SpeechHon STUART NASH (Minister of Tourism): Thank you very much Mr Chair and I'd like to reiterate Naisi Chen's comments saying that this is an industry where a number of participants have done it extremely hard even those who managed to adapt to a market of only domestic tourists; it was still very tough for a number right across this country. But nor did Kiwis sit on their hands; they actually got on their bikes. In fact one the great success stories was our cycle trails. The cycle trail numbers are up by over 10 percent which translates into an over 30 percent increase in economic activity along these cycle trails—and over 2 million journeys actually. Fantastic to see. In terms of our investment into Tourism New Zealand we've put over $100 million into Tourism New Zealand. Tourism New Zealand are our eyes and ears in international markets. They have done a fantastic job because they had to pivot from marketing campaigns to get people to come over here to a campaign to keep the brand alive. And of course they couldn't tell people to come because the borders were closed and they did a very very good job of creating aspiration. I talked with the CEO René de Monchy and his team and we decided that what we would try and do is ensure that New Zealand became one of the most aspirational destinations. People often forget that in fact we were open for a lot of the time when the rest of the world was closed. So you know we were on boats watching the America's Cup in the middle of summer having a really good time when there were many people across the developed world in lockdown. What Tourism New Zealand was doing was building that aspiration so that when the borders opened as they are now to visa-waiver countries then people could decide OK you know what I want to go to that country. It's highly vaccinated. It's a fantastic place. It's a warm welcome and it's a safe place to come." That was the role that Tourism New Zealand did. But not only did they do that they actually took on another important role. For the first time ever they came back and they actually marketed New Zealand to New Zealanders. People will have heard the "Do Something New New Zealand' and as Naisi Chen outlined they did something new. Those who took their kids to the movies over the recess might have seen the new campaign for autumn and it's basically just "That's autumn"—of course a play on words it wasn't made up. It's quite clever. The campaigns are very good and I do take my hat off to the innovators and the marketers in Tourism New Zealand. They do a really really good job of flying the flag. I think they did a fantastic job over the sort of two-year period when our borders were closed and what they are now concentrating on is taking that aspiration and turning it into action. As I highlighted in the question at question time the international views for people who want to travel here are actually higher than they were pre-COVID. So the action stations moving from aspiration into action are well under way. Traditionally it's a soft time for tourism in winter except for places like Queenstown of course. Again Australians spend a lot of time in Queenstown. It's a little-known fact that Australians actually travel for skiing more than any other nationality. So we're hoping we're going to have a whole lot of Australians into Queenstown but then we expect things to pick up in October and hit the ground running once again. Thank you very much."