O'Connor GregTransportGREG O'CONNOR (Chairperson of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee): Thank you Mr Chair and I rise as the chairman of the hard-working Transport and Infrastructure Committee. I also acknowledge the Minister in the chair Minister Wood who recently scored nine out of 10 on a review of Ministers and I'd like to think that's something of a reflection of the collegiality and the hard work of the committee and I acknowledge my committee members here in the Chamber today. The entities we examined were Air New Zealand; Airways Corporation of New Zealand; Civil Aviation Authority of New Zealand; KiwiRail Holdings Ltd who appeared with the New Zealand Railways Corporation; the Ministry of Transport; Waka Kotahi New Zealand Transport Agency; and Meridian Energy Ltd. Really the story of our reviews this year was COVID and I go to the first entity we examined which was Air New Zealand probably one of the entities that was most affected by COVID although bearing in mind this is a backward-looking review; that only went through part of the period in review—part of the period affected by COVID—but it was significant and certainly was showing up in the accounts of all the entities we examined.I guess even when the entity arrived Greg Foran the recently appointed chief executive the thing he did point out was that they had reduced their executive team from nine to six members again reflecting that. I do note that on our committee we had the ex-CEO of Air New Zealand and I'm sure—I won't speak for him but he was very pleased that he was on our side of the table not sitting at the end being examined given the state of the airline and given the effect of COVID on it. Of course Air New Zealand's operating expenses declined by 12 percent but that was reflected by a loss—instead of 2019-20 $4.8 billion the revenue has reduced to $1.2 billion a 59 percent decrease—and of course for the other entities we were then to examine that was reflected right through. But just some of the effects on Air New Zealand they of course required a $900 million standby loan facility but they also received $113 million in wage subsidies. So again Air New Zealand as the first entity that we did examine certainly set the scene. They had to reduce staff by 30 percent which is approximately 4000 people at a cost of $140 million in redundancies.Given the time restraints I'll go on. We also examined the Airways Corporation. Again their income was similarly affected because they derive their income from the airline activity as do the Civil Aviation Authority of New Zealand. The only thing with civil aviation of course is that some of their members we did hear were able to be transferred to take part in managed isolation. Moving through to the Ministry of Transport one of the main things that came out of that was the effect on the supply chains in particular and we heard that the inter-agency supply chain group was brought together to address these issues. We also examined KiwiRail and KiwiRail Holdings and KiwiRail's corporation and I should of course mention at this stage the then chairman Brian Corban who's now recently deceased and we acknowledge his passing here in the House today. Just in the time left to me we did also examine Waka Kotahi and Meridian Energy but I think just for the Minister in the chair I'd just like to leave him with a couple of questions given what we did here. Could he elaborate please: what Government measures did the Minister think made the difference in keeping our transport system up and running and our supply chains moving given what I've spoken about and what we heard as a committee about the effect of COVID? Also just perhaps he could talk about how the Government investment in the transport sector can aid our economic recovery? What evidence is there of such investment over the last year? I look forward to the Minister answering some of these queries.