Stanford EricaERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): Thank you Mr Speaker. Well the Prime Minister this week has finally decided to grace Auckland with her presence after 12 long weeks of long hard lockdowns. And you'll note that she threw us a little morsel just before she came down: You can go and visit the shops" she said to ease the way for her visit which we know would have been pretty tumultuous otherwise. But I presume that actually it probably will be. I do note that Mr Seymour said today that she's only visited two businesses one of them which had not actually been closed down at all. I suppose we should be grateful because for a while there the only Auckland businesses that she was actually going to be visiting were the duty-free shops on her way through to her trip to Europe. But I do notice that she reconsidered that at the last minute—probably quite wisely I should say—and has decided finally to grace us with her presence.But I do hope that while she is in Auckland that she bothers to go and visit a hospital. I hope that she does that because she needs to see for herself the critical shortage of healthcare workers that we have in our DHBs and in our hospitals. She needs to do that so she can pass that information on to her health Minister and to her Minister of Immigration who have done a hapless useless job over the last four or five months of bolstering our critical healthcare workers in Auckland. And it's worthy of note—just before I carry on because I found out this little morsel today—that up until now we've had about 1010 nurses enter New Zealand since the pandemic began. But get this: 1156 sports people have arrived. That's how much focus this Government has put on bringing nurses into our hospitals to bolster our resilience and our healthcare system to make sure that Kiwis are safe during this pandemic.What we now know after weeks of mining for information is that the immigration Minister never bothered to find out what the speciality of nurses was who were coming into New Zealand. He never bothered to ask them if they had an ICU speciality so we have no idea how many ICU nurses have actually come into New Zealand. He never had a conversation with the Minister of Health as to how we could use the immigration process and the visa process to bring in more nurses to bolster our ICU capacity. Never happened. Never had a conversation.And now we find out that Minister Little the Minister of Health knew in June this year that healthcare workers were not able to get in through managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ). So we have nurses waiting to come to New Zealand sitting offshore who can't get in through MIQ. He found out in June. He didn't do anything he didn't start getting his officials doing any work until 13 October. Two weeks later we have a policy put in place saying 300 nurses and doctors can come in through MIQ. If he'd done that exact same thing back in June when he knew about it two weeks we could have had on 1 July 300 spaces set aside for healthcare workers—back in July. That's 1200 nurses and doctors and critical healthcare workers that we could have had in the country had he been on top of his job. But what was his excuse? What has he said in the media? "Oh well you know hindsight is 20/20 and there was no playbook." I tell you what: it wasn't hindsight; it was foresight that he needed.We're in the middle of a global pandemic and here are a few things that he would have found out if he'd bothered to ask any questions because the one thing he said was "Well back in June we only had one or two anecdotal cases" that he was made aware of. But if he'd scratched the surface and done his job and gone to the Auckland DHBs and said "How many ICU beds have you got that are staffed?" He would have found out that only 14 of the 17 resourced beds could actually be staffed. He would have found out from the Aged Care Association that they had 350 nurses sitting offshore who couldn't get in through MIQ—that was back in June. And there was nothing about hindsight because actually he was written a letter—which we got through the Official Information Act process—from the Aged Care Association on 10 August telling him that they couldn't get their workers in. He would have found out that 60 percent of those nurses were being declined spaces when they went for an emergency spot. He would have found out that those nurses coming in through MIQ had slowed to a trickle. And he did nothing. He sat on his hands until October when he finally said to his officials "Oh maybe we should do something about it."He knew that Delta was on our doorsteps he knew that we had a critical healthcare shortage he knew—if he had bothered to do his homework—that they couldn't get in through MIQ and he did nothing. He's our Minister of Health it is his job to make sure that in a global pandemic with Delta on our doorsteps about to enter our communities that we had healthcare workers being able to get in through MIQ. Finally he's done something; too little too late. Most of those workers have to go through a 10-week process of getting registered to even start work which means they won't be working until March. Absolute dismal job by our Minister of Health."