Ngarewa-Packer Debbie; Hipkins ChrisDEBBIE NGAREWA-PACKER (Co-Leader—Te Paati Māori): I seek leave of the House to give a short call on behalf of Te Paati Māori on this ministerial statement.SPEAKER: Is there any objection to that process? There appears to be none.DEBBIE NGAREWA-PACKER: Thank you. My thanks to the House. Last week we acknowledged the decision to move Wellington into level 2. We supported this as we also support the extension of that into this week. However we note tangata whenua know that during pandemics we are often those who bear the brunt of viruses. We therefore have a few questions to the Minister around how we prevent this and improve the situation for the future. Dr Rawiri Jansen predicted that we would have a low uptake of Māori getting vaccinated due to a range of factors including age eligibility. What is being done to address this and who in Government is overseeing it? What is the Minister doing to secure more vaccines more quickly so that we are not so vulnerable as a nation? Despite promises made over many months we've yet to see either a Māori pandemic response plan or a full Māori vaccination plan released by the Government. Why is this and when can we expect to see these released? Does the Minister think it's acceptable and in line with the Crown's obligations as Te Tiriti partner that after 16 months they still haven't released a comprehensive Māori pandemic response plan? Kia ora.SPEAKER: Has the member finished?DEBBIE NGAREWA-PACKER: Yes.SPEAKER: The Hon Chris Hipkins in reply.Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister for COVID-19 Response): I was interested in David Seymour's comments—that he didn't suggest that we should adopt the risk management approach of Taiwan and Singapore which has previously been the argument that he's put forward in this House. Both of those countries of course have experienced outbreaks and have had to impose restrictions. I think it is wrong for David Seymour to continue to assert that our success in containing COVID-19 is down to luck. It is absolutely not. In fact it is the hard work of the people working at our border and in our public health units and I think all New Zealanders are grateful to them for their contribution. In terms of our contact tracing indicators I would point out that one of the reasons Dr Verrall and I have been actively discussing this is the original indicators were based on the notion that there could be 15 to 20 contacts per COVID-19 case. In this particular case we have now contact traced 2609 potential close or casual contacts for one single case. That is not what the performance metrics were designed to be based on when that report was first adopted. In terms of the vaccination of Māori—and I thank the Māori Party for their questions—around 10 percent of our vaccine doses so far have gone to Māori. The supply of vaccines is constrained. We are getting bigger supplies of vaccines arriving in the country from next week onwards but at this point supply is still very constrained. We are working very closely with Māori health providers to make sure we're getting out there in amongst those communities.Actually in communities with high concentrations of Māori and I think particularly of Northland and the Tai Rāwhiti areas there has been a whānau-based and a community-wide approach taken which is actually I think reflected in the fact that we've still got a reasonable number of group 4 people who are not yet eligible being vaccinated. That's often happening in those communities where they are taking that kind of more clusters—you know doing whole communities at the same time. That will be capturing some of those Māori communities but there's no question there is more work to be done there and we are seeing really good shifts in the attitude of Māori and Pacific communities where vaccine hesitancy has been higher. We are seeing that really coming down and I think that's really encouraging.