Hipkins Chris; Rurawhe AdrianRt Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I move That this House express its confidence in the Government and commend its programme for 2023 as set out in the Prime Minister's statement.In a little over 50 days the year 2023 has unleashed a series of extreme weather events unparalleled in New Zealand's recent history. First we had the floods. Main routes in and out of the Coromandel and Northland were cut off and the extent of the damage across the upper part of the North Island was significant. Auckland and Waikato were swamped under a deluge of rain claiming the lives of four people and displacing tens of thousands of people. At that point it was believed to be the costliest weather event New Zealand had ever experienced and then there was more to come.Along came Cyclone Gabrielle which led to the declaration of a national state of emergency for only the third time in New Zealand's history. Gabrielle was stronger than Cyclone Bola in 1988 and stronger than Cyclone Giselle in 1968. It has left enormous damage in its wake across large parts of the North Island. From Cape Reinga in the Far North down to the Tararuas and the Wairarapa the recent weather events have wreaked havoc on millions of Kiwis' lives. Tai Rāwhiti and the Hawke's Bay have seen the devastating impact in particular: 11 lives have been lost and others are still unaccounted for. To those who have lost loved ones in these tragic events New Zealand is grieving with you.As we start back at Parliament today there is still major disruption being felt by many but I want to reflect on the conversations that I have had with some of those who have been disrupted by these recent weather events. I think about the family in Auckland whose home I visited to see the waterline halfway up the wall. They were cooking dinner when the rain started. It took 15 minutes for the water to inundate their home and for them to lose everything. That's an enormously traumatic experience to have—to go from cooking your dinner to losing everything that you own in the space of 15 minutes.I think about the owners of a pub just outside the Esk Valley that I got to meet late last week. They had opened their doors to welcome in the community. Where people would normally be drinking and dancing and enjoying themselves there are now mattresses where they are providing emergency accommodation for those who have had to evacuate. The pub kitchen is serving meals to all those in the area that need it and the pub owners are committed to supporting their local community through.In the room next door I visited a makeshift health clinic where health workers continued to provide essential support to those who need it. And in a very Kiwi kind of a way I was talking to one of the nurses working there who was telling me about all of the families she had been supporting. When she stopped I asked her And how are you?". With a tear in her eye she told me that she had lost everything and yet there she was continuing to work to support those who are most in need because that's what Kiwis do in times of adversity. All of those conversations that I have had in recent days have made me so proud to be a New Zealander because when we are confronted with these kinds of events we rally around and we support each other and all New Zealanders are rallying behind this cause.People continue to live in a great degree of uncertainty; their lives still disrupted now. The number of people without power has come down sharply. We started with 225000 households without power. People have been out working in the wind and the rain day and night to get people reconnected and as I came down to the House today that number has fallen from 225000 to just around 11000. We absolutely should acknowledge those who have been putting in the hard yards to get people reconnected to those essential lifelines. More than 1300 people were still in civil defence centres overnight because they had nowhere else to go and countless more will be living with friends family other extended relatives while they find out what happened to their homes and what they can do next. The impact on agriculture horticulture and food production is currently incalculable but we know it will be significant. As of yesterday afternoon around 250 State highways and local roads were still closed crews were working on 400 kilometres of highways and of course councils have their crews focused on local roads cleaning them up and getting them reopened. I want to acknowledge how traumatic this situation has been for so many people and for so many businesses. I think also of the trauma of those who found themselves trapped on roofs overnight. Our rescue teams worked valiantly up until they were no longer able to do so because of the wind the rain and the dark. And they knew that when they had to stop working that there were still people on roofs and they were back out there at first light the next morning to make sure they got those people to a position of safety. But for some people it was a dark cold and miserable evening waiting on a roof and I want to acknowledge the trauma that they have experienced.I also want to acknowledge our extreme gratitude as a country to the brave men and women who have sacrificed so much in the service of their communities: our first responders our Defence Force personnel police community organisations local marae volunteers and so many more who have contributed to supporting others through this. In this time of great need your dedication has been an inspiration to all of us. I want to particularly acknowledge Dave van Zwanenberg and