Wall LouisaLOUISA WALL (Chairperson of the Health Committee): Tēnā koe Madam Chair. It is my absolute pleasure as the chair of the Health Committee to speak on this Estimates debate for Vote Health. In doing so can I acknowledge Minister David Clark who actually presented to us on 24 June and obviously acknowledge that we have a new Minister of Health in the Hon Chris Hipkins. From that hearing I do want to highlight some points but before I do so I just want to note that my colleague Michael Woodhouse is in the Chamber today and I know he will be focusing on DHB deficits and also management of DHB assets. My colleague Matt Doocey has got a particular interest in mental health and addiction services and my colleague Liz Craig will talk about personal protective equipment. Given that I know those other topics will be spoken about I really have three distinct questions for the Minister in the chair the Hon Chris Hipkins. They are really to outline the overall response to COVID-19. I think there've been many initiatives that we through our Minister of Health and our Ministry of Health have engaged in to protect New Zealanders as we strive to eliminate COVID-19. So obviously the highlighting of those initiatives is incredibly important. Also I think it's pertinent given there was a disruption to business as usual—and particularly when we went into alert level 4 during the lockdown period—there has been an appropriation of $233 million in investment over three years for planned care to address issues such as waiting lists and waiting times. So the opportunity cost of our response in those initiatives I think it would be incredibly important for the Minister to highlight. Just finally from 10 April 2020 we transitioned to managed isolation for 14 days. Before that those New Zealanders returning home were self-isolating at home. I think it would be good for us to understand that transition period and in fact where we are today and I'd like to know the role of the Director-General of Health. Obviously Mr Bloomfield's become somebody that we all have high regard for—so understanding his responsibilities in that process. It would also be good to understand the importance of our public health services and our public health capacity in the implementation of our elimination strategy. And then finally within our response to COVID-19 it would be really good to know what our contribution to the global effort in the development of a COVID-19 vaccine is. I think we're all vested in understanding our contribution because we did go hard and early but the reality is—CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): Can I just remind the member that her role as chair of that select committee in the committee of the whole House at this stage is to present a report of the major findings of that committee. The questions are able to be asked but it's got to be non-political. When you start to getting into phrases like we went hard and early" that are contentious then the member is sort of straying from the role of the chair.LOUISA WALL: OK. Other than that everything I've highlighted initially was in our report. They were the headlines in our report.CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): You just need to refer to that. LOUISA WALL: I have. Everything I've referred to—other than the "go hard and early". Obviously that was my political contribution. But those are my questions to the Minister in the chair the Hon Chris Hipkins. Thank you."