Salesa JennyHon JENNY SALESA (Minister for Building and Construction): Malo le soifua. Talofa lava and happy Samoan Language Week Mr Speaker. The Wellbeing Budget 2020: Rebuilding Together is coming through during an unprecedented time of global and financial and health crises. In terms of our health response I'd like to acknowledge and thank our Prime Minister first and foremost for her leadership. You can see in comparing Aotearoa New Zealand with other countries just where we are. I'd like to thank her as well as the Director-General of Health and all of our Government departments for how we've come together. And I cannot go ahead without thanking all New Zealanders: our team of five million New Zealanders. We are where we are we've come together and we are close to eliminating COVID-19 only because New Zealanders have come together united to fight against COVID-19. But our Budget Rebuilding Together"—I'd like at this time to refer to one of the former speakers the Hon Paul Goldsmith where and I quote when he gave his speech he said "Investing in skills and retraining is beyond him." This is exactly why we are the Government which will absolutely invest in the right way. When we came into Government we were confronted with a huge shortage of skills in building and construction. This Budget of 2020 is going to invest $1.6 billion to train and retrain people but we wouldn't have had to do that if the Government before us over nine years had actually trained the people that we need. When we came in in building and construction we needed 30000 more skilled people in this area. This sector construction is the fourth-largest employer in New Zealand. They employ 10 percent of our workforce contributing billions of dollars a year into our economy. Between 2017 and 2018 the construction workforce grew by 5 percent. However in terms of that long-term investment in training our people that is something that is quite different between this side of the House and those on the Opposition because we always look long term and train the folks that we need. One of the things that we're investing in as well is we're going to build 8000 public and transitional houses. The Government before us sold houses. They didn't actually build the State houses that we need. We are focusing and ensuring that we build those houses.Hon Member: Brave work Minister.Hon JENNY SALESA: Absolutely. In terms of assisting our small businesses the fact that we have invested and 1.6 million people have actually benefited from our wage subsidy scheme—that is something that we absolutely know from people writing to us telling us when we walk around small businesses—is something that they absolutely love: the fact that our Government has invested to ensure that they can keep their employees employed. In this Budget we've extended that wage subsidy scheme. But of course we're targeting that extension. We will ensure in terms of training our apprentices that in the future we won't have such a huge shortage in skills. Just over the weekend I made an announcement as Minister for Building and Construction that we will ensure in terms of exemptions—and I also would like to thank many of our colleagues from this side of the House—that we will allow our homeowners our DIYers and indeed with the assistance of our builders to be able to build carports to be able to build verandas to be able to build greenhouses without having to go through the council for consent. We know from feedback from the construction sector that this will actually assist them. Many of our builders and our tradies instead of going through the process of consenting and then building can get on and assist with that build right now. The other thing that our apprenticeship scheme will do is it will actually incentivise our employers. As feedback from our construction sector we know that this is really really positive because when we incentivise them to take on our apprentices and our tradies to ensure that they are well skilled they will we are told take even more trainees in. The other thing that the last Government did is they stopped what we call ACE—adult community education. In this Budget 2020 we're reinvesting and ensuring that our adults who have to retrain can actually come back and retrain in the evenings because we know that we're going to go through a contraction in terms of jobs. The other thing that we're doing is we have the Construction Sector Accord. With that one of the things that we and industry are focused on is how we can transform the construction sector. I'm glad to say that they are really giving us a whole lot of advice in terms of the areas to focus on. I do want to also focus on the fact that as a Government we are investing the biggest amount ever in disability support services: $833 million in Budget 2020 for disability support services. There's never been such an investment in disability support services. In our first year when we came in we invested $211 million. Last year in our Wellbeing Budget we invested $348 million for disability support services. But this year this huge investment of $833 million is historic. We know that one of the things that the disability support services sector usually does is after every year it actually gets a top-up. So this huge investment of $833 million should ensure that we won't actually need such a huge top-up in the future. This year we are topping up by just over $100 million but as I say one of the reasons why we're investing that much is to ensure that in the future we won't have to come back and top it up. The other investment that we're doing is in terms of a Pacific package. This is also an historic amount—$195 million for investing in Pacific—but I do want to cover just one small part of that overall investment which is in education: a package that's called Talanoa Ako. Now this is a programme where teachers communities and parents actually get together to ensure that the parents themselves know how best to support their students. Now this programme is going to be expanded to 65 different schools right across New Zealand right across the motu. As soon as COVID-19 hit what we needed to do in terms of the Ministry of Education and this investment was to reach our parents in a different way because of the fact that schools were closed but we still needed to actually get in contact with our parents. So we changed the focus of this particular programme Talanoa Ako and we went to deliver it via the radio—so via Radio 531pi—and we did it in the various Pacific languages. So we engaged with Pacific parents via Tongan Cook Island Māori Fijian Samoan Niuean Tokelauan Tuvaluan English Kiribati and Solomon. We've gotten so much good feedback from our parents because not only do they connect on a daily basis with our teachers but this programme Talanoa Ako also allows them to be able to ask our teachers questions and then when they come through the next day in the next session of Talanoa Ako whoever the teacher is is able to answer our parents' questions in the language that they actually can understand. Another innovative programme that we changed because of COVID-19 in education is an initiative called Developing Mathematical Inquiry Communities (DMIC). Now this particular programme basically teaches our young people our Pacific young people in schools to utilise things that they are really familiar with—whether it's tapa whether it's mats—from their own culture. They can actually be really great mathematicians but it is actually teaching them using things that they are really familiar with. So when COVID-19 happened what DMIC actually did is they changed their programme so that they could actually reach out and continue teaching our Pacific students DMIC but in a distance way. So you know I'm very very proud of Budget 2020 and I'd like to also thank and acknowledge the Minister of Finance the Hon Grant Robertson for doing such a wonderful job of this Budget. Thank you very much Mr Speaker."