Sepuloni CarmelDEBATE ON PRIME MINISTER'S STATEMENTDebate resumed from 21 February.Hon CARMEL SEPULONI (Deputy Prime Minister): I just want to start by saying that we as a country have a lot to be proud of and what we have come to realise over the course of the last 3½ weeks is that one of those things is that in the midst of hard times New Zealanders do come together and do recognise there is strength in solidarity. On 27 January as many Aucklanders were just settling in to what was meant to be the long anniversary weekend the weather system hit suddenly. As a result of this night four people lost their lives. Many more would be homeless and thousands would be wondering if their house would remain habitable. My aroha goes out to all of these people and their families.That night I saw firsthand the true spirit of our nation as we banded together to help one another. First responders went above and beyond to make sure people were able to get to safe places. In my own electorate of Kelston the spirit of a community came together to make sure our people had a safe warm and above all dry place to spend the night. What we saw was individuals and families walking through the doors of that hall at St Leonards Road School in Kelston having experienced trauma and also coming with a number of complex challenges. I met many of those families and many of them shared with me their stories and their experiences and it is incredibly humbling when you are sitting there in the middle of the night listening to these traumatic stories firsthand and people are sharing with you the horrible circumstances that they have had to endure.I'll never forget the family that came through who spoke of the woman having been trapped inside her house. The water had risen to such an extent that the front door would not open and she could not get out. The back door when she opened it—there had been a slip; so she could not get out the back and she could not escape through a window. She was fortunate she was able to get her hands on a cellphone to ring 111 and was rescued by the emergency services. I spoke to one woman who carried her child up the street with water up to her neck and had to rely on a neighbour to take over given the height of the water and the difficulty she was having carrying her child. Not only did they experience trauma but they came in with a number of complex challenges. It became apparent very quickly that a number of people had lost their medication in the floods—one woman with breast cancer; a number of people with high blood pressure and heart conditions; one man who had only 30 percent vision and had lost his eye drops and needed them urgently to be able to retain the vision that he did have; a tetraplegic man came in on that night because he was flooded out of his house.These are the very real and traumatic experiences that New Zealanders endured not only in Auckland. Within a week we had another weather event. The cyclones have meant that Auckland Northland the Coromandel the Bay of Plenty the East Coast the Wairarapa and the Hawke's Bay have all been tragically affected by what ensued from the weather events. But again just like I saw in Kelston we have seen communities band together and come together to support the people that were affected. Sadly 11 more New Zealanders are known to have lost their lives with more missing or still unaccounted for. Our hearts all in this House—I know this is true—go out to their families and communities who are grieving right now.These extreme weather events have taught us many lessons which we will apply in the rebuild and recovery but they have also shown us the very best of us. They have shown that we as a nation have each other's backs when the chips are down. Yesterday the Prime Minister laid out for this House the Government's intentions for supporting New Zealand families and businesses through these difficult times. I want to echo what the Prime Minister said yesterday: our Government's number one priority is to support New Zealand families and businesses through difficult economic conditions and the impact of cyclone and floods. We are committed to building back better building back safer and building back smarter. The Prime Minister and Minister Robertson will have more details on the cyclone and flood recovery in the coming weeks.There has been a number of things that I have been reflecting on over the course of the last few weeks but one of them is the importance of our welfare system and I have said on a number of occasions over the course of the last five years that our welfare system is there for every New Zealander. Quite often there is a stigma attached to the welfare system and assertions that there are only certain groups of New Zealanders that need to access the support. This weather event showed us why it's important to recognise that the welfare system is there for everyone. We've had $36 million go out already in civil defence payments. Over 72000 people have accessed those civil defence payments. We've had Ministry of Social Development staff at almost all evacuation centres where possible across the country not working by themselves but working alongside the very important community groups and iwi organisations and first responders to form that collaborative effort that needs to be there to support these whānau during difficult times. It also made me reflect on where we started with the welfare system which was changing the culture to ensure that all New Zealanders had their dignity upheld by the welfare system and I think at this point in time and I would hope every person in this House should agree that when New Zealanders are experiencing traumatic experiences—in this particular example it is weather events and having to evacuate their homes in many instances—they deserve to be able to turn to a welfare system that upholds their dignity and works for them.I do want to recognise the community iwi organisations and NGOs that have been working. Many of them got in there early. They used the resource that they had. Fortunately a number were set up because they'd been resourced through Care in the Community but they were able to use that resource to immediately respond to the needs of whānau. In those early days when I spoke to social services and community organisations they were very clear with me that they would have enough for that time but it would be important that we turned our eye to what they would need in the coming weeks and we've certainly done that. We announced last week the $11.5 million package that would be there to support them in some instances to help replenish the stocks that they have exhausted because of the support they have been providing people impacted by the weather events—and in many instances to support them for what will come because the recovery will not be instant. There will be many families who will continue to experience challenges because of what has occurred.I also want to point out the importance of workforce at this time. We have spent the last five years investing in areas where we've had workforce shortages particularly in areas like trades and apprenticeships. We are going to need them more than ever over the coming months as we recover and rebuild and I want to acknowledge that that investment was to address the workforce shortages we were already experiencing but I also want to acknowledge that we can't take our foot off the accelerator now and this Government's focus and prioritisation on building the workforce that we need for New Zealand continues to be a priority and will be more important than ever given the horrific impacts that we have seen on people's homes across the country.I want to end by making sure that I fully thank and acknowledge all of the people who have been out there helping those families that have been impacted. In my own electorate we have had former All Blacks we have had community groups we have iwi on the ground—we've got many volunteers that aren't necessarily getting paid to provide support to these whānau many of them impacted in some way too by the floods or the cyclone. And I know that that effort is being replicated across the country. So I want to acknowledge each and every one of those people who are undertaking that work. I want to encourage them because the work will continue for some time and we need to continue to work in solidarity if we are going to address the needs of the whānau and communities that have been impacted by these weather events. Mālō 'aupito.