Sharma GauravDr GAURAV SHARMA (Labour—Hamilton West): Kia ora Mr Speaker. It's an absolute pleasure of mine today to speak in the House during this general debate. I guess the general theme of this debate is around the foundation of our recovery and what I interpret this to mean is recovery from nine years of a National Government which severely underfunded everything from housing to health. Today we celebrate 105 years of the Labour Party and just last week I celebrated my own 34th birthday and what a way to celebrate: the Labour-led Government has given the best birthday present anybody could ever ask for. On 1 July a raft of initiatives kicked in to support New Zealand's economic recovery from COVID which also addressed child poverty housing and climate change. These include a main benefit increase after tax by $20 per adult per week. In addition to this the training incentive allowance will support high-level study for sole parents on benefits and carers and disabled people on supported living payment. We also extended the unsupported child's benefit and orphans benefit to short-term caregivers of children who are unable to live with their parents. We increased the paid parental leave rates established a ministry of ethnic affairs and started a new migrant exploitation protection visa to protect migrants and help them leave exploitative situations. We've started a new rebate for electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles and my favourite one is around the healthy home standard which means many of our communities will get to live in a dry warm home for the first time in their lives. The list is exhaustive but it would be a disservice to not mention the incredible work this Government has done in the most beautiful city in the country which as you know is Hamilton or rather the Hamilton West electorate where you used to be the member of Parliament Mr Speaker. The biggest challenge for me is just—SPEAKER: I left. Dr GAURAV SHARMA: Well I think it probably got the award after you left—sorry. SPEAKER: Oh! Dr GAURAV SHARMA: The biggest challenge for me is to choose just a few of these projects from an exhaustive list. I want to first of all start talking about the incentives that the Government gave during the COVID pandemic. I used to be a front-line healthcare worker—you know swabbing patients on the front line—and at that point the Government gave $853 million to 129000 people followed by $156 million to another 36000 and $17 million to another 16000 in resurgence. That's $1 billion given out to people for wage subsidy during this time.Before I finish the rest of my speech I just want to go on a bit of a side-line story. At the medical practice I used to work at there was a worker there and well before COVID they got in touch with me one time and they said You know your Government"—I was still a candidate then—"is hell-bent on giving away money to people and people who apparently don't want to improve their situation." We had quite a long conversation around supporting people who need help and because of various reasons they end up in those situations. Well during COVID this person pretty much got fired on the phone line by their boss without any notice without following the contract that should have been followed and the Government did help them with the wage subsidy. The same person got back to me and said "For the first time in my life I realised that people do need a helping hand when they are in trouble and often the situation isn't in people's own control." He's really appreciative of the help that the Government gave him at that point and has changed his whole view on providing help to people. But anyway coming back to the great work the Government's done in Waikato especially in health: $106 million as part of the health capital funding has been allocated $32 million for increased capacity around speciality services and $100 million for a new acute mental health facility. In transport we launched Te Huia train service from Hamilton to Papakura which received $85.8 million funding and $8.2 million has been invested in the Hamilton to Cambridge section of Te Awa cycleway. This year alone $500 million from Waka Kotahi will go towards 398 kilometres of State highway being maintained resealed and repaired in Hamilton. That's a lot of investment by the Government in Hamilton. As part of the shovel-ready project $23.8 million towards Waikato Regional Council—that's part of the climate resilience package—$1.64 million to help eight Pasifika churches $13.9 million for 53 maraes and creating 363 jobs. I'm also looking forward to the new alcohol and drug rehab court which was recently opened by Minister Faafoi and the Hon Aupito William Sio. Thank you."