SpeechHon STUART NASH (Minister for Economic and Regional Development): Thank you very much Madam Speaker and we love you Minister Faafoi and the work you've been doing. I was in a bottle store recently buying something for my wife of course and the guy there said Are you Stuart Nash?"—I was all masked up of course—and I said "I am." He said "Please say thank you to Minister Faafoi. I became a resident yesterday." Every single one of the MPs of both sides of the House have heard these stories because we have made a real difference Minister Faafoi and thank you very much. I have been in Cabinet ever since COVID reached our shores—ever since we heard about COVID—and one thing I will say is that every single decision that this Government has made and every single meeting that the Prime Minister has chaired where COVID has been brought forward has put the health and wellbeing of our communities at the very centre. Every single discussion we have is about how we can protect the health and wellbeing of our communities. You will have heard the Prime Minister say and you'll hear the Minister of Finance say that there is no global rulebook or playbook for managing a pandemic and we acknowledge in hindsight that perhaps a couple of the decisions we made we would have done things differently. But we went forward with a no-regrets policy and I honestly believe that when the history of COVID is written the Government led by our Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and the economic response led by our Minister of Finance Grant Robertson will be at the very top of performance around the world. As every single member has alluded to we have the lowest death rate and the lowest hospitalisation rates.I used to do a show. I did it for five years—it was on Mike Hosking—and we kept talking about the Government's response. Mike Hosking is one of these guys who is always right in hindsight—he is always right in hindsight. He kept going on about the Government's response and I said to him "Mike we have the lowest death rate in the world." He said "Oh well that might be one measure." and I said "Well I think how many Kiwis have died is a pretty important measure." He used to talk about Sweden—"We need to follow Sweden." Well what I can tell you is that in Stockholm there are about 990000 people. There are about 1.5 million people in Auckland. There have been about 4500 deaths from COVID in Stockholm. Imagine the conversations we would be having in this House let alone around the dinner tables and barbecues if there'd been 4500 deaths in Auckland. They would be completely different to the conversations we have been having. We would not have had the summer we've just had. If you have a look at the economic intelligence unit's report we were number two in the world in terms of democratic institutions. I absolutely believe as mentioned that I think history will prove us right that our response has been at the very top.The other thing I'd say about Mike Hosking is I made a bet with my good friend but Opposition MP Mark Mitchell and Mike Hosking in September that we would reach 90 percent double-vaxxed by the end of the year. Mike said to me "Not a hope in hell. It's never been done anywhere around the world and I'll take you up on that bet but I hope I lose."—those were pretty much his words. Well he lost. He said "It's impossible." We said that there's a difference between impossible and aspirational and if there's one thing this Government is it is aspirational because we backed Kiwis. We knew we could get there we knew the Kiwis would buy into the reason for getting vaccinated and they did. I won that bet by about a month and Mike Hosking still hasn't paid—Mike pay up mate.But we won that bet. When Mike said "It's never been done anywhere around the world." well Jacinda Ardern said "It doesn't mean that we can't do it and we're not going to say we won't do it because we know we can." and Kiwis bought into it. As mentioned every single decision that Jacinda has taken has put our best interests at heart.The second thing I would say is that not every sector of our economy or our community has done particularly well. As the Minister for Tourism I'm in charge of a portfolio where there are many businesses that have done it really really tough and I would like to acknowledge the men and women who work in tourism—the men and women who pre-COVID had a fantastic business model and were delivering a magic experience to all the international visitors who flocked to our wonderful country—and they have done it tough. As the Minister for Tourism I would have been down to Queenstown about six times. I've been to every single district that we have identified had a reliance on international tourists and I've heard the stories and they are of men and woman as mentioned who could never foresee this. A number of them have managed to adapt their business model but it is still tough. But the message I want to give to them is that we are nearly there. We have a plan in place and we are nearly there so hang on.We've already provided $600 million in direct support to tourism. We provided $600 million in resurgence support payments to tourist and hospitality businesses so there has been an immense amount of support and I know for a number of them it is still really tough. But I want to say to those businesses thank you for the work that you have done thank you for holding on and thank you for believing in us. We believe in you and I back you 100 percent and we will get there and once again deliver the tourism experience that meets or exceeds the expectation of every tourist who comes to this country.However I have been very clear that tourism won't look the same as it did pre-COVID. Pre-COVID there were 875000 tourists in Milford Sound every year. That was not sustainable and we were losing the social licence with our communities. We need to take that back and we need to move from sustainable to regenerative tourism. Regenerative tourism is about tourism adding value to our communities and we're working very closely with the sector to deliver on that.Small businesses: before COVID I used to say that this will be the last generation of business owner that will survive let alone thrive without being digitally enabled and the reason I said that was because as the Minister of Revenue at the time Inland Revenue were moving everything online. Every single initiative we were putting in place rested on a digital platform. But what's happened is that because of COVID this whole digital transformation has been brought forward by a substantial amount. McKinsey & Co. believe that in the United States about five years' worth of digital transformation took place in eight weeks and I believe the same has happened here. But we recognise that for a number of businessmen and businesswomen they were very good at what they did but they weren't digitally capable in a way that we needed them to be. Hence the reason why we put in Digital Boost. It's a free service. There are hundreds of videos so businessmen and businesswomen can start their digital journey right from the very beginning or jump in at any point in time. So far there are 27000 businesses that have taken up that challenge and I think they'll be a lot better for it when we get out of this.I did hear a member talk about our police and I do want to say that I was a very very proud Minister of Police. I oversaw the investment of 1800 graduates. We backed the police in a way that we have never done before. When I took over the police portfolio I took over in a period where the numbers had dropped in the previous three years of the last Government—and I can see one of the former members Judith Collins there. But the thing I'll say about her is I saw the Cabinet paper she put up and she was overruled when she wanted more numbers. But we oversaw that. I went to every single graduation except one when I was in Mexico and another one when COVID hit—they said "You couldn't get back if you went to this."—and goodness me I saw the fantastic men and woman who chose the New Zealand Police service as a career. I back them 100 percent. I think they do a magnificent job at keeping us safe and the thing about our police service is that the vast majority of Kiwis just do not know what they do 24/7 to keep us safe. I'm very proud of the way that we have really moved the police service into the 21st century. The last thing I'd like to say in the final couple of minutes is about economic development. This is very important in a post-COVID world and the thing that will lead us out of this is our industry transformation plans. We understand that as a country we have a number of global competitive advantages a number of unique selling points. We can go out to the world and say "Buy New Zealand." They used to say that we can feed the world. We can't; we can feed about 50 million people. That's the figures and Mr David Bennett knows this—he's a dairy farmer.So what we should be doing always is aiming at the ultra-premium end of the market whether it's our food whether it's our services whatever we deliver or whether it's tourism—that ultra-premium end of the market—because that's where we need to play and that is where the industry transformation plans will take us. It's about looking at sectors—advanced manufacturing forestry and wood-processing Minister Clark's leading IT tourism agritech construction food and beverage—and saying "What do we need to do to encourage these industries and businesses that operate within these industries to be the absolute best?" We recognise that the Government does have a really important role to play to work alongside these industry sectors to help them be the best they possibly can be. We don't tell them what to do; we ask them how we can help them be better. The process so far has been transformational but we're just along that path at the moment.I would just like to finish by saying I am incredibly proud to be a member of this Parliament to be the MP for Napier and to be a member of Cabinet as we have made what are I believe some of the toughest decisions any Cabinet has had to make for a generation. Thank you very much."