Halbert ShananSHANAN HALBERT (Labour—Northcote): E te Māngai o te Whare tēnā koe. Ki ngā kaiurungi o Tāmaki-makau-rau i tēnei wā ka mihi atu ki a koutou. Kia kaha ki a koutou kia haumaru.[To the Speaker greetings. To the leaders in Auckland at this time I send my greetings. Be strong and stay safe.]It's great to be back in the House with my parliamentary colleagues. Can I just affirm and acknowledge that COVID grumpiness is a thing for Aucklanders at the moment but it's great to see everyone—including my colleagues in Opposition across the House. Can I just speak in support of our Prime Minister visiting Tāmaki-makau-rau today. It is not staged; she is there and can I remind them of their election visits on Ponsonby Road—speaking of staging. But I'm very keen to be back in the House and getting on with the important issues for the people of the North Shore—not moaning on the sidelines—securing our recovery getting on with it and supporting people to protect our environment to build more houses on the Shore to support our local hospitals our schools and ensuring that we're building infrastructure that our growing city desperately needs. We need to get on to it.But I've got to say that it has been wet in Auckland over these past few months and it's been difficult for everyone; for all of our community. It's been good for our water-storage dams but it's added to the challenges that we have faced in working in schooling and in living from home. But we are now on the countdown to 90 percent double-vaxxed in my community and we have a very strong expectation that we will move to the traffic light system when Cabinet considers this in just under three weeks.My electorate office today tells me that Auckland has beautiful blue skies it's sunny and something else too: it's a great day for shopping. Birkenhead Avenue is busy and our Highbury Centre Glenfield Mall and Northcote Town Centre have been looking forward to all of our shoppers coming back. Our local businesses are very much locally owned and we will get in behind them and support local.But securing the return of our retail outlets is possible because of the hard work of local people in our communities that have been doing the hard mahi: getting on getting our vaccination rates up beyond 90 percent first dose on the North Shore. They are our COVID heroes and I want to put on record my very heartfelt thanks to them. I especially want to acknowledge the staff at the Birkenhead Vaccination Centre that has served Auckland's North Shore. They've regularly been the second-busiest across the whole of Auckland; it is a tremendous effort and I congratulate them.I also want to acknowledge Te Puna Hauora in Northcote the fono too for their work in especially targeting our Māori and Pacific community on the North Shore in their vaccinations and to Kāinga Ora too who have worked solidly to get the vaccination rates of their residents up in Birkdale and Beach Haven in Northcote Central. They are a major landlord where some of the planned 1700 beautiful new social and affordable houses are getting on and being built in new communities. And a big shout-out to our local Mormon church in Beach Haven who partnered with our Samoan community and our Tongan community at the Wairua event centre and ran very very successful mass-vaccination events on Super Saturday. It was an incredible event and we are very very blessed to have such a strong community-led response that brings kotahitanga to our community and higher rates of vaccination.As much as lockdown has been necessary to keep our families safe from Delta while we've lifted vaccination rates it's been hard and I want to acknowledge that in the House today. We have all felt it and I want to say to my community: thank you very much for staying home thank you for staying safe and thank you for getting vaccinated.I also want to thank some special people; people that have been delivering food packages sanitary packs out to the most vulnerable in our North Shore community. The North Shore Māori wardens the Birkdale Beach Haven Community Project and the Glenfield Salvation Army. Incredible people that have been out there looking after our community as well as our local businesses that we've brought on to be a part of this effort. The Birkenhead New World Bakers Delight Oceanz Seafood and KiwiHarvest. Without them we could not have done the tremendous efforts to support over 400 families in our local backyard in Northcote.But we can continue to moan and groan. We can feel the ruts that COVID-19 and Delta have brought upon us. But today is the day where we take a step forward. Our shops are open and our community is excited. We get to rebuild and work on our recovery moving forward as a country.