Hipkins ChrisHon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Education): It has been an incredible year and there has not been a morning that has gone by where I haven't woken up and come to work and felt incredibly honoured and privileged to be able to serve as a Minister in this Government. Not a day has gone by where I haven't been humbled by the commitment and dedication of all of our public servants throughout the country. We thank predominantly today those who serve us directly here at Parliament but I also want to send my thanks to everybody throughout the country who has committed their life to public service.I'd also like to take a moment to thank the families of all of our members of Parliament. There are many sacrifices MPs' families make in order for us to be able to do our jobs. They get us back for a few weeks. I'm sure they're looking forward to that and I'm sure they're then looking forward to us coming back here again at the end of that. But I do want to acknowledge our families and thank them.Mr Speaker I know that you'll go through the numbers from the House at the end of this year but I just want to reflect on one or two of those. At last count the House has passed 51 bills into law this year. Only four of those bills have been the subject of any form of urgency. That is probably a record low in recent times for the use of parliamentary urgency. To give some comparative figures in the first year of the last National Government—2009—55 bills were passed but 33 of those were the subject of parliamentary urgency. We have brought an end to that unnecessary use of parliamentary urgency and that is a very welcome thing.The other number that I would like to reflect on is the 40203 written questions that have been answered or are being answered during the year so far. I thank all of the staff who put an enormous amount of effort into answering those.I was somewhat taken earlier in the week by a video clip on Facebook of a member of the Australian Parliament singing a happy Christmas to the Australian people to the tune of The Sound of Silence" by Simon and Garfunkel. Members will be very pleased to know that I'm not going to follow suit in doing that but I did reflect on what members might have on their playlists for the coming summer break.Simon Bridges seems to me like a little bit of a Split Enz kind of guy. I'm sure that he will have "Six Months In A Leaky Boat" at the top of his playlist this summer holidays while Amy Adams—who I'm sure is a Freddie Mercury fan; I can tell—will be singing along to "I want to ride my bicycle" over the summer break. Judith Collins appropriately will have Tears for Fears at the top of her playlist with "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" at No. 1 while Gerry Brownlee will be singing "Cry Me a River" by Justin Timberlake. Paula Bennett will have the "Eye of the Tiger" by Survivor at the top of her playlist. Coming back to Simon Bridges second on his playlist will be "Don't You Want Me" by the Human League.Moving to this side of the House though—bearing in mind that this is a Christmas and festive occasion and nobody should be spared in this—I'm sure the Rt Hon Winston Peters will be tossing up between Matt Davis' "It's Hard to be Humble" and "You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet" which I'm sure will be at the top of his list while I'm told that Jacinda Ardern has been humming along to a Christmas tune of "All I Want for Christmas is a Good Night's Sleep" and I think there are a few parents in the House that will be sympathetic to that.The top of my playlist will be the Dance Exponents. I'll be singing along to "Victoria" over the summer holidays as I'm sure many other members of Parliament will be as well. When it comes to you Mr Speaker I thought about what an appropriate song for your summer holiday list might be. I thought the song "Don't Speak" by No Doubt might be at the top of your playlist for the summer holidays.To end—you can't be nice all the way through this contribution—I'm sure the final song on Simon Bridges' playlist as he considers what to do over the summer break and the year ahead will also be another Freddie Mercury song: "Another One Bites the Dust". Thank you Mr Speaker."