SpeechHon RON MARK (Minister of Defence): Thank you Mr Speaker. Well what can I say? I'm quite astonished and gobsmacked. I listened to that member's earlier speech and it was characterised by reason gratitude even lauded and applauded officials and the Government for the act that it had taken in supporting that legislation. Now we have this bill before the House which is the COVID-19 Public Health Response Bill—a bill which I and my party New Zealand First believe is absolutely essential if we're to get through stage 2 and back to normality as quickly as we possibly can whilst minimising a spike in infections and a re-emergence of COVID-19.If one is truly as concerned as that member is about the state of the economy jobs people who stand to lose their jobs or who already have lost their jobs businesses—and I noticed a lot of rhetoric of late; people talking up their great concern for small business. I didn't actually see it in their time in Government. I saw a greater devotion and interest to large corporate businesses like Skycity with all of their pokie machines like Chinese donors of large amounts of money. I saw a lot of focus on big corporates but I never once heard the type of rhetoric that I'm now hearing emanating from the Leader of the Opposition about what I would cynically even characterise as belated concern for small business—nine years belated.I have to say also—and I do need to address these points because they were made in that member's comments—he's moved in his own words from commendation to condemnation. I get that; that's the job of the Opposition to call it as they see it. But then he went on to exemplify his criticism of the Prime Minister and this Government with some rather caustic comments about a former Prime Minister of the National Party. In fact the Prime Minister who's most revered as being a patriot a nationalist a strong-minded firm leader who knew what he stood for—Brett Hudson: Here we go. New Zealand First is defending the memory of Rob Muldoon.Hon RON MARK: —knew what his party stood for was brave no wilting flower no lily. A man—and Brett Hudson I'm just astonished. I have no doubt that Mr Hudson will later on take Mr Woodhouse aside and give him a bit of country language actually about Robbie Muldoon and what a hero he was to many many National Party people. In fact I voted for Rob Muldoon. As a soldier I admired his leadership I admired his strength and courage and I admired the fact that he could make hard calls regardless as to whether or not everybody agreed with them he made—Hon Michael Woodhouse: Yeah but he didn't ride roughshod over the parliamentary process.Hon RON MARK: He didn't ride roughshod? Well Mr Woodhouse that's completely contrary to what your Hansard records you as saying. So what we are seeing right now played out in the House is the confusion that the Opposition's been displaying for the last eight weeks—absolute total confusion. The question really is where can they make traction in the hearts in the minds of the public on a 21-26 percent poll? That's the real challenge that's facing them. Unfortunately it's manifesting itself in this ridiculous debate that we're all being subjected to right now and are no doubt going to be subjected to for a number of hours until this very worthwhile very necessary piece of legislation is passed which I have to remind people has a sunset clause in it.Now extraordinary times—I used to say it to young men that I was mentoring young women both when I was in the military and when I was operational when I was running a small business employing staff. Sometimes life has a habit of smacking you in the face with something totally unexpected that one is not prepared for. One might have—in the late hours of the night when philosophising and debating and discussing—talked about a pandemic and what the effect might be on a country on a region of the globe maybe even on the planet itself but no one takes these conversations seriously at the time and then it arrives. I can simply say this: extraordinary times require extraordinary measures to counter them. I don't think there's any disagreement in the House on that.The question is how far does one go and to keep oneself aware and alert to the fact that these measures have a finite period of time and then we must get back to normality. But if we are to do the things that Mr Woodhouse wants: go to the pub—he wants to go to the pub. He wants to have a bit of a knees-up at home and have his mates around—that came out; it's in the Hansard. Blame it on the daughter blame it on the rest of the whānau but Mr Woodhouse wants to go to the pub—he's made that very clear. We all probably want to get back to sort of normality and socialising with our friends and our mates and our communities. We most definitely want to be back in our rugby clubs back with the kids at Saturday morning footy and netball—we want to be doing those things—but the surest way of ensuring that we can't or that we end up going back into lockdown at stage 3 or stage 4 is to be rash and to not factor in those things that we need to do to ensure that the gains we have made this far are cemented down and not lost. And then people can go to the pub until whenever.I'm one of those people who worries about the next thing to hit us and I guess with a security head on and I'm pretty sure Gerry Brownlee—given he's probably the most effective Minister of Defence that that party's had over its nine years in tender—thinks about these things as well: the What are you going to do next time?" But right now we're faced with the situation we face. Police do not have the powers and we've deduced that we need to strengthen those powers—the enforcement powers—so that they can do the sorts of things that they need to do: so that they can enter premises to direct people to stop activities.I get a little confused when I hear people complaining that the Government's not done enough to stop an upsurge in parties over the last weekend. Well this bill when we get down to level 2 will ensure that the police can do something about that because no one wants those breaches to go unchallenged not dealt with—that is very clear. And yes there are some extraordinary powers in there: that they can enter a private dwelling house without a warrant but that's only if they have reasonable grounds to believe that the people have gathered there in contravention of the order and entry is necessary to give a direction to cease that activity. I would like to think that a party that's setting itself up to run a very strong law and order campaign in September would agree with that; would back the police as they've said they would; would agree that the police in these circumstances need the power to act and bring to an end illegal gatherings or gatherings that are likely to jeopardise the health the safety the wellbeing of their own whānau of their own community of their own neighbourhood and there from that the nation's as a whole.I think that addressing the questions from Mr Woodhouse about the Government doesn't trust the people—holy heck. I have sat in Cabinet I have spent Sundays reading masses of Cabinet papers where provisions have been put in place to assist small businesses and the commercial sector in a way that is historic—we've never seen anything like this. I mean if I think about Rob Muldoon as being a leader that Mr Woodhouse doesn't like from the National Party I do wonder about Ruth Richardson because Ruth Richardson's approach to harsh times was completely the opposite: slash and burn and bury the economy.This Government's chosen not to follow that pathway and it's been a high-trust model that's been leaned on at every turn with money being made available for employers that they could draw down on immediately to pay wages of their staff. We actually hear that some of them have simply used that money to pay redundancies. Well we've always known—and I know that our Government and the Cabinet and Prime Minister have always said—this is a high-trust model. We're facing extraordinary times. We needed to act with speed. We needed to get money into the hands of private business owners employers to help address what was coming and we're doing that again with even more assistance to small business. We are where we are right now looking to go to level 2 because the public of New Zealand in the main—in the overwhelming majority—have responded well.Of course like every family we have our one or two don't we and we've got to deal with that. We have to live with it; we've got to deal with it. This piece of legislation will help us deal with those miscreants. But in the main we are in the position now because we have trusted the people and they have done what we always knew they would do: they've responded magnificently. But do we want to burn up the gains? Do we want to find ourselves going back into level 3? Well that's an Opposition call. Fortunately they're not on the Government benches so they don't get to make that final decision. Kia ora."