SpeechMARJA LUBECK (Labour): Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare. Thank you Madam Speaker. I can't recall much from the speech of the Leader of the Opposition but I do recall that he mentioned be buys his cheese for $16 or $17 a kilo. I just received a message from my husband. He says We buy it for $10.60 every week not even when it's on special." So he might want to shop around a little bit out of that expensive deli that he might normally be visiting.But in all seriousness New Zealanders have done the mahi and in large numbers they have gone through lockdowns they masked up they physically distanced and on mass they have vaccinated they've taken their boosters and generally as a country we have looked after each other and our communities. And as a result what we've seen in New Zealand is we have fewer COVID cases and we have fewer hospitalisations and deaths than anywhere else in the OECD. And it's also fantastic to see that we now have 4 million New Zealanders—that's 94 percent of our country—fully vaccinated and also 1.5 million New Zealanders have already taken their booster vaccination. So awesome effort from the team of 5 million.But it's not to say in any way that these last few years haven't been stressful. In fact we know that many have done it really tough. But no country has been immune from COVID and as the Prime Minister said in her speech no country is immune from the Omicron disruption but we are and we have been working very hard to make sure that we avoid the worst of that.Like many others border closures meant that I was separated from loved ones. In my case that meant that I was separated from my family in the Netherlands. And while in New Zealand we were able to have our lives pretty much as normal for the last two years with greater freedoms than in most other countries I could see how being locked up and stuck in their homes for fear of going out and not being safe took its toll on my parents. And at the same time I also feared for the health and wellbeing of my sister who works in a place where they look after the more vulnerable and the elderly and where in fact many many died during the COVID outbreaks. It's not only that; when a country gets overwhelmed with COVID the health services get strained to the point of breaking and it means that many people can't get their healthcare.So it's very stressful when you fear your parents getting sick or when you fear that you may never see them again. And it's agonising to have to watch family overseas not able to get the healthcare that they need. So like many others did I applied for managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) and to get a room so I could travel to my whānau in the Netherlands and help out where I could. And seventh time lucky in the MIQ ballot I managed to secure one of those rooms.But putting the record straight it wasn't exactly the summer holiday that some have referred to. First of all when I arrived in the Netherlands that week it was minus 4 degrees; so that is hardly summer. But also as they had in 2020 Holland very quickly had to lock up all over Christmas and well into the New Year. As I said it was the second year in a row they had to do that because cases were rising—and I don't mean they were rising into the hundreds; they were rising into the thousands and then into the tens of thousands. And in the Netherlands the vaccination rate is roughly in the middle 80s and also what they don't do that many people may find surprising is they don't have QR codes and they don't do contact tracing.So what living with the virus means in a country with a population of 17 million—which is roughly only just about three times New Zealand's size—living with the virus means that 21336 people have died from COVID and many more including my family are suffering from long COVID. And sure the shops and the restaurants and the bars may be open but the virus is going rampant. In the last 24 hours they had 77000 new cases—77000 cases in a day. So 1500 people in hospital with 215 seriously ill in ICU and that means that living with the virus means for so many that they can't actually live life at all and every day families lose loved ones and they have since the very first day this pandemic started.So that's the setting when I say that I count my blessings every day for the fact that New Zealand had their approach to COVID. I count my blessings every day for our brilliant leader Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern for how she led our team and the team of 5 million in keeping ourselves our communities and everyone safe. Thank you Madam Speaker."