Tinetti Jan; Mallard TrevorADDRESS IN REPLYDebate resumed from 3 December.Hon JAN TINETTI (Minister of Internal Affairs): I'm absolutely delighted to speak in this Address in Reply debate and—I can say—for the first time as a member of the Government. I would actually like to start my address here today by congratulating you on your re-election as Speaker. It's something that many others have done in this debate so far and I wanted to have my opportunity as well.New Zealanders voted for stability and certainty in this last election. It was a fantastic campaign. I enjoyed going throughout the electorate that I live in and work in and hearing about what impacts upon our voters within that electorate. And certainly I got the sense that New Zealanders felt really stable felt really strong and really lots of comfort in the work that we are delivering as a Government. They said a lot to me during that campaign but what I got a lot right throughout it is We believe in you and we trust you." So I'm really humbled to join my team on this side of the House to be part of the first majority Government under MMP in New Zealand. But we know that we do not take this lightly. It is a huge responsibility. As overseas the global pandemic is raging we continue to see the health and economic outlook worsen. So we have priorities as a Government—first and foremost our priority is to keep New Zealanders safe from COVID-19. It is a huge responsibility but it is something that I heard time and time and time again during the election campaign "Please keep us safe. We like what's happened so far. We trust you and we believe in you."We also have a priority of accelerating our economic recovery—again because of the trust that New Zealanders have seen and put in us. Time and time again I heard "We trust you with the economic recovery." Actually some of the times throughout the campaign I heard this coming from quarters that I hadn't heard it in the past. I heard it from people that I have engaged with widely in the past but not necessarily have they ever said "We put our trust in your economic abilities to take us through this campaign." but I did hear it a lot during the campaign. I was really heartened to hear that from people from our chambers from our business community from—much through the wider public as I said that I'd hadn't heard it from in the past. And the third area that we are focusing on as a Government is to lay the foundations for a better future. Again during that campaign I heard people say "We need to take the opportunity. We have a window of opportunity to actually make things better for New Zealand." And time and time again I heard from people "We need to jump through that window. Let's not let it close before we actually take that leap." Now again I'd have to say that I heard from people in the campaign saying "Take that opportunity." that I hadn't necessarily heard from in those terms before people that I hadn't heard from—people in the business community my local business community people and our chambers saying to me "You know we really do need to think outside the square to tackle those things that are rife in New Zealand like child poverty."So I want to cycle back to the start with looking at keeping New Zealand safe. As I said this is something that New Zealanders have actually seen us achieve and they want to see it continue and continue and continue. Time and again I heard "We're fully aware of what is happening overseas. We don't ever want to see that happen in this country. We appreciate what has happened here in New Zealand." We know that no system is perfect; we've seen that. We know that this is a tricky virus; we've heard that. We've seen that this virus takes us by surprise all the time because that's exactly what it is; it's a virus. But we know that we will be evidence based in everything that we do. We will continue to improve our systems of keeping us safe at the border. We will learn from that evidence and we will put those lessons in place. As we learn about the virus and as new technologies are developed we will actually implement those lessons and we will learn from what is happening around the world. We are in a position that we can take the evidence of what is happening and actually use that to ensure that those terrible events that we are seeing on a day-to-day basis don't happen in this country. Now the second point that I talked about was our economic recovery and as the Minister for Women I want to use this part of my reply to focus specifically on women and the recovery. Now this Government will continue to take action to support a strong economic recovery and get people back into work. But we've seen in the past in times like the global financial crisis and the Canterbury earthquakes that women have been negatively impacted by those economic shocks. Now we need to ensure and learn from those lessons that we can mitigate that for women in this labour market shock. So we're looking at the COVID recovery in terms of what it means for women.I have heard it said to me that maybe some of the things that we've been focusing on have been a little bit male-centric. However I challenge that—I challenge that. We are putting women at the heart of what we do and ensuring that they have the equal opportunities to participate in the recovery as males do. We are ensuring that women are having equal opportunities to enter into our vocational education and training. Indeed our campaign around that has focused on upping the number of female apprentices who take up that opportunity and we have seen this go over double. Now there is way more work to do in that area. But there's also a conversation that I want to have as a country around the fact that if women are a little bit hesitant about going into those areas—why is that? What is the culture of those vocational opportunities that needs to change to make it a safe place and a desirable place for woman to go into? We need to ensure that we are setting up conditions for women to ensure that they are protected from any future labour market shocks. It's not good enough to say that in history this has happened and it's going to happen again. We know there will be future labour market shocks. Let's ensure women aren't the most vulnerable next time around.So the Government launched a $320 million free Targeted Training and Apprenticeship Fund which makes all apprenticeships as well as certificates diplomas and programmes in targeted industries free for New Zealanders of all ages from the 1 July 2020. What has that meant for women? We've seen that 14000 new apprentices have started in their apprenticeship nationwide. And of those apprenticeships we have seen that women—over 1800 as opposed to about 700 this time last year—have taken up those new apprenticeships. So we are moving in the right direction but with way more to go. As I said we are laying the foundations for a better future and we have the opportunity right now to build back better. Tackling New Zealand's long-term issues as part of this recovery has to be a major focus of what we do. We need to think outside the square. I want to spend the last minute of my Address in Reply speech here talking about something that I am absolutely passionate about and that's child poverty. We need to continue that welfare system overhaul. But the one area that I really want to talk about and that I'm really proud about is the extension of the free lunches. Not only does this make the biggest difference to young people and their learning—and I have seen that happen firsthand—it is creating jobs for their families for the people in their communities. It's giving them mana. It's giving them hope. I have had people come to me with tears in their eyes saying they have got a job at their young people's school for the first time and they have that mana.We won't solve these problems overnight but we are a Government for all New Zealand and we will keep moving. Thank you.SPEAKER: I call Chris Baillie for his maiden speech."