Faafoi KrisHon KRIS FAAFOI (Minister of Justice): It's the last general debate of the year; so I would like to acknowledge the new Leader of the Opposition and wish him the appropriate amount of luck. The former chief executive of Air New Zealand—my only substantive interaction with him when I was the member of Parliament for Mana was when we was cutting flights to Kāpiti Airport. So the man who just told us that he cares about the regions about small-town New Zealand was cutting flights to Kāpiti cutting flights to Nelson cutting flights to Gisborne. That is exactly his background in corporate New Zealand. But again I wish the new Leader of the Opposition the best of luck. A week is a long time in politics. I look forward to next week in the National Party caucus!It is the last general debate of the year. So we deserve some acknowledgments. I want to start with my colleague Marama Davidson the co-leader of the Māori Party because it is a very special day and we are marking it by wearing orange. I want to acknowledge the work that she has undertaken to get to the point where Te Aorerekura was launched earlier this week in order to make sure we are eliminating sexual and family violence in New Zealand. That hard work over many many months and years has come to fruition and it will make a big difference to our families and our partnerships in New Zealand and I want to acknowledge the hard work to get to the point where we are today.It has been a difficult year but a year where the leadership of the Government has made a huge difference to the lives that New Zealanders live. The leader of the ACT Party was saying it's been a costly year and it depends on how you look at cost because we've got the lowest rate of hospitalisations the lowest number of cases and the lowest number of deaths in the developed world per capita here in New Zealand. So if you want to talk about costs what is cost? Would the ACT Party prefer it if we had more hospitalisations? Would they prefer that we had more cases? Would they prefer that we had more deaths due to the COVID outbreak? Because that is a cost that this Government isn't willing to entertain and actually I want to acknowledge all the New Zealanders and especially Aucklanders who have got us to this stage where we are right now where in a week's time they will be all free and we will be able to enjoy a relatively normal Christmas compared to what we have had over the last six months in those conditions.I want to acknowledge all the hard work of the people at the front line: the people who are doing vaccinations the people who are helping us scan the people who are helping us with our COVID vaccine passes and the businesses and the organisations who are making sure that they adhere to that. And I acknowledge that because we've been through nearly a week of life with the COVID vaccine pass and I'm sure many members around the House and people who may be listening and watching have actually found that most New Zealanders get it. So don't listen to the negativity and increased negativity from the other side of the House because New Zealanders have got this. They realise that the decisions we've been making over the last 20 months have kept us safe and they want to continue doing it because everyone has worked hard to make sure we can do it. When you go to a basketball game to watch your kids and they're over 12 everyone gets it. If you want to go into the gym and you've got your vaccine pass they scan it and they let you in. New Zealanders get it and we're transitioning into that new world of making sure that we can keep Delta at bay from our communities making sure we're keeping New Zealanders safe and New Zealanders healthy and New Zealanders get it.I want to acknowledge the work of my colleague Aupito William Sio as well and my Pacific colleagues as well because for a community of Pacific Islanders here in New Zealand we thought there were going to be big challenges to get us vaccinated. We're now at the point where we're 92 percent first-dose vaccinated across the country and that is huge. But the work is not over. We've got to keep having those discussions having days like Barbara Edmonds organises in Porirua to make sure we're getting those second doses getting those boosters having those conversations with our families to make sure we're keeping ourselves safe.So my final message isn't one for the people in this room; it's for the people outside of this place to make sure we keep doing what we've done for the last 20 months. We got to stay the course we've got to keep vaccinated we've got to keep doing the simple things that are keeping our children and our families safe to make sure that we can have a Christmas to make sure that our elderly are safe from the ravages of COVID those who have pre-existing conditions in our communities are safe from the ravages of COVID. We have worked hard to get to this point and we've got to stay the course.So I wish you all a very merry Christmas but while we're having that merry Christmas keep our families and our communities safe by making sure you do the right thing that we've done over the last 20 months because of the leadership of this Government.