O'Connor DamienHon DAMIEN O'CONNOR (Minister of Agriculture): Thank you very much Mr Speaker and this is the first opportunity I've had to speak in the House post-COVID and as I came into Parliament yesterday—Hon Louise Upston: Unbelievable! I hope you're allowed to speak freely. Or the Speaker might shut you down.SPEAKER: Order! The member's had her five minutes. Mr O'Connor please start again.Hon DAMIEN O'CONNOR: This is the first opportunity I've had to say a few words in this House. I came back to Parliament yesterday; on my desk was 23 March" the diary for the last day that I was here. And like many New Zealanders we went away at that time into a period of unknown not quite certain of what the next weeks would bring to us.I think like most New Zealanders we are proud to be Kiwis. I would like to say that the efforts of each and every New Zealander—or the vast majority with very few exceptions—over the past six weeks have been outstanding. What we have done to not eliminate but to get ahead of a virus which is ravaging the world has been outstanding—5 million Kiwis in isolation which has given us an advantage taking on a discipline and I guess adopting some practices: staying at home like many Kiwis; long hair a bit scruff; not too certain many of them of course about their future in their jobs or their business; tough times for the vast majority of Kiwis whatever way you look at it. Yet we've come through this to a point now where if we maintain the discipline and the focus if we can lock in the advantages and the progress that we've made we will be acknowledged internationally perhaps as the first country to really get ahead of this virus.I want to thank firstly my Prime Minister and her leadership. I want to thank my senior parliamentary and Cabinet colleagues for what they have done in a team around here in Wellington in making the tough calls—yes as part of a team but getting on and putting in a huge amount of effort—to move New Zealand into a position that hopefully will enable us to get back to some form of normality as quickly as possible. I'd like to acknowledge the essential workers across health across healthcare across the police but also in the area of primary industries where early on it was acknowledged that the production of food and the biological and seasonal cycles of agriculture and horticulture—we needed to get on and pick the grapes pick the fruit milk the cows and continue to maintain the base of our economy and the biological systems that support that. That came at a huge risk. The people involved took on that challenge maintained a discipline made the changes and have so far proven to deliver no major outbreak of COVID. Yes there has been the odd case but not in any way to contribute to a cluster. So thank you for producing the food thank you for keeping law and order thank you for looking after the people who need healthcare.I've heard in the last couple of days in the House here of course reference to freeing things up opening things up moving on as though we have beaten this—well we have not. I guess in the one area of freedom of religious expression—I'm a Catholic probably not practising as much as my mother would like—but like so many I guess having the privilege of understanding that there is a greater being out there and I guess we don't all go to a church or to a location every week or maybe every month or every year to acknowledge our religion and our religious beliefs. I think the people who have gone online or through their own personal ways shown their commitment to religion can continue to do that for another week or two to ensure that we stay ahead of this. This is not some restriction on the rights of New Zealanders. We trust New Zealanders as much as we trust them across all parts of our community and our economy.In the end we need laws for the few people who would not choose to adhere to what we would call the conventions of our lives. That's what making the law is about—protecting us from them them from themselves—and the few people who might not want to adhere to the social distancing to the preventative measures that we have in place now may be the ones that contribute to another cluster or outbreak of COVID-19 and we don't want to return to a level 4 situation. So maintaining the progress locking that in and moving forward while not restricting unnecessarily the rights of New Zealanders is the objective of this Government and we'll continue to work collaboratively and collectively to achieve that goal."