Mallard TrevorHon RON MARK (Minister of Defence): Thank you Mr Speaker. It's a pleasure to be able to rise this afternoon to be able to add to the general debate. I've got to say that I start with a brickbat and a bouquet and the bouquet has to go to Jan Logie. I thank her for her speech where she acknowledged the essential workers and for being brave enough to suggest—well no not suggest; to state actually—that with some of us in this country whilst the team of 5 million has done a brilliant job there are just unfortunately those elements who have treated our supermarket staff abysmally. I think they should be ashamed of themselves—truly ashamed. So thank you Jan for the speech. That's the bouquet. The brickbat has to go to the Leader of the Opposition because no matter how many times I listen to what's been said recently and I know they've got a job to do but it reminds me of Rudyard Kipling doesn't it? If I might plagiarise his poem a tad I've got to quote him if you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you if you can trust yourself when all men doubt you but make allowance for their doubting too"—and I'll sort of abbreviate by saying—"you might well become a leader too one day my son." I think it doesn't really matter when I listen to—I just have to ignore some of the criticisms that have been thrown at the Prime Minister and at the Government and take note of the silence from within the Opposition's ranks which suggests that on whole the vast majority of that caucus knows that we're doing the right thing and that the country is going to come out of this. Yes we're going to pay a price and we know that but the Government and my ministerial colleagues are doing everything they jolly well can to alleviate the pain for small businesses who comprise the bulk of our employers in this country. Having been a small-business person myself I do understand what it's like to be pondering how you're going to pay the wages the next week when you're having a bad run and this is a bad run that New Zealand has never ever run into before and never ever anticipated. I just want to say that we are mindful of what's going on and we do realise that the people who are going to help pull us out of this hole will be those people who are brave enough to put their houses on the line to employ someone else and to keep going no matter how tough the situation is getting. Those are our real heroes out there when it comes to economic recovery. We mean to ensure that they get the support they need and I congratulate the Minister of Finance for the work he's done. But the people I'm going to congratulate now in the final two minutes I've got are the women and men of the New Zealand Defence Force. I've got to say that these people have been working behind the scenes undertaking a vast array of tasks and one of the things that's become very evident to a lot of Government departments where we've been leaning in and providing support across all Government agencies is the expertise and the skill that Defence Force personnel have in logistics and long-term planning forward projecting and putting together plans and proposals and implementing and carrying them out. I guess one of the learning lessons out of this is that other Government departments are starting to see the value who might never have engaged with the Defence Force at the level that they have had to in the last six weeks. They are starting to understand the value and we have now got better linkages between them so they now know what sorts of capabilities the Defence Force can deliver. The support has gone out to the national crisis management team the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Whether it's doing the planning work necessary to repatriate New Zealanders who have been caught offshore unable to get home; whether it's been doing the planning work to try and get other citizens other nationals out of New Zealand and on their way home; or whether it's been assisting the Ministry of Health the 400 personnel in total that have been deployed to all of the Government centres managing the response to COVID—these people have done a sterling job. On top of that they have continued to maintain those capabilities that we have to maintain such as the counter-terrorist capability such as the explosive ordinance disposal teams who do that work—those very very brave people—and such as search and rescue people and even yesterday the air force's No 5 Squadron once again had a successful operation and recovered a canoeist out at sea whose canoe had sunk. The humanitarian aid and disaster relief operations—and I'm going to talk more about that hopefully tomorrow when we start talking about the work the Defence Force did in response to tropical cyclone Harold and is continuing to do. So it's a big shout-out to the Defence Force. Thank you very much for your service and to the mums and dads who had to wait longer for their loved ones to get back from Iraq—SPEAKER: Order! Order! The member's time has expired."