Robertson GrantGENERAL DEBATEHon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): I move That the House take note of miscellaneous business. I wanted to start today by acknowledging the people of Christchurch and most importantly the Muslim community in Christchurch. At this time they are going through the most extraordinary reliving of grief and they're doing so with levels of courage fortitude and dignity that I believe makes all New Zealanders proud. No one would wish upon this community what has happened to them but their ability to stand up and stand in the court for the last three days and speak the way they have makes me extremely proud to have them as fellow New Zealanders. The extraordinarily tough time that community has gone through does give us pause for thought when we look at what has happened with COVID-19. This has been a tough year for everybody and going now back into a period of restrictions in the Auckland area in particular is psychologically tough. It is important we acknowledge that—this has been a difficult year. But New Zealanders have worked together to get through it and as the Prime Minister said earlier this week We have done well as a country." Yes there is a new outbreak but we are getting it under control quicker than most and every single day New Zealanders contribute to that. It is also important to remember that we have done well throughout this year—103 days of no community transmission. That saw the country operating at a level that had not been forecast and was not seen virtually anywhere in the world. The New Zealand Activity Index actually showed that the months of June and July were better—from an economic perspective—in New Zealand than those comparable months in 2019. We saw expansion in our manufacturing and our services indexes through that same period. The New Zealand economy was recovering well and that was a result of the fact that we had done well. But yes the virus came back again—as it has done almost everywhere else in the world. But again we acted swiftly and decisively and New Zealanders have swung in behind. If we need to look to the example of what might happen if we hadn't acted in that way we only need to look across to the state of Victoria which on 26 July had 8181 cases and 71 deaths—whereas on 26 August they had had 18613 cases and 462 deaths. We stand today as a country that has worked hard to make sure that we can get on top of an outbreak like this. Yes it has come with sacrifice but we've done it once and we can do it again. In doing so we have got better at what we do. We have tested over 170000 people since that outbreak. Our contact tracing systems which set a gold standard of 80 percent of people being contacted within 48 hours are contacting over 90 percent of people in a 48-hour period. Our ability to use genome sequencing means we can understand more about the virus. We are getting better at this and we are getting on top of it—all without going back into level 4 with only having one region of the country in level 3 and the rest of the country in level 2. This is the result of a consistent strategy to stamp out the virus to go early and hard to strengthen our public health system and to cushion the blow economically. It is that consistency of strategy that this Government stands behind. That stands in contrast to the other side of the House where we have seen all sorts of strategies all sorts of plans and proposals all sorts of contradictions and no clear vision for how that side of the House would handle an outbreak like this. They've spoken against money being invested; they've asked for more money to be invested. They wanted a shorter level 4; they wanted a shorter level 3. They invented a homeless man. They called for an open border; they wanted a closed border and then another open border. They leaked patient details. They thought universities could run their own isolation facilities. They dismissed the need for action during the period that we were at level 1 and called it scaremongering and they made up conspiracy theories. Those are not the actions of a responsible political party with a proper coherent plan and strategy for how to deal with an outbreak like this. There is no playbook for dealing with a pandemic. What this Government has done is relied upon expert advice upon evidence and upon making sure that our values of looking after people—no matter who they are—in New Zealand stand fast in this period of time. It is impossible facing a pandemic to get everything 100 percent right—as Dr Reti has told the country—but on this side of the House I am proud of a consistent strategy that has looked after New Zealanders and has gone hard and early. New Zealand as a whole deserves credit for that—this Government is proud to be leading New Zealanders in that strategy."