 1500 border workers in total still not vaccinated. It's one thing to pass these orders and make these laws but we need a Government that can actually deliver and the fact of the matter is the Prime Minister said Look it's going to be mandatory—you know no ifs no buts." in April and then months later still nothing had happened. We actually need if we're going to pass orders like this an executive Government that is prepared to implement them. Otherwise there's not a lot of point in passing such laws or orders. I just say to the Government we know that you've had trouble with supply but you've got to do better at vaccine delivery. If you can't vaccinate the vectors the people at the front line on the border then it's not clear what the purpose of some of these rules are.I want to echo a point that Chris Bishop raised that I think is extremely important. I don't believe in vaccine mandates in the sense of forcing a person to be vaccinated unconditionally but it is also true that a lot of people in our society are going to find conflicts of rights over vaccination and I think in future orders we are going to have to consider what sorts of rights people have to stipulate vaccination not that another person must be vaccinated unconditionally but that they will only transact with a person if that person is vaccinated. This is very important. It's not a question of being mandatory; it's a question of being able to lay claim to the right to only interact with vaccinated people in certain contexts.I'll give you an example as a local MP that Mr Speaker I'm sure will be familiar to you. During the measles outbreak last year I had a principal get in touch and say "Look you're my local MP I need your help. I've got students at my school who refuse to be vaccinated for measles. I've got other students who for medical reasons cannot be vaccinated for measles. Under the Health and Safety at Work Act I'm a person conducting a business or undertaking (PCBU). If I let those people who won't come to school and potentially infect those who can't what is my liability and should I have the right to insist that if students want to come on to the premise that I as a PCBU am responsible for they be vaccinated?" We've already had a rehearsal of that and there are no doubt going to be many further clashes of rights as it goes on.I just want to go through a recent article in The New York Times—this is becoming very real—"Goldman Sachs: … requiring employees to be fully vaccinated to enter its U.S. offices starting … Sept. 7. JPMorgan … encouraging … Bank of America: … only allowing vaccinated employees to return to the office. … Wells Fargo: … encouraging but … not announced a mandate. … Google said in July … it would require employees who returned to the company's offices to be vaccinated against the coronavirus. … Apple: … encouraging. Amazon: The retail giant told its corporate employees … they did not need to return to their offices … pushing back [the] deadline … Microsoft … would require proof of vaccination … Airbnb said … it would not ask employees to return to the office … [in order] to provide greater clarity".We could go down all of these blue chip American companies that'll be familiar to just about every New Zealander that are grappling with this issue and no doubt firms in New Zealand from your fish and chip shop up to your large corporate on the Auckland waterfront are going to have to grapple with those same issues. So I believe that that is a debate that needs to happen in an open and respectful way. This order is in a way a prelude to it but the future debate is going to be far more sophisticated than the Government simply saying all people in a certain place must be for public health reasons. It will be about managing conflicts of rights.So we certainly support these orders. I think they're the right thing to do for the reasons I've outlined but I also believe that it is very important that in future or actually in the very near future because preparedness has been a theme recently—I say while the Minister for COVID-19 Response is sitting here—this Government is actually preparing to think about these issues that are emerging overseas and need to be dealt with here. Thank you Mr Speaker.Motion agreed to.SPEAKER: In accordance with a determination of the Business Committee the House stands adjourned until 2 p.m. tomorrow.The House adjourned at 4.04 p.m."