Goldsmith PaulHon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): Thank you Mr Speaker. Well here we are in the land of the free after nearly three months in house arrest in Auckland over what has been an incredible period of lockdown in the Queen's city. We return to this Parliament from Auckland the National MPs with aggressive intent to hold this Government to account for the shambles that it has been looking over in the past few weeks. This is a Government that's running amok. Like some old-school law and order party Lock 'em down lock 'em up" is their only approach to our economy. Who would have thought? For the first six months of the year they told us how wonderful we were other countries deserved the vaccines more than us we shouldn't be too fast. And now for nearly three months Auckland has been locked down. Businesses haven't been able to trade. People haven't been able to work. People haven't been able to see their family. Kids haven't been at school. It is a disaster what has been happening in our classrooms or not happening in our classrooms over the last little while. And so we see the Government slowly retreating with no apparent logic. Suddenly we learnt to our shock and horror a couple of weeks ago that actually it's OK reopening retail because the impact is not great; it's a minimal impact. But why on earth have the shops been closed for so many weeks? It's a minimal impact but we keep them closed. Today we hear that the schools have a remarkably low impact. Well why are they taking so long to reopen them? We've heard of course about the shambles on the border and we had Chris Hipkins saying "Oh well you know we might have to have an allocation system to get over it." Just imagine the traffic jams at Warkworth and Pūhoi and the Bombay Hills—we'll all line up and get tested somehow on the border and then Mr Robertson "Write-another-cheque Robbo" he came in and said "No I don't agree with that."SPEAKER: Order!Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Thank you Mr Speaker. Mr Grant Robertson: "No we're not going to do that." And then the Prime Minister said "Oh well actually we are; we're still considering it." Nobody has any idea how it's going to operate over Christmas. That is the problem; the Government hasn't thought it through. What we'll see is that the pursed-lipped modellers will say no but the Prime Minister will say yes eventually when she knows that Aucklanders are fed up and they want to get out and they want their lives back. That's why we should have been focused on this vaccine roll-out much earlier and at some point we need to take the opportunity to set Aucklanders free. Meantime I just have to mention that this is a Government that chose during this critical period of lockdown and trouble and strife to announce the craziest Auckland transport plan with a $16 billion light rail down Dominion Road. I have not yet met anybody in Auckland who thinks that of all the transport priorities in the city—Willie Jackson wouldn't agree with this—of all the transport priorities in Auckland the number one priority for $16 billion is a slow tram down Dominion Road. There is not a soul in the city with the possible exception of "Tiny Montgomery"—who's the Minister Michael Wood—with the possible exception of Michael Wood who thinks that a light rail project down Dominion Road is the priority for Auckland transport. And then we have the three waters. "Who cares what the rest of the country thinks? Who cares what the council thinks? We're going to ram it through because there is no alternative." Well that's not how you operate an effective Government. So we're here and we're determined to hold this Government to account. You would have noticed today that National outlined its education plan because we need to get our schools back and we need to get our students learning. Just imagine for a moment if you will an eight-year-old being at home a crowded home no laptop noisy kids the television's on. It's been 12 weeks now out of school. Can you imagine that there's much learning going on? There hasn't been any learning going on and this Government has been very slow to reopen schools. I'm glad finally today they've announced "Eventually we'll get round to it next week. We might have some classroom—" They've left it all very vague. Schools will probably say "Oh well it might be only one day a week." so I don't know what certainty has been provided. I think they should be back all the time. I'm glad that they've postponed the curriculum review which was a huge distraction now. But what we didn't see from the Minister today was any plan to catch up. That's what we've been talking about. You're not going to catch up if you're not at school. And we know that this country has a truancy crisis. The Government's done nothing about it in four years made it worse and we need to have a no-excuses culture when it comes to turning up to school. Willie Jackson knows that but he didn't go to school so much when he was there himself—but we can't blame that on him.Now the other thing we need to do is measure progress. Our policy in terms of measuring progress in education in this city right now is: don't ask don't tell. Throw out the national standards. We don't know—SPEAKER: Order! Order! The member's time has expired."