6. Question No. 6—Economic DevelopmentHon JUDITH COLLINS (National—Papakura) to the Minister for Economic DevelopmentQuestion No. 6—Economic Development6. Hon JUDITH COLLINS (National—Papakura) to the Minister for Economic Development: What special powers if any did Cabinet grant him that enabled him to allow 56 film workers from Los Angeles into New Zealand?Hon PHIL TWYFORD (Minister for Economic Development): Cabinet agreed to border restrictions on 19 March preventing all entry into New Zealand with some specific exemptions. Those exemptions included essential workers as agreed on a case-by-case basis by the COVID Cabinet Committee. Then as an interim measure on 21 April Ministers with power to act on COVID-19 matters delegated further decision-making for agreeing workers as essential workers for the purpose of exemptions to border restrictions to the Minister for Economic Development and the relevant portfolio Minister for each specific application.Hon Judith Collins: How many times has he exercised his powers to grant border exemptions on economic grounds?Hon PHIL TWYFORD: I have now signed off 28 applications representing 201 other essential workers.Hon Judith Collins: When he is granting border exemptions to allow people to come into New Zealand what isolation and physical distancing is he requiring to be in place?Hon PHIL TWYFORD: All of the people who come into the country through the exemptions policy are required to undergo a two-week supervised isolation or quarantine. I should say that 2354 border exemptions have been granted to date; 1906 of these have been for families or on humanitarian grounds—so the ones that are coming in as essential workers are less than 10 percent of that total.Hon Judith Collins: What does he say then to the worried guests of the QT Museum Hotel who were reportedly exposed to a group of Avatar workers in the hotel reception who were not practising physical or social distancing despite having just arrived from the country with the world's highest number of active COVID-19 cases?Hon PHIL TWYFORD: Well I guess the first point to make is that people coming into the country through the border exemptions regime are not screened on the basis of what country they're coming from but all of them are required to undergo two weeks of enforced quarantine supervised by officials from the Ministry of Health. Everybody coming into the country is informed and instructed that they have to comply with all of the public health guidelines including physical distancing. Ministry of Health personnel are responsible for overseeing the quarantine arrangements when people come into the country under these exemptions and I would expect that they would be informing those people that they are required to comply.Hon Judith Collins: Then how can this supervision have been undertaken if there was a group of Avatar workers in the hotel reception at the QT Museum Hotel who were not practising social distancing but were actually mingling around guests?Hon PHIL TWYFORD: If the member has got a specific case that she wants to take up I would suggest that she takes it up with the Minister of Health who is responsible for quarantine arrangements for anybody entering New Zealand.