SpeechHon IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety): Thank you Madam Speaker. It goes without saying and everybody knows that this year's Budget was delivered during exceptional times: a global pandemic that has killed hundreds of thousands around the world and caused every economy in the world to face a significant crisis a slowdown of economic activity unemployment and a withdrawal from investment around the world. But New Zealand went into this in a strong position because successive Governments have known that as a small country highly reliant on global trade and highly reliant on global investment we have needed to keep the Government's books in order. I remember during the global financial crisis Bill English saying that that was the rainy day that the Government had been saving for—of course it was the Government of Helen Clark and Michael Cullen who saved for that period—and the National Party when they were in Government in response to the global financial crisis borrowed. Debt went up. That was the right thing to do to stimulate the economy. But they were careful. They didn't let Government debt get to the same levels as we see in the UK or the US or in many European countries or Japan and when we came into Government again we continued that focus on getting debt down. Debt was lower as we went into this crisis than it was when we came into Government and all of that work over decades has put New Zealand into a strong position to be able to weather this international crisis. We have also benefited from the strong and unwavering leadership that we have had from our Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and the focus that this Government has had on suppressing the COVID-19 virus here in New Zealand—things like closing the border and things like moving to alert level 4; going hard going early; and not being tempted into moving too quickly back down through the levels. It's not just important for the health of our nation and for the people here in New Zealand that we are cautious about the way we come down those levels; it is important for our economy as well. It is easy to forget given the success that we have had here in New Zealand in suppressing the virus and in limiting the number of people who have been affected by it and the number of people who have tragically been killed with the virus—because we have been so successful here in New Zealand it is easy to forget what is still going on around the world. If you look at other countries you see second waves you see restrictions coming back on or you see no end in sight of restrictions of both social activity and economic activity because other countries may not have gone hard enough soon enough in their response. So as important as the health response is—and I think we all recognise that maintaining the health and wellbeing of our citizens and everybody who lives here in New Zealand has been important to focus on—that response has been important for the economy as well and so we now have some of the loosest restrictions of any country around the world. We see more domestic economic activity happening in New Zealand than we see in many other countries but that is not to suggest for a second that we are not facing challenging times. We really do need to recognise the effort of the team of 5 million and the sacrifices that people have made. Businesses have forgone income workers have forgone wages and people have remained at home in order to make sure that that effort was a success and it was in that context that this year's Budget was delivered. The initiatives contained in that Budget are purposefully designed to help us move quickly back to the levels of employment that we saw before the crisis and the levels of economic activity. So we have had targeted wage subsidies to support businesses to keep people in work because we know of the scarring effects of people being made redundant and people losing work. They often don't return at the same level of employment and the same level of income so we want to keep people engaged with their employer so that now that we're at the point where restrictions are lifting people are able to get back to work. Of course in this Budget we have ensured that businesses that are suffering a 50 percent revenue loss for the 30-day period prior to applying versus the same period last year will be eligible for the extension to that wage subsidy to be able to support people to stay in work. There is an additional $400 million of investment specifically to help the tourism industry to recover from the shock of the COVID-19 virus. We have focused on small businesses. Small businesses have already applied for almost $1 billion in interest-free loans to provide them with the working capital that they need to be able to get their businesses back up on their feet. More than 55000 small businesses have applied for that loan and 95 percent of those applications have been approved so far. We've supported small businesses to grow digitally via e-commerce and supported them to be able to do more contactless delivery of their goods so that they've been able to operate within the restrictions and indeed to set them up for the future. Many businesses will be pivoting towards a more digitally based approach to working as a result of the experience they have had during this pandemic. There is practical assistance to help exporters seize international growth opportunities and to look at diversifying their markets so that they are perhaps not so vulnerable to shocks in the future. We're incentivising innovative research and development to grow new ideas because we know that it is tech-heavy research-heavy businesses that are more likely to be higher-wage and higher-growth and more likely to be able to weather a shock like we have seen in this last period of time. But there's an opportunity here as well to focus on things like the environment so we have set funding aside in this Budget to create 11000 jobs focused on the environment and we're launching regional environmental programmes to create local jobs. Projects include upgrading walking tracks and wetland restoration and pest eradication and it's also supporting tourism operators to employ local staff to redeploy people who have recently been made unemployed or people who are underused or underutilised as a result of the economic shock caused by the pandemic and of course training is absolutely central to this. We have a large number of people who have been employed—perhaps particularly in the hospitality and tourism sectors—who in order to be able to gain meaningful work into the future are going to have to train to support themselves to be redeployed and of course an absolutely central component of this is the announcement of 2½ years of trade training—2½ years of free trade training—so that people can pick up apprenticeships and be able to pick up the jobs that are in demand. They actually pay extremely well and it will help set people up for a strong future with meaningful work for many of those people and the opportunity even potentially to own their own business into the future off the back of that trade training. So all of these things contained in this year's Budget are designed to assist people to weather the current storm and to seek the opportunities and to make use of the opportunities that are going to become available into the future because ultimately that's what we have to focus on. It is putting people at the centre of everything that we do. I just want to use the last minute to point out again that it can be tempting to talk about getting down to level 1 sooner. It can be tempting to talk about the economy and the health response as though they are two separate things. All of these things are absolutely intertwined. We need to acknowledge that a strong economic recovery is founded in keeping our people well keeping our people safe and ensuring that we are not too cavalier in trying to get the economy going again before we are ready before it is safe to do so. But that is why this Government has based its decisions on science and based its decisions on the very best advice and it is why the world is looking at us and holding New Zealand up as the example of success both in our health response and in our economic response. I think New Zealanders can be very proud of what we have done collectively and I commend this Budget to the House. DEPUTY SPEAKER: This is a split call.