Craig Stevens volunteer firefighters who were killed in the line of duty while protecting their local community at Muriwai. We ask a lot of our volunteers in New Zealand but no more so than our volunteer first responders. They put themselves in harm's way to protect all of us. And to their families we say thank you. Thank you so much for the sacrifice that you have made. You are in our thoughts.While the cyclone itself might not have directly affected every New Zealander there is no doubt that we are all going to feel the effects of it in the coming weeks and months. Northland Auckland Waikato Coromandel the Bay of Plenty the Tararuas Tai Rāwhiti and the Hawke's Bay account for 30 percent of New Zealand's land mass but they are home to more than half of our population and produce about half of our GDP. Therefore this has been an incredibly significant event for the whole country. And just like with the earthquakes in Christchurch and then Kaikōura the legacy of that is going to be with us for many years to come. We don't yet have a complete assessment of what the cost of that is going to be but we know it will be significant—a multibillion-dollar price tag is ahead of us. And there is no point in sugar-coating it; we know that there are some tough times ahead for the whole country as we work our way through that.The year 2023 has the potential to be very difficult for many Kiwis and many of our families and businesses and our communities will be under an enormous amount of pressure. But we will get through this. Kiwis are resourceful and we are determined. And I know that once again we'll tap into our collective strength and our spirit in the weeks and months ahead to come back even stronger. We will do whatever it takes to recover.We started that yesterday in setting out the first steps of our recovery plan. I want to emphasise again that this will be a response driven by local communities. Central government is here to support those local communities to rebuild and to recover. Grant Robertson will be leading that from the central government's perspective as our cyclone recovery Minister. He has proven experience in leading us through challenging times. We will have a lead Minister working in each of the regions that have been affected so that we can make sure that those local communities and their needs are well-connected with our national response. We'll be working closely and guided by feedback from those on the ground. A task force will be established to ensure that we are bringing together all of the players relevant to the recovery—the insurance companies the infrastructure providers central government and local government—and I'm very pleased to say that Sir Brian Roche who has a proven track record of working in both the public and private sectors has agreed to lend his expertise to that process.A $50 million interim support package was announced yesterday to support businesses in the primary sector and the effect that this has had on them and we've also put additional funding into the emergency response fund of the National Land Transport Fund so that we can continue with that essential roading clean-up work while we scope the true extent of the damage and calculate exactly how much more funding is going to be required.We know that more financial support is going to be required but the Government is in a very strong position to contribute to that. We have some of the lowest debt levels on a per capita basis in the world helped by the prudent financial management of our Minister of Finance during extraordinary times over the last 5½ years. We have options and choices ahead of us because of that. Even if we borrow more money in order to contribute to this response we would still have lower debt than our neighbours and mates over in Australia and considerably lower than countries like Canada the US and the UK.We know that how we recover has to be done a little bit differently this time. We've got to build back better we've got to build back safer and we've got to build back smarter. New Zealand is now without question experiencing the effects of climate change and we are well past the point where we should question the impact of human beings on climate change. Extreme weather events are becoming more common and they are of greater intensity. In the year 2021-22 there was a ninefold increase in the amount of money required to help farmers and growers affected by floods storms and drought.We also see the effect on our roads. The number of events requiring emergency works has more than doubled from an average of 67 events per year between 2018 and 2021 to 140 events per year. Even before these recent events we knew that Waka Kotahi was going to need more money just to deal with the emergency response that the extreme weather is causing. Business-as-usual won't work any more. We have to accept that billions of dollars of additional investment is going to be required not just to fix up what has been damaged but to build more resilience so that we can better cope with these types of events in the future. We cannot fund new roads though by cutting the funding for road maintenance.We have to accept that building a more resilient roading network and reducing our carbon emissions are not incompatible goals. Most parts of our society are now also having to grapple with these difficult choices as well. There are challenges in front of businesses utility companies and other sectors. They are going to need to innovate as we will need to innovate and do things differently.When I became the Prime Minister I said that we would set a new direction for the Government