Watts SimonSIMON WATTS (National—North Shore): Mr Speaker thank you very much for the opportunity to speak on the COVID-19 Public Health Response (Validation of Managed Isolation and Quarantine Charges) Amendment Bill. National oppose this bill. I think my colleague Mr Chris Bishop articulated very clearly in terms of some of the concerns and issues that we have with this bill. Once again this morning I'm standing up talking about trying to fix problems of sloppily drafted legislation within about 20 minutes and I must say this is not what I want to be doing on a Friday morning in this House. We should be focusing on the priorities for this country which are about getting people into jobs and getting people out—Chris Bishop: You could be on the North Shore.SIMON WATTS: I could be in the North Shore and I could be focusing on my electorate but I'm not.Look managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) charging has been a travesty effectively operating on an honesty box system. I grew up on an orchard so I know a little bit about the honesty box. It has absolutely been a joke. I think it's in the region of $7 million that's currently outstanding in overdue fees for MIQ and now we're calling in the debt collectors. So while this bill works to clarify the procedure for Australian MIQ charges and admittedly that is minor—it's a technical change. But as we've heard this morning and from the Minister this was identified about three weeks ago. Nothing has been done in terms of providing us with any evidence or substantiation or background or consideration around costs and benefits around impact. We've had three weeks. The Government's had three weeks to do that and now they've decided under the guise of Budget urgency that they're going to slide this through push it in under the carpet and just basically take it off the radar—another example of error and mistake by this Government. I guess the aspect that concerns me most about this is my reading of that is that we've unlawfully taken about $3 million off Australia—$3 million taken off Australians unlawfully. What we're trying to now correct today in this House this morning because of our special relationship" is we're basically trying to retrospectively say "Well I'm sorry we unlawfully took $3 million off Australians and now we're going to change the law to say that that's OK." Well that's an absolute joke. Where was the review? Where was the advice from officials and the Ministers around this to look at some of this detail and just think well maybe taking money off people without any lawful basis to do that is not a good thing yeah? Maybe they might have thought about that. But no—no no they haven't. Six hundred to 650 people have been impacted by that. That's no small number. Three million dollars—that's not a small number yeah?Chris Bishop: We don't know exactly how many.SIMON WATTS: And of course—yeah. Well I'm interested—I can't wait for committee stage where we can actually start getting into that detail. What was the cost-benefit? What was the impact on the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act? We haven't had any of that stuff. I think the other context that I want to raise is how many times Mr Bishop did we ask for a little bit of clarity in the Health Committee about getting some of these guys in to explain some of this information? Chris Bishop: We'll be asking about this one.SIMON WATTS: Absolutely we have. Every single time—Chris Bishop: Add it to the list Mr Watts. Add it to a very long list of things we want to ask about.SIMON WATTS: I'll add it to my list. I'll tell you what it's a long list here. It's a long list I must say—it's a long list. Every single time in the Health Committee we asked to get some of these officials the Ministers to front on COVID-19 response what's the answer? We're voted down—we're voted down—a lack of transparency around the key issues that are facing this country week after week in that session. It's becoming a little bit repetitious. I stand up and I say "I want to propose a motion. I want to get these peoples in to explain the COVID-19 response. What's happening around MIQ? What's happening around all the issues that we've got in this country in that regard?" And we're getting absolutely no answers. We're getting stonewalled. I've even got the Greens supporting us on that call and along with ACT. So it's not just part of this House asking for transparency in regards to COVID-19. I just want to use the last 44 seconds just to cover off one final point and that is that too many of these MIQ breaches have resulted in impacts on our business community. Some of these legislative examples of errors and lack of drafting is just causing more compliance and impacting the confidence of our business community. We saw nothing yesterday in the Budget that helps our businesses and that is a real real disappointment. I'm really expecting a lot more from this Government. So far I've been underwhelmed. We oppose this amendment."