SpeechDr ANAE NERU LEAVASA (Labour—Takanini): Fa'afetai lava Madam Speaker for the opportunity to speak on the Prime Minister's statement. And again like all my colleagues before me I want to say happy New Year across the House manuia le Tausaga Fou.I acknowledge Madam Speaker your work as well with the most recent Tonga disaster with their eruption. Madam Speaker thank you for your work with Anahila as well as co-chairs of the Aotearoa Tonga Relief Committee and well done on sending those containers full of relief for the community there. I've listened to the contributions across the House and I've heard the Opposition say they have no confidence in this Government and I'm thinking to myself which country do they live in? And like my colleague Greg O" behind me—Hon Member: Which planet do they live on?Dr ANAE NERU LEAVASA: Yes which planet? Yes I wonder. It's almost like they're in The Twilight Zone. But I just want to say you know I've heard from Simeon Brown in his contribution that we're "all talk and no action". I thought he was talking about his own party right there. I would say that they're all talk and no plan because that's all we've heard—it's all hot air and no balloons flying anywhere. But I just want to point out the things that this Government has done in order to combat COVID. Our cases hospitalisations and deaths have been the lowest. And again you've heard that across on this side of the House because that is one of the markers of how well this response has done for COVID. It's been the lowest in the OECD for each of the past two years. I wonder if they have confidence in those numbers. Ninety-four percent of our eligible population is fully vaccinated and our boosters are heading in the right direction—up to today it's 53 percent. I wonder if they on that side of the House have confidence in those numbers. Our unemployment is at a record low and record numbers of New Zealanders have moved off the main benefit into work. Again I wonder if that side of the House have confidence in that. All these things are just some markers and numbers that show the collective effort that this Government and the team of 5 million have done to protect the lives and livelihoods of our community. Our policy is protect jobs and therefore saving businesses as well. The Leader of the Opposition yesterday hearing what he was saying and I wonder—one of the first things he wanted to do when he came into that position was to have "Freedom Day" in December. And it certainly would have been "freedom" day—it would have been freedom for the Omicron variant to run rampant in our community and therefore cause unnecessary illnesses and therefore lead to unnecessary harm for our community. So I'm confident in this Government in making sure that those numbers have improved and protecting our community. I look to a couple of things that our Prime Minister has made in her statement one of them being keeping people safe and keeping our whānau safe. Omicron did come—we saw globally how difficult it was for other Governments to manage the infectious nature of this new variant—and I'm glad that this Government had a plan to make sure that we slow down and limit the spread of the outbreak. The COVID-19 Protection Framework that was set up in order to make sure that we took into consideration the high vaccination rates and now boosters in order to control the spread of the virus and make sure that the economy was kept ticking over.No country is immune we've heard that but with the markers and the details and results of this COVID response I'm glad that the public health response has done really well and again in partnership with our community. The investment into COVID-19 treatments has improved—we've funded now therapies when people do get COVID-19 in order to make sure that they don't go into hospital and therefore ICU admission. Those are the antivirals and also antibodies that'll make sure that we boost the immune system of our community. Boosters are our strongest weapon and I want to acknowledge and make sure that our community go and get their boosters—53 percent is a good number. We're on the right track but let us keep going with that. Lastly again I want to acknowledge the amount of work that our health providers our community providers and social providers have done in this pandemic and the amount of work they're going to be doing in the next short months and weeks. I acknowledge them. Kia kaha. Faamalosi malo le tautua faafetai lava."