SpeechHon TIM MACINDOE (National—Hamilton West): I'd like to begin by sending fond greetings to the great people of New Zealand's most desirable city Hamilton. I'm very fond of them; some of them have been remarkably tolerant of me over the years. In particular I'd like to acknowledge the constituents of Hamilton West and I say that with some seriousness because over the last 12 years I've been used to seeing thousands of them at regular intervals—at community events at festivals at different ethnic functions in my constituent appointments and so forth—and this has been an extraordinary time when we have been separated. I've got to know my own neighbours remarkably well and what a delightful group of people they are. We live on the edge of a park and so I've seen many of them as they've walked past with their dogs. In fact I've seen some exhausted dogs and some very fit ones who I think have had more exercise in the last two months than they had in the previous two years. But always I've been impressed by how positive people have been by the team spirit that has been evident and I am very grateful. That has served us well and all New Zealanders deserve our acknowledgment and our thanks for what they have sacrificed in many cases in very difficult circumstances for a collective effort in getting on top of COVID. We're not entirely there yet but we've done well and we should acknowledge that progress.I want to join other MPs in thanking the essential services whether they work in the healthcare or the emergency services area the cleaners the drivers the farmers—you name it. All of the people who have continued to work so hard deserve our acknowledgment but so too do those who've worked at home and who have managed to keep small businesses going doing whatever they can. It's been difficult and in many cases it's put businesses under unbearable pressure and we understand that; that's why I hope tomorrow's Budget will recognise that in particular the small-business owners who desperately need more wage subsidy assistance. But we do have much that we can build on. The important thing is that we get back to work; so I'm so glad that we are finally moving into level 2 tonight.I was very glad to be able to run an art competition within the Waikato region for primary and intermediate schoolchildren to be able to thank the essential workers and some of the schools in the area really got into it. I would love to mention all of the results. The first three year-group winners were published in the Waikato Times or their pictures were in the Waikato Times on Monday of this week and year 4 should be published any day now. I will say that Kawena Daniels was highly commended in year 4 for her picture of the Prime Minister and Dr Ashley Bloomfield at their press conference and it is an absolute delight. I do hope it'll be published. I sent it to the Prime Minister and to Dr Bloomfield and boy I was impressed that Dr Bloomfield wrote back to Kawena and thanked her and told her how thrilled he was with that picture. Considering how busy he was I thought that was pretty classy—so well done.I want to thank the public servants who've worked so hard. I mentioned them in a debate last night; now it's more appropriate for me to do that. Whether they've been in the Ministry of Social Development where they were really swamped particularly with wage subsidy issues but also a large number of issues to do with extra numbers going on to benefits—boy they stepped up and it was difficult but they deserve our acknowledgment. So too do the officials in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. I had to contact them on several occasions because like all constituent MPs I had constituents who were trapped abroad sometimes in extraordinary places—islands off the coast of Ecuador and that sort of thing. It's not easy to get people home from those places in the circumstances that we've faced. But I have been so impressed by all of those public servants. I want to give a big shout-out to the unflappable Alma and Sam who've been at the other end of the elected officials email and phone line for MPs. I'm so glad we had that because there were so many issues that we had to deal with that; without their help we'd have really been in trouble. So they and all of the people who helped them deserve our collective thanks.Constituents kept us incredibly busy. I have to say that in 12 years as the MP for Hamilton West at the local electorate level I have never been busier. I'm actually quite glad that Parliament was adjourned because we couldn't have coped with the parliamentary demands given the bewildering array of issues that we were having to deal with many of which were deeply distressing such as relatives who were unable to be with dying members of their family; those who were unable unfortunately to leave to be at funerals for those who had died; those I've already mentioned who were needing to access the wage subsidies; and there were thousands of businesses including in my own area many of whom came to us for help; those who were helping to feed the homeless—and my heart goes out to those people at any time but I am so grateful that there were wonderful people helping to feed the homeless.So there were great demands but it's always a great privilege to be an MP particularly an electorate MP never more so than in the last few weeks. I want to thank in particular also my executive assistant Claire Barlow my electorate agents all of whom have worked incredibly hard.