SpeechSARAH PALLETT (Labour—Ilam): Thank you so much Madam Speaker. It's with great pleasure that I stand in support of the Prime Minister's statement in my first speech of the year and I wish everybody a very happy New Year.My family takes pandemics very seriously. I lost two great great grandparents—young healthy fit and with five young children—to the Spanish flu pandemic. It changed our family for ever as it did to the honourable member Kelvin Davis who also lost members of his family. So when I say that I'm proud to be part of this Government proud to be here representing our pandemic response it's with a very clear understanding of the impact of those pandemic responses.I know that the decisions that we make aren't part of some political game but they have irreversible consequences for some people. And I know that you can't actually wind back mistakes that you may make—you can't open borders and shut them and expect everything to go back to as it was before because despite what members of the party sitting opposite might say there actually isn't any coming back from the dead divinity notwithstanding.We have lost 53 Kiwis to COVID. And this is undoubtedly a tragedy and my heart goes out to those families and to those who loved them. But putting this in a global context: Ireland has suffered the loss of 6228 people—Ireland an island with an almost identical population to New Zealand. In the UK: 158000 deaths equivalent when adjusted by population to 11752 Kiwis we could have lost. But of course none of these countries are 100 percent directly comparable. The closest comparison still sits in the thousands of deaths to date.Now I lived through the earthquakes in Canterbury and I have seen the effect on our community of losing 185 beloved people. The terrible effects of those losses still reverberate through the entire country. We're a close community here in New Zealand and I can't begin to imagine what it would be like for us to have lost thousands of Kiwis. We could have; however we went there and we took early and decisive action to prevent it. We listened to our experts and over and over again we responded with intelligence and flexibility to new challenges new variants. And last year we delivered one of the highest vaccination rates in the world. We should be very proud and I am.I'm going to sing Canterbury's praises here because 98 percent of Cantabrians are fully vaccinated 91 percent of our Māori population and 97 percent of Pacific people. People and communities have pulled together to ensure that no one is left behind. And in Ilam our Orchard Road vaccination centre has been breaking records daily and I thank them together with every pharmacy GP vaccination clinic and every single person who's rolled up their sleeves to keep us all safe like my daughter who today got her booster—the first of our children to do so. I'm proud of her and I'm proud of every Kiwi who's going to take that action to keep us safe. And in an ever-changing global situation we have looked after our people we have delivered and we will continue to do so.But we haven't just been delivering a world-leading COVID response; we have remained focused on and committed to making things better for all. We've increased the minimum wage steadily to $20 per hour and the predicted falling of the sky just didn't happen but what did happen was that money was put directly in the pockets of our lowest earners. The party opposite which was performatively hand-wringing over the cost of living has opposed the rise in the minimum wage time after time after time. It's completely ludicrous to adopt a position of caring for everyday Kiwis when you've personally bemoaned the increasing cost of your barista-made coffee. And when a super-wealthy member of Parliament bemoans a 10c increase to a cup of coffee when that 10c has such a significant effect on a barista's wages you know that that party couldn't give a flying fig for everyday Kiwis.So I'm proud of what we've achieved and I'm excited for the year ahead. We have the long overdue creation of our unified health authority to address inequities for Māori health and I'm very proud to stand by my Prime Minister's statement and her speech. Thank you.