Collins JudithHon JUDITH COLLINS (National—Papakura): Thank you Mr Speaker. Can I start by thanking all those people who have sent nice kind words of support for Holly Collins my dog who is almost 17. Obviously you know dogs can get coronavirus so I tell you if I get a sniff I'm not coming to work.So I think it's really important though that we look at this Budget Policy Statement and say Is this a Budget Policy Statement fit for present times and into the immediate future?" I'm sorry to say it: no it's not. So we have a Government that has talked about—and the Minister who has just resumed his seat just talked about—the Wellbeing Budget and the business as usual basically everything continuing the same and looking to the future and climate change everything else.We can put our heads in the sand over this COVID-19 or we could understand that it is coming our way. When we see the panic that has occurred in supermarkets where people are buying toilet paper in New Zealand in great trolley loads—which is totally insane behaviour frankly given that we export toilet paper. I've just checked on the internet and apparently in 2018 we as a country exported $54 million worth of toilet paper. So I'm pretty certain we're covered no matter what when it comes to the toilet paper.But let's not joke too much about it. That is a sign of people panicking. The reason they're panicking is they're not certain what to do and so they race round and they think "What might I need if everything's shut and I can't go out or I'm stuck in isolation or something?" That's what they're doing.Last night or yesterday rather I should say 168 people died in Italy of COVID-19. Now the wave of death seems to have occurred in China over the last month and now seems to be trailing off. That is a good thing that it is trailing off but the wave now seems to be in Italy. Italy has 60 million people; we have 5 million people. That would be like us standing up in this House and saying that yesterday we lost 34 people to COVID-19.I understand why people feel a bit panicked. If it was us with those numbers we probably would too. We don't need to panic buy food. We export 95 percent of the food produced in New Zealand. We produce enough for 40 million people. My message to people is we don't need to panic. But the big thing that we do need to have from the Government response is that we need to know that the Government knows what it's doing and it is properly prepared.We were not overly as people convinced that the Government knew how to deal with a pandemic when it couldn't cope very well with the measles epidemic. We didn't believe that that was something that should be happening in today's world when we have immunisations available. There is no immunisation yet available for COVID-19 and I think that is one of the things that is causing businesses and staff to be very concerned about this and how this could impact on them their jobs and therefore on the economy.In the National Party we believe that the Government needs to reassess the Budget based on the fact that COVID-19 is impacting on New Zealand not so much in numbers at the moment—and it most likely it will—but in the way that it's affecting our exports. If we consider that tourism is a major export to New Zealand—such as people come to New Zealand for tourism—that is clearly having a serious impact right now on our tourism industry which is one of our biggest industries. It has made a huge negative impact on our tertiary education providers and particularly not only on our universities and the polytechnics but also on the private tertiary education providers.We should not underestimate the impact of this terrible terrible infection on not only people's health but actually on their mind-set. I've been looking for some words of inspiration and I didn't get them from Mr Robertson but I did get some from Franklin Delano Roosevelt who in 1932 during the Great Depression when he took over as the President of the United States said the "only thing we have to fear is fear itself." It's a bit trite I guess to say that but I think part of what's driving this panic is people are fearful and they're fearful if they see their Government not looking like they're in charge and doing the best they can.It is important that if people believe that they have some of the symptoms of COVID-19—which I have to say look to me when I've heard about them remarkably similar to most other winter viruses that we often get—they should be able to get tested. We have people now self-isolating in what we'd consider a responsible way. The problem is they're not at work either. And so workplaces and businesses are having to think of ways of dealing with it. People are putting in place very responsibly plans—and I understand that Vodafone were doing this today or very soon—where people can work from home so that they are not putting both the work and themselves at risk and their workmates. So these are good responsible responses from people.I don't think it's responsible though for the Minister of Finance to stand up and say "We're just going to continue on with everything that we were doing in exactly the same way." I don't think anyone needs to be a rocket scientist to work out that the world is in a situation of quite a lot of flux. People are very worried and certain countries are taking drastic measures primarily because they have to. We now have countries like Samoa—one of our neighbours and very good friends—saying "If anyone wants to come to Samoa they need to have a doctor's certificate to say that they're not sick." I mean this is going to have a huge impact on Samoa's tourism which is one of its biggest earners. But then again they need to do something because they don't have a lot of confidence that other countries are doing what they should do to keep this virus at bay.We also need to bear in mind that not everyone who gets this virus is going to die but many are going to be very sick and some may not be very sick at all. But when we look at those mortality rates they're not enormous: about 3.4 percent of confirmed cases so far. But if you're one of those 3.4 percent you might think that's a pretty enormous number.But what I'm concerned about is listening to Mr Robertson talk about how everything's just going along fine and dandy. Well they're saying it's all fine and dandy as a tsunami's coming at you. We've got an enormous tsunami coming at us and that is our export markets—and thank goodness for the farmers by the way. If we weren't producing all this food—thankfully people still have to eat but they're not necessarily going to be eating quite the same quantity or quite the same as what we have because we're exporting fine product. But if we didn't have the farmers—if the Government had actually succeeded in undermining farmers so much they stopped bothering to produce—we would be in very very dire straits. Thank goodness. Think about Air New Zealand for instance and what they're going through at the moment: cutting flights—they and many other airlines. This is not business as usual. About half of Air New Zealand's owned by the Government. We're going to have a massive loss coming up there. We've got losses all over coming at us as a country.I just think it's important that we don't panic that we don't race around buying up all the toilet paper produced at Kawerau and thinking we're the only people there. I think it's important that when we look at our Australian cousins and that terrible video that I think we've all seen of those Australian women fighting over toilet paper—do you know my thoughts were? "Oh gosh I hope they're not New Zealanders and they get sent back here." We've got enough trouble without that nonsense. But it's just a sign of panic and people do and they don't trust that the Government's in charge; that's one of the problems.So I think that the Government needs to not be so low key about it that nobody thinks they're doing anything but telling people straight up what's happening: how many cases there are what's happening here what's being done. I think hopefully an immunisation regime will be put in place—a vaccine will be put in place or found—before it comes to New Zealand in a major way—this COVID-19—but let's be real here: this is going to seriously affect the economy seriously affect jobs seriously put at risk people's work seriously put at risk people's wellbeing. This country doesn't need a Wellbeing Budget it needs a Budget about keeping our people well and that's something we're not seeing from this Government."