Bishop ChrisCHRIS BISHOP (National): Can I start where the Minister for COVID-19 Response ended which is congratulating you sir on your ascension to this august role. It's great to see you with a grin on your face sir chairing this session.I thank the Minister for COVID-19 Response for the exchange we've just had and beg the House's indulgence for an interjection but it was a genuinely interesting question which is what do we do as a Parliament with these orders that the court has essentially ruled as inconsistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and essentially ruled unlawful. We've just heard from the Minister that that has happened but also he didn't want to put the House into a position where we were confirming orders that the court has essentially ruled unlawful. I think that was the right decision and so those orders now lapse and it'll be interesting to see what the Government does with those orders and with the issue of mandates for the Police and Defence Force generally.I've read the Yardley judgment Yardley v Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety quite carefully and some people have got a little bit carried away and said that it sort of means the end of vaccine mandates generally. That's not quite my reading of the judgment. It's actually quite a narrowly tailored judgment in relation to section 11AB of the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act that we passed an amendment to under urgency in the latter quarter of last year. I actually raised this in the debate—and if you check the Hansard you'll find this. I raised this issue of the confusion between section 9 of the Act which allows the Minister to make vaccination mandate orders in relation to public health and the amendment that came in which allows the Minister under section 11AB of the Act to make vaccination mandate orders when it's in the public interest. That is actually what's at the heart of the Yardley judgment and something that the Parliament is going to have to grapple with because what happened in the Yardley case is that the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety made a mandate order in relation to the Police and Defence not on the grounds that it was justified on public health grounds but that it was justified on the grounds of maintaining public confidence in the Police and the Defence Force and essentially the continuity of service for those two particular forces.What His Honour Justice Cooke found is that that argument or that ground that the Government put forward was not made out—that because you were dealing with such a small number of people in relation to vaccination who hadn't been vaccinated then there was no real impact on the continuity of service. Interestingly and this is where it is true to say I believe the judgment will have an impact on vaccination mandates more generally is the judge's comments made over the dicta in relation to transmissibility of COVID particularly the Omicron variant and whether or not that has an impact on vaccination. The judge made two particular comments that I think are interesting and that I think we need to bear in mind as we have the debate around mandates. The first is the public health advice was that no further mandates were necessary. In other words the Police and Defence Force mandate that the Government imposed was not necessary and the existing mandates that were in place prior to the Police and Defence Force mandate made by the Minister for Workplace Relations were not necessary. That is interesting—that is interesting. The second point is the judge made very careful comments obiter dicta in relation to the impact of Omicron on vaccination and how that applies in terms of limiting transmission. Because it's very clear I think to most members of the House now that there's been a sea change in our COVID response because of Omicron. Under Delta—David Seymour: The Government's still working it out.CHRIS BISHOP: Well I'm not sure if that's actually true. I think they're starting to get their head around it. Under Delta it was very clear that vaccination made a big impact on transmission. Scientific evidence is very clear on that. Under Delta and the previous strains of COVID vaccination made a big difference. It limited the transmission. So if you had 100 vaccinated people in a room the chance that they would spread COVID amongst themselves was very very small indeed; very low—not zero but very low. Omicron has changed the game. It busts through vaccination it busts through double vaccination it busts through booster vaccination and actually the vast number of people the vast bulk of people who are getting COVID—almost 20000 today 15000 yesterday; you know it was 3000 last week or whatever it was—are vaccinated. They are fully vaccinated and indeed they are boosted. So that raises significant questions for the Parliament as to the utility of firstly vaccine mandates and secondly the issue of vaccine passes. I want to make it very clear for the House that we worry on this side of the House around whether or not there is any utility of vaccine mandates and vaccine passes any more. As the judge comments in the Yardley decision it is worth bearing in mind that mandates impose on rights. I think possibly in the last year or so we have worked out that we've been too quick to impose on rights. It's been interesting that the Attorney-General has not really ventilated and had a discussion publicly at least about the intrusion on rights that mandates have on individuals. There are two particular rights—and again these are covered in the Yardley judgment—that are intruded upon. One is the right to be free from medical treatment or the right to choose your own medical treatment and the second is of course freedom of religion which is touched upon as well. So it's very clear—I think everyone would agree—that vaccine mandates intrude upon individual rights and freedoms. So the question is whether or not the intrusion on those rights is justified. Now our view in the National Party was that we would tolerate those intrusions on those rights for a temporary length of time—for a small length of time—while we were battling COVID because the science at least six months ago was very clear that vaccination made a big difference in terms of the spread of the virus the spread of the illness and of course the wider impact that that spread has not just on individuals but more actually on the public health system and our wider society. It made a difference to limit the spread of COVID and generally we've done a pretty good job of doing that in New Zealand. So our view was they were justified as a temporary measure but times have changed. Omicron has changed the game. The transmission benefits of vaccination are no longer anywhere near what they were and because of that the rights calculus—the careful balancing of whether or not something is a justified intrusion on a right—has therefore changed. And actually that is what His Honour Justice Cooke made comments about in the Yardley judgment. So that's why it is right that the Minister is taking time to consider the impact of that judgment when it comes to vaccine mandates.But we should not underestimate the impact that mandates are having on individuals out there. I'm not just talking about the group of protesters on the forecourt—they are at the hard edge of people who have been impacted by vaccine mandates—but right throughout the country there have been people who have found themselves shut off from their local sports club shut off from their local golf club—not allowed to even play a round of golf outside. I think worldwide there's one case of transmission of COVID outside but yet the local golf club has banned him from participating. The thing that really gets me is young kids: 13-year-olds who can go to a physical education class and participate with unvaccinated 13-year-olds but can't go to a rugby practice after school—can't go to rugby practice because it's not involved in school sport. It's a private school sport—Hon Scott Simpson: Or swimming club. CHRIS BISHOP: Or swimming club—as my friend and colleague the Hon Scott Simpson says kids going to swimming lessons in outdoor pools. What is the risk of a 13-year-old contracting COVID outside? It's not zero but it may as well be zero. Of course you've got to weigh that up against the impact of banning a 13- or 14-year-old from participating in sport and keeping them active fit and healthy. All of those things have fallen by the wayside. So my view and National's view is we've got the balance wrong and we do need to start to unwind the mandates. We do need to start to unwind the vaccine pass restrictions that I haven't had time to cover. The sooner they are gone once we're through the peak of the Omicron outbreak and then we can start getting back to normal life the better.