Prime Willow-JeanHon WILLOW-JEAN PRIME (Minister of Conservation): E te Māngai o te Whare tēnā koe otirā tēnā tātou katoa i roto i tēnei Whare hei tēnei ahiahi. Ko tēnei taku tū tuatahi i tēnei tau hou o te nohanga o te Whare Pāremata.[Greetings Mr Speaker and greetings to everyone in the House this afternoon. This my first time to stand in this new year and new sitting of the House of Parliament.]Mr Speaker—or shortly Madam Speaker—it is an honour and a privilege to take my first stand in Parliament this sitting year. It feels strange because we are into early March and this is in fact my first time back sitting here in this House. What a start to the year it has been.I want to start my contribution in the way that the Prime Minister started his statement and it was about acknowledging the difficult time for our country. In fact I wasn't present for the Prime Minister's statement because I am from one of those regions that was impacted by Cyclone Hale but also Cyclone Gabrielle. I was fortunate enough to be given leave by the Prime Minister to stay in Te Tai Tokerau alongside my ministerial colleague and MP for Te Tai Tokerau Kelvin Davis so that we could support our communities in the immediate response to the impact that the cyclone had had. I want to join with the Prime Minister in acknowledging the many many people who while their families were also impacted by the cyclone were out there supporting their communities. That is our civil defence that is our Fire and Emergency that is our police that is our Whānau Ora providers who were getting care packages out to our communities as soon as it was safe to get back on those roads. And it is our road workers who have been fixing our many many broken roads some of which are still impassable.So I want to start my contribution on the Prime Minister's statement talking about the work that we have ahead of us to respond to the cyclone and to recover because as I went across Te Tai Tokerau over the last couple of weeks that is what people are still experiencing and still talking about. I know that there are areas across the motu that weren't impacted by this event but are looking on and sending their thoughts to those of us in those regions that have been. I listened to the earlier contributions of the Hon Kiritapu Allan from Te Tai Rāwhiti the Hon Stuart Nash from the Hawke's Bay and there'll be other contributions I'm sure this evening from those also impacted. We have a huge piece of work in front of us to recover from this weather event and to prepare and be resilient for future extreme weather events which we know are becoming more and more common.In Te Tai Tokerau we had 28 red stickered houses 27 yellow 15 white. In the Kaipara we had nine red stickered eight yellow 30 white. In Whangārei we have five red stickered 22 yellow and 17. That's many whānau severely impacted by this. As we've heard over the last couple of weeks hundreds of local roads were impacted in Te Tai Tokerau from this weather event and also that event at the end of January. Our State Highway 1 Brynderwyns has been opened and unfortunately closed again due to further slips. We also had after Cyclone Gabrielle a huge downpour last Friday which impacted Mangawhai—many people stranded there; again more houses families and businesses impacted. Just to note though we are now able to have northbound traffic coming through the Brynderwyns but further work continues on that to have that reopened. I also think about the Mangamuka which was impacted last year and we had only just reopened it after the 2020 event.So part of my absence for the Prime Minister's speech is that in his speech he says that the solutions to this and the response to this are going to be locally driven. So we have been out in our communities from Te Kao to Mitimiti Rāwhiti Mangawhai Dargaville and communities in between talking about what we need to do together to respond to recover and to prepare for a more resilient Te Tai Tokerau in the future. We have started that work. We convened a meeting with leaders. We are looking to put together a plan in coming months to submit to the new Minister and the committee in terms of what the needs are for Te Tai Tokerau. It's going to be a tough year for Te Tai Tokerau and for Aotearoa.I want to turn to though—apart from the cyclone—the other major challenge that we had before the cyclone and I think has been compounded by the cyclone is the cost of living challenge for our whānau. I'm really proud of the work that our Government has been doing to support our whānau. There is no silver bullet as the Prime Minister said to the high cost of living and we are providing targeted support for working families lifting incomes so that those that work hard can get ahead.If I can share some of those initiatives as the Prime Minister referred to: we have consistently put whānau first. From the very first day I came in in 2017 within the first 100 days we delivered a package to support whānau and we have continued to build on that. We've supported parents with health costs by expanding free and low-cost doctors visits to children under 14. We've introduced mental health support into schools and expanded school-based health services across approximately 300 schools. We've introduced the winter energy payment and we've increased main benefits superannuation and the family tax credit student allowances and the accommodation supplement. We've extended paid parental leave to 26 weeks. Low-income New Zealanders have access to increased support for dental costs. We've reduced the cost to send our tamariki to school by removing NCEA fees by removing the school donations for more than 1600 schools. We've served more than 63 million free lunches—free healthy lunches—in schools feeding more than 220000 tamariki through Ka Ora Ka Ako. And we've rolled out—something I'm quite proud of—free period products in more than 2000 primary intermediate kura and secondary schools. And as the Prime Minister mentioned from April this year we will roll out the next phase of the cost of living support. That is in terms of childcare support and those come into effect in April.But we're also supporting families in terms of reduced costs for petrol for road-user charges for public transport—and in fact the half-price fares for public transport will be made permanent for community service and Total Mobility cardholders. Those are the bread and butter issues in my community in Te Tai Tokerau—cost of living number one. The region I come from unfortunately has some of the lowest average incomes in the country so this targeted support is making a real and meaningful difference for our communities in Te Tai Tokerau.I just wanted to highlight a couple of other things. I am very proud to be the Associate Minister of Health particularly for women and for rural communities. This year we will be developing and delivering on 1 July our health strategies which include a women's health strategy and a rural health strategy. I was pleased to see the Prime Minister make specific mention that we will be rolling out the HPV primary screening for cervical screening including the option of self-testing from July 2023 as well. Also as the Minister for Youth I am very proud of the work that we are doing to support our rangatahi and their mental health through direct access to the services in schools and by the end of 2023 more than 3 million New Zealanders will have had access to free primary mental health and addiction support; 12100 youth-focused sessions were delivered and 15700 kaupapa Māori sessions have also been delivered. We will continue to do this work for youth mental health services.I see that my time has expired. While I have much more to contribute on the Prime Minister's statement that is my speech this afternoon. Kia ora.