Seymour DavidDAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Thank you Mr Speaker. I'm sure a man of your vintage frequently listens to the tunes of Jay-Z and you'll be aware of the song 99 Problems! It seems relevant to this Government. They've got more than 99 problems but what they don't have is 99 problem solvers. They don't have a practical approach to addressing the issues that New Zealanders are confronting day by day. Let's start with what's happening in the hospitals in the GP clinics in the care homes up and down this country—4000 nurses short. And what do we hear from the Government? We don't know. There's a fast track but the Prime Minister can't tell us how many people are on the fast track to immigrate into New Zealand. What would a Government that took a practical approach to addressing urgent problems do about the shortage of nurses? Well first of all they'd make the immigration fast track genuine. They would make it as competitive if not more competitive than what Australia offers but they can't. And the reason is they don't understand that the world's changed. It's not a case of being able to pick and choose people wanting to come here. We're in a war for talent where we need to attract people. Australia gets it. Canada gets it. They rolled out the red carpet as soon as COVID was over and they moved on and took people in. New Zealand has a Government that campaigned on reducing immigration to only 10000. That's why they're so confused. That's why they say they're fast tracking nurses but they can't say how many. Here's another thing you could do if you had a practical approach to the problem of a nursing shortage. Well you could say: we stood down 518 due to mandates in November. You know what? We're not mandating the flu vaccine. Half of the medical profession hasn't had that and there's more flu in the hospitals than COVID today. So why do we lose 500 nurses in the middle of a shortage due to a lack of COVID vaccines? That is illogical. That is insanity. We should dump those mandates and get as many of those 518 stood down in November back in the hospital now. Here's the other thing that people that work in hospitals tell me. Our isolation rules are unworkable. The Prime Minister found this herself. Her partner got COVID—a week in isolation. Then she got it and had another week. That is happening in families across New Zealand. Every principal of every school is suffering at losing a teacher for two weeks because of a few days of infectiousness. That's what's happening in the hospitals. They're losing their nurses. We should do what Singapore does and say you've got 72 hours stand-down; out with a negative test. We should dump the household requirement just as Australia for example has so that people can get back to work. That's just one of the 99-plus problems that we could solve if we took a practical approach to the shortage of nurses. Then you've got the extraordinary circumstance of an industrialised First World Western nation that is falling over itself for a shortage of plasterboard. You can't make this stuff up. It is literally a sandwich of cardboard and plaster of Paris and you can't get it for love nor money in New Zealand. And what's this Government done? Well they're going to appoint another working group. They're actually going to have a ministerial task force. Let me make a prediction. This task force will soak up the time until Fletcher's new factory comes on stream and then when Fletcher's back on stream we'll forget about the task force: business as usual. Man you've got to admire Fletcher's lobbying and the outcomes that they get. Wow. But that's what's going to happen. A Government that was committed to practical problem solving would do what ACT proposed just yesterday. We would say MBIE you need to create a materials equivalence register." And on that register are materials that are equivalent to plasterboard from around the world. You can get applicants within New Zealand who can ask to be put on them and if other countries already have materials registered then the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment should proactively seek them out and put them on the register. If we can't do that why did we just hire an extra 14000 full-time equivalents in the Public Service over five years? What are all these people doing if they can't solve a problem as simple and straightforward as that? That would then be followed by solutions on crime. I wish we had more time to give those but let me finish with one that is salient to New Zealand's long-term future. The world is changing. The Chinese Communist Party who are a totalitarian dictatorship are building their influence right against New Zealand's area of interest. What a practical foreign affairs Minister would do is take those Kiwis of Pacific origin in business the arts and sport—take them on a road show of the Pacific and say "We're back folks. We're your friends we're here to help and be careful of those people offering you money." That's what they could do. But what's our Minister of Foreign Affairs done? Three waters and the co-governance of everything! Forced on New Zealanders. What a shame."