Prime Willow-JeanWILLOW-JEAN PRIME (Labour—Northland): E te Māngai o te Whare tēnā koe. Thank you for the opportunity to speak on the debate on the Prime Minister's statement. Unfortunately I haven't been able to sit through all the debates this afternoon but I have been able to tune in and out of some of the contributions. I'm not going to focus on any of the criticisms from the other side. I'm going to focus on the job that we've got ahead of us this year and it is a big job. In fact when I look at the Prime Minister's statement it is 27 pages of jobs for us to do this year.I was reflecting back—we usually start the beginning of our year with a caucus retreat and the honourable member for New Plymouth Glen Bennett has just left the room but we had our caucus retreat in New Plymouth under Maunga Taranaki. What a beautiful way to start the year with our whānau there as well. The Prime Minister began by outlining for us her Labour caucus what was going to happen in the year ahead of us what were the challenges what was the job for us to do. I was asked following that what I thought this would be the year of"—the media were questioning us as we went out for morning tea. My immediate reaction from listening to the Prime Minister and thinking about that was: I think it's going to be the year of the booster. I kept thinking about that afterwards because I thought "Oh that doesn't really sound that inspiring 'year of the booster'." and I sort of thought well you know maybe there was something more ambitious. But that is actually quite ambitious when I thought about it—I don't step back from that. Actually when I heard her describe the challenge with Omicron facing us and the thing that we could do to protect ourselves the most—it was the booster.I think about my people of Northland our vulnerable population and I hope that the booster isn't the focus for us for the whole year but it certainly is the focus for us in this first part of the year—we are racing against a virus. This is actually the month of the booster. We are trying to encourage as many people as possible to do as much as possible to protect themselves from Omicron.I'm pleased that last year the Prime Minister said this was the year of the vaccine and I think that we actually did far better than many expected that we would. We've had some difficult conversations. It's been challenging out there in our communities. Northland has just got to 90 percent first vaxxed. We are the last in the country but I'm so proud of Northland because every single one of those vaccines required whānau encouraging each other our providers being out there making themselves available in the most remote parts of our community and we got there. We're going to get there with the second dose and we're going well on our boosters at the moment.We can all do our bit to slow the spread and keep our communities safe and that's what the Prime Minister said. Together we have risen to the challenge of COVID-19. The pandemic has affected us all and some in very tragic circumstances but it's also drawn us together. Yes we have a protest outside at the moment but I think about the more than 4 million people who have been vaccinated. And I just want to mihi to our team of 4 million that could get vaccinated but also to our whole country for the efforts to date. It's been two long hard years. I know everybody's hōhā I know everybody's over it but guess what? COVID isn't going away. It's a virus it keeps adapting and so too do we have to.I'm really proud of my colleagues who are in Cabinet who have had all of those conversations difficult debates and been put in a situation of making really difficult decisions but making the right decisions because what they did was they prioritised people's health their lives and their livelihoods. I'm really proud of what we have achieved and the other side has criticised us for patting ourselves on the back over here. I don't take that credit just us as the Government—that was the team of 5 million who has helped us achieve that so far but we need to keep going. Kia kaha tonu tātou. He waka eke noa.[We must stay strong. We're all in this together.]The challenge is not over yet.So I'm proud that we can report today that there are now over 2 million who have received their booster shots over 46 percent of our tamariki receiving theirs as well but there is more work to do.The other thing I wanted to pick up from in the Prime Minister's statement was the other work that that is going on. It's not just COVID that our Cabinet are focusing on. At the same time they are continuing with major health reforms. They are working—I'm looking at two Ministers who are going to be making announcements shortly in the employment space. We heard the Minister of Tourism the Minister of Small Business talking earlier; the Minister of Immigration the Minister of Justice talking on things that we have been progressing. Just this week we passed our first piece of legislation which came through the Justice Committee to ban conversion practices. All of that mahi continues while we are managing a pandemic while our economy is strong and we have the best results in the OECD and the world We should all be proud of that us as the Government but also Aotearoa because everybody has played their part in it.Now what I wanted to pick up on is this plan for us the 27-page work plan over here and I know every member and every Minister has gone through it and picked out the things that have been specifically said that they have a responsibility for in their portfolio areas. One of my portfolio areas is I am a member of the Pae Ora Legislation Committee. I've just come off the select committee to come in to do the speech this afternoon. On that committee we have had five days of hearings. I think it was from 9 a.m. in the morning to 6 p.m. in the evening. Five days—we received over 4600 submissions on the Pae Ora Legislation Committee. Now for those who maybe don't know what that is in the House or who are tuning in tonight—that is for the reform of our health system. We are going to be disestablishing the DHBs setting up a health authority a public health unit and proudly a Māori Health Authority.It was a challenging five days of hearings especially after a long summer break. It took a little bit of getting back into the swing of things. But what was particularly difficult for me was that unfortunately the majority of the submissions from individuals were opposed to this bill and they were tending to be single-issue focused and it will be no surprise to many in this House that the main thing that they were objecting to is the hauora Māori provisions in principle. It was really sad to have to sit through those submissions and to hear that we still have people who do not understand and also do not accept that we have major inequities within our health system and here we are trying to propose something because the status quo is unacceptable and unfortunately we received this huge number of submissions in opposition. So we have our work cut out for us this year.I want to absolutely acknowledge the Prime Minister who said that we are a united team we are a focused team and that we will continue to manage the pandemic but we must also continue to do all of the other things in health—as I just spoke about and we're making good progress on that—and in housing and I do take issue with the comment made earlier criticising us for buying and building when all that side did was sell.There are a couple of other things that I'm really excited about this year. We are—Hon Member: That's a killer line.WILLOW-JEAN PRIME: Just look—sell full stop. That's it there's no more to say.There are a few other things that I'm excited about this year. This year we will celebrate the first uniquely Aotearoa public holiday and that is Matariki. So we will be celebrating that in June this year and I'm really excited about that as people will get to have a day off and hopefully reflect on what Matariki means learn about some of that mātauranga Māori. It is also the year that schools are going to be receiving resources to teach New Zealand history in schools. I'm really excited about our tamariki getting the opportunity to learn that history of Aotearoa New Zealand. I hope that with that along with Matariki we're going to see the next generation have the opportunity to learn more about our tangata whenua about our unique place in the world as Aotearoa and that everybody will have access to that. I really hope that by having that we might see a different type of submission to our select committees in the future as we try and tackle issues that we are facing where we try to reduce the inequalities where we try to ensure that everybody has the best opportunity their wellbeing is provided for to the greatest extent possible and that we do that for one another like we have our approach to COVID. Nō reira tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): The next call is the very last call in response to the Prime Minister's statement and we only have five minutes left."