How MPs draft legislation, interact with the public, and debate in the Chamber is all up for review as the Speaker decides how to deal with the unvaccinated, writes political editor Jo Moir
For the most part, MPs are leading the charge on vaccination with only three of the 120 having not yet received their first dose.
ACT Party’s Toni Severin has a medical condition and is seeking advice on whether she can get the jab, while National’s Simeon Brown and Maureen Pugh both have bookings.
Neither Brown nor Pugh would comment on why they haven’t sought a vaccination sooner given Pugh is over the age of 60 and Brown is in Auckland where walk-in vaccinations are readily available.
A National Party spokesperson told Newsroom, "Maureen Pugh has a flexible booking with her medical professional to get vaccinated, she is awaiting further medical advice before going ahead’’.
If the trans-Tasman bubble reopens, Pugh has a desire to travel to Australia at Christmas to see her grandchildren “who she hasn’t seen in three years, and she will be fully vaccinated before then to do so’’.
If the bubble remains closed, it's unclear whether Pugh plans to get vaccinated.
Brown is stuck in Auckland lockdown while Pugh, who is junior whip, is back at Parliament.
On Tuesday, National Party leader Judith Collins told Newsroom if Pugh and Brown aren't vaccinated "it's entirely up to them'' and she couldn't force anyone to do so.
A new kind of Parliament
The Speaker of the House, Trevor Mallard, says the next steps for Parliament are how to return to business as usual in a new Delta world, once everyone has had the chance to be vaccinated.
“It might be a requirement that if it’s a job that can be done from outside the building then an unvaccinated staffer do that’’ - Trevor Mallard.
That means establishing who on the Parliamentary precinct is and isn’t vaccinated and how that impacts their ability to do their job.
“One of the things we’ve found out is there’s a significant proportion of jobs done in the buildings that can be done from home,’’ Mallard told Newsroom.
“It might be a requirement that if it’s a job that can be done from outside the building then an unvaccinated staffer do that.’’
Mallard is consulting with both the Clerk David Wilson and Parliamentary Service chief executive Rafael Gonzalez-Montero to first encourage staff to get vaccinated, and secondly construct a log of who hasn’t.
“We need to get a sense of where we are at in a couple of weeks’ time, because we don’t have a picture at the moment of how many staff are vaccinated and how many aren’t.’’
Legal advice has been sought on the privacy rules around doing so and Mallard said he understands there are rights of an employer in this area that cover it.
“I think eventually we are going to require people who come to do the visitor tours, who are above a certain age, to be vaccinated." – Trevor Mallard, Speaker
Mallard is also planning to meet with select committee chairs to form a vaccination policy for off-site advisers and public submitters.
This will directly impact the way legislation is drafted and the access the public has to MPs considering a variety of bills and petitions.
“From a certain point, if they’re doing hearings then people should be vaccinated to actually do them physically, as opposed to virtually. There’s a call to be made there, and with government and ministry advisors as well.’’
“It’s always easier to do things face-to-face, but we have proven we can do things by Zoom and making those sorts of calls are what we are working through.
“We don’t have a policy yet, but there’s a logic to saying we want to keep the highest possible proportion of people in here vaccinated,’’ he said.
From there the next consideration is how to deal with members of the public coming in for meetings, like lobbyists, and public tours of Parliament.
Public tours only take place at Level 1 so Mallard says it will be some time before they’re back, which means there’s time to work out how to assess who is and isn’t vaccinated.
“I think eventually we are going to require people who come to do the visitor tours, who are above a certain age, to be vaccinated.’’
Media fall under Mallard's review too
Journalists aren’t exempt from the rules either and Mallard plans to consult with the press gallery executive about how to apply vaccination expectations.
Media fall under the essential worker category and can currently move between regions, but the press gallery made the decision to stay put in Wellington as many continue to work from home.
This was a position individual media companies took before Mallard instructed accreditations would be revoked for anyone who did travel to Auckland.
“I don’t want to have to put the whole building into Level 3 or 4 style approaches because of one or two individuals choosing to travel,’’ he said.
Parliament sits through until next Thursday and then has a two-week recess to coincide with school holidays.
Despite gatherings increasing on Tuesday night from 50 people to 100, Mallard is keeping it to a limit of 50 in the Chamber (including staff) through to the end of this week. Next week it will increase to 70 (including staff).
That will give him the recess to see what level various parts of the country are in and work out what restrictions will apply when the House returns in mid-October.
In the meantime, anyone who has been in Auckland in the last 14 days is required to stay away from the precinct.
“We could have a restricted Chamber for quite some time." – Trevor Mallard.
Mallard told Newsroom he fears Parliament would cause substantial spread if Covid was detected on the precinct, which has driven his stricter than Level 2 rules in Wellington.
“Vaccination of MPs, who are the biggest travellers, will presumably help, but I’ve got to think about rules for staff and the press gallery, because they can just as easily be the source of an outbreak by coming in here.’’
MPs travelling back and forth to their Auckland electorates is completely dependent on the country’s biggest city returning to Level 2.
“If Auckland is at Level 3 until Christmas then we won’t have people coming back and forth, because there will be a reason they’re in Level 3,’’ Mallard told Newsroom.
“We could have a restricted Chamber for quite some time.’’
Mallard wants Parliament to remain the “most open in the democratic world’’.
“You can get into our place much more easily than you can any other like-Parliament. I think it’s good for our democracy and want to continue that.’’
He said it’s about balancing that freedom alongside terror-type threats and the health and security of both the staff onsite and those wanting to come to Parliament.
Some of those decisions fall under his control, but Mallard said both Cabinet and the Public Service Commission will have big calls to make as well about how Parliament continues to operate.
MPs call out Mallard
Following Mallard's interview with Newsroom on Wednesday, the Speaker emailed everyone on the Parliamentary complex saying, "I understand receiving information in this manner may have caused anxiety, which was not my intention.''
"As already mentioned there are two different situations at play - the first one is from an employment perspective which is the responsibility of your employer, the second is the rules of access to the parliamentary precinct which is my responsibility,'' Mallard wrote.
Deputy Prime Minister Grant Robertson told media on Wednesday afternoon that the way the information had firstly been shared through the media was not "quite what I would expect''.
Green Party co-leader James Shaw had similar thoughts saying he was surprised to read about it on Newsroom.
"I'm not quite sure how it ended up in the media and so we'll just have to wait and see.''
Shaw was pleased Mallard had sent out an email to everyone on the precinct.
"I think that was a good thing to do, because obviously if something breaks in an unmanned way like that, then it can cause anxiety.''
He told media the issue of unvaccinated staff on the precinct in the future had been discussed at Parliament's Business Committee, but his own caucus doesn't have a view on it yet.
ACT leader David Seymour said the party had been unaware of Mallard’s proposals before the publication of Newsroom’s story, and the Speaker should have followed through on a commitment to consult on the substance of any planned changes.
“We were very surprised, as were a lot of people waking up at Parliament this morning, to read in the news what our policy was going to be.”
Seymour said his MPs and staff were “enthusiastic jabbers”, and the party supported a vaccination requirement for Parliament – with the exception of those with a medical condition precluding them from receiving the vaccine.
