Coffey TamatiTAMATI COFFEY (Labour—Waiariki): Kia ora Madam Speaker. Thank you for the opportunity to contribute to the Budget debate of which this is absolutely a Budget with a plan and it's a necessary Budget because we've just come out of an unprecedented situation a very heavy situation where New Zealand was put in a place that we had never been before. Worlds were turned upside down and New Zealand was calling on the Government to be able to help now during and certainly well into the future as well.Before I start I'd like to acknowledge all of those people who passed during the lockdown. It's been a very tough time for the families of those that had passed away during the lockdown—the very strict parameters around tangihanga and funerals. I want to acknowledge all of those that passed during that time.What I acknowledge also was the working together of the Government and also our Māori communities. It was a delight to see our iwi health providers talking with our DHBs trying to get results trying to get supplies trying to get information and resource out to those remote Māori communities that really needed support at what was quite a tumultuous time. I want to acknowledge the work that the police did with our iwi and our Māori communities as well in terms of some of the community stations that were set up and primarily with the goal of looking after these small communities that hadn't seen any impacts from COVID and didn't want to see that either. So I applaud the police and I applaud those communities that worked constructively with the police during that time.Not to mention our job as Māori MPs. We were contacted daily many times daily from our worried constituents—worried about their safety worried about their health and we swung into action as well. That partnership is something that continues to this day and will continue well into the future as well—a partnership that is led by our tremendous our awesome our amazing Prime Minister the Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern our Minister of Finance Grant Robertson who's come up with this Budget; this Budget which is going to help us a lot.When I go back into my community this weekend and they ask me what the Budget is doing for Māori I'll be able to look them in the eye and say This is one of the best Budgets that Māori have ever had to benefit from." The unprecedented targeted spending that has been apportioned in this Budget is going to be great for our communities. The amount of money that we've apportioned to Whānau Ora—$136 million building on the good work that they put out during the lockdown: their care packages the love and attention that they gave to people that needed it at that time. I want to acknowledge them for their work. There is $200 million for our kōhanga reo. They are our language nests they are the future of our language they are a gift from our ancestors and that appropriation is the biggest that that movement—the kōhanga reo movement—have seen in a very long time.I also want to acknowledge that in the post-COVID world that we find ourselves in there are a lot of Māori that will find themselves without jobs. Whenever we talk about the unemployment rate the Māori unemployment rate is always double what the general unemployment rate is and we need to make sure that we as a Government are doing as much as we can to be able to support people back into jobs. So the announcement around the apprenticeships—getting rid of fees from 1 July scrapping those fees so that people can retrain and become commanders of their own destiny in whichever field they want to take up. I want to applaud our Minister of Education the Hon Chris Hipkins for the work that he's done in that space also my colleague the Hon Willie Jackson for his work in reaching out to our nephs on the couch reaching out to our young Māori that need some support through He Poutama Rangatahi through Mana in Mahi—that's been expanded into our big cities as well and I want to acknowledge that.But one of the best apportionments that I saw in this Budget was the $7 million that went to one tourist organisation in the Bay of Plenty in my home town of Rotorua—it went to Te Puia and it went there as part of a special arrangement. We have master carvers and master weavers at the New Zealand Māori Arts and Crafts Institute and it was feared that they would end up at the Ministry of Social Development in the dole queue and we couldn't see that we couldn't take that we had to do something about it. I was pleased when the Prime Minister the Minister of Tourism and our Minister for Māori Development all came to Rotorua a couple of weekends ago to make that announcement. We've still got a long way to go but we're going in the right direction. We have got a plan and we've got the right people leading us."