Party leader calls for quicker vaccinations
National Party leader Judith Collins has doubled down on calls for accelerated vaccination of border workers and says the latest raised alert levels has delivered a ‘‘devastating blow’’ to New Zealanders.
She called for the Government to move swiftly to find the source of the latest community outbreak – the faster-spreading UK variant – and vaccinate border workers ‘‘as a matter of urgency’’. The Government is currently planning to start vaccinating border workers from Febru- ary 20. ‘‘I feel for the people who have already sacrificed their livelihoods, their jobs and their businesses to keep Covid-19 out.’’
Collins said people would be anxious after the announcement on Sunday that members of an Auckland family had contracted the virus.
Collins said her party had called for an accelerated roll-out of vaccinations for border workers and frontline staff since January. ‘‘Because we were acutely aware of the economic and social damage a third lockdown could cause.’’
Another border failure would be ‘‘unacceptable’’, she said.
‘‘The Government’s shortcomings in the area have been shown up time and time again.’’
ACT Party leader David Seymour said he made a request overnight to Parliament’s business committee to restart the epidemic response committee – set up by Parliament to scrutinise the Government and its actions during the 2020 lockdown. Seymour said the request was considered by the committee yesterday morning ‘‘and they said no’’. ‘‘Last time we had it, it was very valuable ... one of its features was that it had an Opposition majority, so the selection of guests, lines of questioning and so on, actually reflected what the Parliament thought.’’ Seymour said the latest cases ‘‘potentially exposed further holes in our border testing regime which need to be plugged as soon as possible’’.
‘‘These cases also suggest the border testing order may need to be amended to ensure Covid-19 tests are not missed if workers are on annual leave.’’
Meanwhile Green MPs in Auckland, Marama Davidson, Chloe Swarbrick and Golriz Ghahraman will remain there for the next 72 hours. Davidson said Green MPs Jan Logie and Elizabeth Kerekere, who attended Auckland’s Big Gay Out, returned home before the lockdown levels were announced. They would selfisolate at home for the next 72 hours, Davidson said.
Parliament has cut its numbers in half to fit within level 2 coronavirus guidelines.
Parliament’s business committee met yesterday to decide on the shape of Parliament at alert level 2. The number of members in the debating chamber has been roughly halved, with caucuses agreeing to keep the number of MPs in the chamber to half of their full caucus size. To aid that, parties have an unlimited number of proxy votes.
Proxy votes are used by parties so that not every MP has to be present in the chamber for every vote. Parliament limits proxy votes, to ensure a minimum number of MPs show up for debates.
The changes mean that parties can cast votes for every member of their caucus, regardless of whether they are present in Parliament or not. This is important as party leaders have advised Auckland MPs to stay there. Unlimited proxies means that there’s no pressure on parties to call their MPs to Wellington for fear of losing a vote.
The public gallery will be closed to visitors, but overflow from the debating chamber will now sit in the public gallery.
Select committees will continue to run, however they will be physically distanced and Auckland MPs will attend via Zoom.