Mooney Joseph; Rurawhe AdrianJOSEPH MOONEY (National—Southland): I rise on behalf of the National Party to oppose this bill. The history of this bill is worth repeating to some degree in the brief time that will take. It was introduced with less than 24 hours' notice to Parliament on 28 September and had its first reading the next day on 29 September under urgency. The National Party I'm glad to say—Mr Chris Bishop in particular—raised a critical point about the Local Electoral Act pointing out that it was going to give the Government the ability to roll over the local elections for the better part of two years. We heard a description from Chris Hipkins yesterday about why they had done that. He said that at the time a couple of months ago there was an elimination strategy and the Government needed to have that power. But the National Party raised this issue and one thing I can give the Government credit for is that they scrapped it. They didn't give us a good reason for why they scrapped it; they just said that things were different to a couple of months ago. Well yes things are different. Auckland's been in lockdown for 12 weeks. Local businesses haven't been able to operate for 12 weeks. People have been stuck at home. The South Island has been at level 2. National Party members from the South Island wrote to the Government and asked for the rationale and the reasoning behind it.Maureen Pugh: Got an answer?JOSEPH MOONEY: We haven't. Maureen Pugh says Have we got an answer?" The answer is no we have not had an answer. The Government has been obfuscating and you might ask the question why. That's a very good question—a very good question—that I think we may have got some illumination from the media yesterday who ran a story saying that the Government only began planning for the Delta outbreak in late July just weeks before the virus escaped managed isolation and quarantine in August. So what was the Government doing all this time? It's not as if it was a surprise that Delta was circulating around the world; in fact we'd been given warning in June. A gentleman from Sydney had come to Wellington spent the weekend having a lovely time in Wellington going to some great cafes I understand and other places and as a result Wellington was locked down and it went into level 2. So the Government had fair warning but it wasn't until the next month—late July—that the Government started planning and this goes to this COVID-19 Response (Management Measures) Legislation Bill which is a misnomer because the COVID-19 response was completely lacking in respect of Delta from this Government. That's why they rushed through a change to delay the local body elections despite them being postal voting and then had to get rid of it yesterday. Well it's not in the bill that we're voting on this afternoon. It just shows the haphazard nature that the Government has taken and the lack of planning that the Government has had in respect of this bill in respect of planning for Delta and in respect of managing Delta. They're just making it up as they go along. It's not good enough and it was illustrative in the Supplementary Order Paper which was as big as the bill. I looked through what we're looking at this afternoon to vote on and it's filled with zigzags—crossed out. It's just a huge amount that's been crossed out.So the Government rushed in a change on 28 September then they've gone and rushed this through under urgency and then rushed it through again yesterday evening and today in committee stage and haven't answered a number of significant important questions. We are now voting on a bill that is substantially different from what was initially proposed and there hasn't been a good reason given for why that is.This is emblematic of other things that the Government is doing like with the three waters. I'm sure members opposite have had a number of emails coming into their inboxes from unhappy constituents who are asking "What on earth is the Government doing?" It's just rushing stuff through without consulting with its communities properly. The Government needs to take a step back and actually think about listening to its electorate. There's another matter in this bill the Criminal Procedure Act. I asked Minister Kris Faafoi about the jury backlogs that are building in the Waikato and Auckland districts and he couldn't give me those numbers. I mean that's a pretty important thing. I asked one of my colleagues and friends in Auckland and he said "Well look the trials are being put out to 2023 now yet none of them can go ahead under level 3 so who knows how long that's going to take?" I would suggest that the Minister probably needs to get that information and maybe we'll have some better law coming before the House than this bill that we have before us this afternoon.DEPUTY SPEAKER: Before I call Greg O'Connor is this part of a split call?Dr Duncan Webb: No. DEPUTY SPEAKER: OK. Greg O'Connor—10 minutes."