Coffey TamatiTĀMATI COFFEY (Labour): Thank you Madam Speaker. Very pleased as a non-member of the Finance and Expenditure Committee to stand and take a call on this because it's incredibly important that those people that are listening to the debate right now understand that this Budget Policy Statement sets a framework for how we're going to be able to deliver for our Māori and our Pacific communities. I felt it was important to bring that voice into this debate today as we're talking about the Budget Policy Statement because it needs to be said. It needs to be said that actually explicitly having an objective in the Wellbeing Budget for 2021 centred around the benefits of Māori and Pacific is huge—having it actually singled out there making sure that we're lifting Māori and Pacific incomes making sure that we're providing those skills and opportunities and making sure that we're looking after those communities as we work through the impacts of COVID-19. These will be pleasing for our Māori and Pasifika communities to hear this because one of the last things they might have heard was just how severe the unemployment rate for our communities was going to be. At one point Treasury had it at about 26 percent—they were predicting. That had huge implications as a forecast. It definitely put the shock into our communities thinking that the sky was going to fall in that we would be doing it tough for a very long time. Where I come from in the Bay of Plenty we only have to look at how the forestry sector was affected in the 1980s when the whole game changed. There was economic scarring left from that lack of investment into those small communities that is still felt these days. But we are in a different time. It's a new Parliament. It's a new day. And this Budget Policy Statement I can assure you is going to deliver for our Māori and our Pacific communities.Now some of the fears caught up in—especially last year after we had such a huge year COVID definitely put everybody into a tailspin. Again this was one of the pillars. Māori and Pacific was a pillar that we had last year as well and look at the investment that we saw. We actually saw significant investment into things like jobs making sure that we didn't have a 26 percent Māori unemployment rate; making sure that we had things like the wage subsidy scheme things like the income relief payment for Māori but also workers businesses to be able to stay the course and hold on to their jobs. That was an amazing initiative put forward by this Government to get everybody through what was an incredibly tough time.In terms of the health of our people the doubling of the winter energy payment in 2020 was significant. We were telling people to stay home. Stay home."—we said—"It's winter but stay home." Well that's going to have a knock-on effect for people that can't actually afford to stay home that have been made to stay home. So we doubled the winter energy payment to make sure that whilst they were staying home they were also staying warm because actually we've had enough of hearing about how our damp cold houses in New Zealand are affecting our people. We're already moving to make some changes to turn that around. But one thing that we could do which was immediate was actually the doubling of the winter energy payment and I look forward to more—well actually I look forward to that kicking off again this year. Many New Zealanders will be pleased to hear that the winter energy payment is kicking in again really soon as the seasons change. Finally in my short contribution I want to talk about the investment that we put into education—specifically again to lift our Māori and Pasifika communities up by implementing and expanding the free and healthy school lunch programme. We were able to expand that out to another 200000 more students. Now there's an equity formula that underpins that that absolutely benefits Māori and Pasifika communities. Why? Because they need a bit of extra help. Actually communities like that see this scheme—the school lunches scheme; the free school lunches scheme—as a game-changer a game-changer for your own household budget. Suddenly there's an expense that you don't need to worry about. And also from the teacher's point of view it is a game-changer in the classroom as well where young learners are showing up to school they're being taken care of but they're also being fed at the same time. This improves their concentration level it improves the amount of waste that schools produce and it leads to happier learners. So if they were the pillars of our Budget in our policy statement last year then this year I think that actually we're going to do quite well out of it. We're going to be making sure that our jobs are still secure for our communities going to make sure that we're providing in terms of health and in education as well. Kia ora."