and that we would have our focus squarely on the basics—including the cost of living that is affecting New Zealanders. Recent events have reinforced the importance of that to me and there is nothing more basic or critical for a Government than lifting the country back up after a major disaster.The usual systems and processes of Government will need to adapt to the challenge in front of us. We will need to make some tough calls and we will need to prioritise carefully. I've already announced the first round of reprioritisation that we are taking as a Government. The Television New Zealand - Radio New Zealand merger won't go ahead. While we acknowledge that there are significant gaps in our social security infrastructure now is not the time for the social insurance scheme but we acknowledge that there is still a gap there that we should grapple with. We've stopped the biofuels mandate and we have asked the Law Commission to look at the issues around hate speech in their totality. I want to provide a reassurance that when we said to the victims of March 15 that we would stand with them and that we would take the recommendations of the royal commission seriously we will not back away from that commitment. But we will also not allow the commitments that we have made to them be politicised in the way that they have been. We want to make sure that we do this properly and that we address the concerns that the royal commission has rightly raised.The scale of the task ahead of us is significant. The worthy will sometimes have to make way for the urgent. We have done that before as a country. We saw Governments reprioritise after earthquakes in Christchurch and Kaikōura and we did that when we responded to the global pandemic. We will do that again. More reprioritisations will follow shortly but we will still be looking to advance the reform of our water infrastructure. I will say more about that in the coming weeks but the events of the past month will have focused the minds of many New Zealanders on the need to tackle the challenge ahead of our water infrastructure. It has been tested and it has been found badly wanting. Just patching up ageing pipes and water treatment facilities isn't going to cut it and abandoning local authorities to deal with the scale of the challenge by themselves is not leadership. We will make sure we get on with the job of ensuring that New Zealanders have the sort of water infrastructure that they should be able to expect as a First World country.The cost of living will be at the forefront of the Government's priorities. We know that we are dealing with a heightened period of economic uncertainty. We have already taken action to extend the reductions in fuel tax saving families filling up the car by up to $17 every time they do that. We've extended the half-price public transport subsidies and we have lifted the minimum wage because we are not willing to leave the lowest-paid New Zealanders behind.In April New Zealanders will see that our support continues to roll out. Improved access to childcare is long overdue and New Zealanders will start to see that in the coming months. Improvements to Working for Families and the family tax credit will also be rolling out. Superannuation and benefit rates will increase as will the Best Start payment. From 1 May we will deliver the winter energy payment to 1.2 million New Zealanders.But there is no question that the cyclone has changed a lot from a Budget perspective and we will work our way through that but this is not the time for austerity. It is the time to continue our investment in health in education and in the social services that New Zealanders rely on and that is where our focus will be. We will continue to invest in dealing with the skills shortages that we have across the country because when we have been faced with these sorts of challenges in the past Governments have sometimes retreated from that and the legacy of that can last for generations. So we will continue to invest in our people—and you'll see that in the apprenticeship schemes for example that we have been investing in: 50000 New Zealanders in work supported by the Apprenticeship Boost; 215000 New Zealanders supported through free trade training. We are absolutely committed to plugging the gaps in our workforce and yes immigration will continue to play a role there.We're committed to ending the postcode lottery for health in New Zealand and we will rebuild our mental health system; in some cases building it from the ground up. By the end of this year more than 3 million New Zealanders will have access to free primary and mental health and addiction support. Community safety will continue to be a priority for us but we know that empty slogans simply won't cut it. We've got to make decisions based on evidence and resourcing and we will have by the middle of this year 1800 extra police on the beat compared to when we became the Government.Right now the task ahead of New Zealand may seem daunting to many people. There is a big challenge ahead of us all but the cyclone and its aftermath won't be with us for ever. We will need to look through the cycle. We'll be building a country of opportunity and energy where our kids can thrive. We can do these things. We can rebound strongly from the cyclone. We can navigate the global pandemic of inflation. We can invest in the skills the innovation required to power up for the future. We can build back better we can build back safer and we can build back smarter and we will do that by working together. So let's get cracking.SPEAKER: The question is that the motion be agreed to."