Roberts AngelaANGELA ROBERTS (Labour): Really pleased to rise and take a call and reassure the member opposite Mark Cameron that there's some great stuff happening with our rural communities because today I want to talk about and celebrate collaboration—something this Government is really committed to doing and is really good at doing. Collaboration is time-consuming and it's messy but when you come across a really wicked problem or a complex issue and if you're really really ambitious collaboration is absolutely necessary. And I just want to bring a couple of examples of this where the Government has successfully collaborated to solve complex issues. I will start with M. bovis because I think it's really important to highlight the serious commitment that this Government has to futureproofing our primary industries to sustain ourselves into the future. It was in 2017 when M. bovis was identified. I was an economics teacher in a rural school at the time and in 2018 this Government joined up with DairyNZ and Beef + Lamb New Zealand to collaborate. They knew it was going to be really hard; no one else in the world had bothered to even try but because we sat down together and decided to collaborate and commit it was going to be possible. It was hard but it was going to be possible. I was a teacher of economics in a secondary school at the time—talk about a teachable moment; it certainly was one. And it was great to hear from the Minister today that New Zealand currently has no farms infected with the cattle disease Mycoplasma bovis. And the effort continues but at the moment we have zero farms infected and zero being investigated because we collaborated. The sector and this Government trusted each other to go through what they knew would be incredibly hard to write the playbook as they went and make it work. And I need to acknowledge the hardship felt by our communities—many of us live in rural communities and we know the families the farms the connected businesses that have been impacted by the sacrifices that have been made. The reason we did it: if it had become endemic it would have cost about $1.3 billion in lost production in the first 10 years alone. This was not Government dictating; this was everybody sitting down and committing to solving a wicked problem. We are moving in the right direction. All the indicators—the bulk milk testing which is an amazing surveillance system that has grown since 2018 and beef herd surveillance—have confidence in our 10-year programme working. But of course we're only as good as our detection systems and our on-farm records and we know that the ongoing vigilance and commitment will be required into the future and we need to make sure that that sacrifice by our farmers and the hardship felt by our communities—very real hardship—wasn't all for nothing. Like I say I was an economics teacher at the time and it was a golden opportunity to bring economics into the classroom and to explore the impact of decisions made by Governments and industry and how those impact directly on our families on our farms on our local town on our exports and our economy. The cost was significant nobody will ever deny that: 184000 cattle culled 280 farms depopulated and thousands with movement controls and significant impact on the way that they operated.So at this point I'd like to segue to talking about education in the classroom and just talk about something else that was a difficult problem and issue that has been hopefully resolved with an offer today to the Post Primary Teachers' Association and the secondary school teachers of this country. It's really difficult—teachers are the most expensive but the most valuable part of our education system; it is really really hard to value them when it costs so much. And after careful consideration and weighing up the current challenging financial environment this Government has decided to make sure that we prove that we value our teachers and that we can bear the cost of making an offer. This historic offer will see beginning teachers receiving an annual increase of almost $11000—35 percent at the top of the scale. This is a Government that recognises the value not just the cost of teachers and we hope that this shows that we acknowledge the challenges in front of them and helps them to continue to fight for a fabulous education system.