Hipkins ChrisHon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Education): There have been a lot of firsts lately but I never thought I would find myself sitting here thinking Actually Paula Bennett was quite good." But I did during that contribution from Nikki Kaye. In New Zealand right now as humanity around the world finds itself in a very difficult time it is a fantastic time to be a New Zealander because our team of 5 million has done something truly remarkable. Through a collective team effort we managed to squash COVID-19 we managed to stop community transmission in this country and we are one of the best places to be in the world right now. I am very proud to be part of the Government that led New Zealand through that process with clear decisive leadership and with good communication and managed to get New Zealanders to the point where we understood the risk of COVID-19 and where we made the sacrifices we needed to make voluntarily because we knew that that was the right thing to do. We need to now bring that same focus that same resolute leadership to the recovery effort that we brought to fighting the virus in the first place and that is exactly what the members on this side of the House have to offer because there is no rulebook here. This is new territory for New Zealand and the leadership that this Government has shown has brought us this far. We have a plan to see New Zealand through recovery and we have one of the best-positioned countries in the world to do that. Let's compare our Government's response to COVID-19 with the previous National Government's response to the global financial crisis. This Government has boosted Government capital spending so that we can keep our economy moving versus the National Government who cut capital spending in a time of an economic downturn and made that downturn worse as a result. This Government has boosted apprenticeships and put extra money into keeping apprentices on the job versus the last Government who saw thousands and thousands of apprentices lose their jobs during the global financial crisis and that slowed down the recovery afterwards. We will not repeat the mistakes that they made after the global financial crisis. This Government is focused on building assets for New Zealand. The last Government sold assets when New Zealand last had an economic downturn. The sound judgment that this Government has shown will help to get us through this very difficult period of time. Let's contrast that with what's on offer on the other side of the House. The new Leader of the Opposition—Hon Grant Robertson: Who? Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: —Todd Muller; I know. Todd Muller: if you haven't heard of him one of his first declarations as Leader of the Opposition was that he would move with urgency to reopen the border between New Zealand and Australia and between New Zealand and China. Those were among his first promises as Leader of the Opposition. He's then gone on to argue that we should devolve the management of the quarantine of international students coming back to New Zealand to the universities—bear in mind that the universities don't think the border should be closed in the first place and they've actually put that in writing. The stated position of the universities is that there was no justification for closing the border and the Opposition wants to hand over management of quarantine to them. They are willing to play Russian roulette at the border and put all of the gains that we have made through the sacrifices of 5 million New Zealanders at risk and that is not something that this Government is willing to do. They have flip-flopped around all over the show. First they wanted more compassion when it came to compassionate leave to go to funerals and tangi and weddings and other things and then they said "Oh no we were too generous and there shouldn't have been that." They cannot make their minds up on anything. They argued that shops building and construction and a whole lot of industries should have stayed open during alert level 4 when we know that in the countries that did that they have not been anywhere near as successful at stamping out COVID-19 as we have been here in New Zealand. And let's not get on to the ACT Party National's junior coalition partner who want us to be like Sweden where thousands and thousands of people have died as a result of COVID-19. New Zealanders have done a remarkable thing in recent months. The hard work and sacrifice of New Zealanders has been worth it. Its position does well for recovery. It came about because New Zealand was incredibly well led during that process and that's the sort of leadership that we will bring to the recovery."