Shaw JamesHon JAMES SHAW (Co-Leader—Green): Thank you. The decision to adjourn the House and to set up a special select committee was not taken lightly by anyone and I do want to acknowledge the words of the Leader of the House in terms of the personal journey that he's had to go to in order to arrive at this point. This is the last speech that I will give in this House for at least a month—a month where we were supposed to have been sitting under normal circumstances. The Green Party does believe and has always believed very much in a robust democracy a democracy where the actions and the decisions that the Government is taking can be scrutinised and therefore improved. That is not possible in the current circumstances—for normal parliamentary process to continue—and so the Epidemic Response Committee we think is a practical and it's an innovative solution to the problem of maintaining accountability in Parliament at a time of a public health emergency. Marama Davidson my co-leader will be representing the Green Party on the Epidemic Response Committee from her home in Manurewa so we're going to have one co-leader who is a member of the executive and another who is going to be scrutinising those. People often say that Aotearoa has sort of a very practical pragmatic incremental approach to constitutional issues and that is true but our proudest moments actually when we've made changes to the constitution have actually been on fairly pioneering matters: so the signing of Te Tiriti o Waitangi for example; He Whakaputanga the 1835 Declaration of Independence; the first country in the world where women won the right to vote; the proportional representation system that we've had now for something like almost 25 years; the establishment of the Waitangi Tribunal to help to guide our country and knit it back together. The moment in our history now that we face where we're facing this pandemic of truly epic global proportions also requires innovation and also very practical thinking as well so I think that the Epidemic Response Committee will enable a constructive parliamentary check on the urgent work that the Government is doing. I think it's a good thing that it has an Opposition majority and that it will be chaired by the Leader of the Opposition. I think that that will help to strengthen it in terms of its design and the role that it's intended to play. It does have some powers—actually I would argue that it may in fact be able to have more of a parliamentary accountability check than regular parliamentary question time where the current Opposition and the previous Opposition frequently express frustration at the extent to which question time is able to perform that function. Of course this new committee will be live-streamed and whilst I frequently question the life choices of people who choose to spend their time watching parliamentary television I have to say we are all about to have oodles of time and this is a time where I think the citizens of New Zealand probably really ought to be paying more attention than they might regularly do to what it is that their Government is doing. We all do have parts to play in fighting COVID-19. The Government has its part to play. This new special committee has an incredibly important part to play. Every New Zealander has a part to play in this and the function of parliamentary democracy and I do want to encourage New Zealanders to pay attention to what it is that we are doing. As I sign off I do have one final message from this House I think to New Zealanders. As a nation it is a time when we have to be physically distant from one another. We are going to be apart but we are going to be apart together. We do not need to be distant as humans. Let's take this time to reach out to all of those in our communities and our whānau and our friends—online on the phone. Let's look out for people who are most vulnerable and let's get through this together. Ka kite anō.