Hipkins ChrisHon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Health): Gerry Brownlee forgot the first job of a deputy leader which is don't overshadow the leader in her first big speech. Mind you Judith Collins set the bar pretty low something that we've of course come to expect from Judith Collins in all of her endeavours in this House.National's running on the campaign platform of them being the best party to deliver. Of course they made Gerry Brownlee their deputy leader and the people of Christchurch know that Gerry Brownlee can't deliver anything. Gerry Brownlee has demonstrated one thing: his commitment to restoring the Canterbury Plains in the middle of the CBD! As far as you can see from eye to eye you see flat land in the Canterbury CBD thanks to Gerry Brownlee's rebuild efforts. Years on after the earthquake the people of Christchurch are still waiting for those big projects; Gerry Brownlee promised them and didn't deliver any of them.I can tell you around the Christchurch schools rebuild this Government in three years has put more new money into that than National did in nine. If you take out the insurance money and the money they would have got anyway we've put more money into rebuilding Christchurch schools than they did. That says everything about their commitment to the people of Christchurch. So if they're going to run on the platform of being the party that delivers and they're going to have Gerry Brownlee as their deputy leader during that campaign I say bring it on because their record speaks for itself.And then of course we had Gerry Brownlee running down the prospect of there being a further outbreak of COVID-19. Now I know Gerry doesn't read the news but he should look on the telly at what's happening around the rest of the world and he will see that while we live in tranquillity here in New Zealand because of our collective efforts around the rest of the world it is a very very different story. COVID-19 grows by the day around the world. The total number of cases that existed in the world when we went to level 4 is now the number of new cases we see around the world every single day. There is no room for complacency and there is no room to loosen up the very tight control measures we put in place to stop COVID-19 coming into the country.I say that to everybody who might have heard Shane Reti's first contribution on Radio New Zealand the day after he became their health spokesperson where he reiterated their commitment to reopening the borders for—among other things—international students. Now I want to see international students back in the country when we're able to safely do so but I'm not going to put the overall health and wellbeing of New Zealanders at risk in the process of doing that. One of the worst things we could do for our country is rush to reopen the border—as the National Party have consistently argued over the last couple of months—and put the health and wellbeing of New Zealanders at risk. The best thing we can do for our economy is lock in the gains that we have made by stamping out COVID-19 and there is one party in Parliament that wants to put all of that at risk. It's the party opposite it's the National Party who have been very clear they would throw away the gains that we have made and that is not something that members on this side of the House are willing to do.We will bring the same focus to the rebuild of our economy that we brought to fighting the virus in the first place. We'll keep the people in work as we did through the wage subsidies but we will invest in our people as well. After the global financial crisis we saw tens of thousands of apprentices being laid off and for the next decade we suffered the consequences of that as we saw skill shortages that the members opposite in Government were more than happy to fill through skilled migrant labour rather than training New Zealanders. We will not make that mistake here. We will invest in our people as we have done with apprenticeship subsidies with extra investment in vocational education and training so that we can not only keep Kiwis in work but we can get them back into work quickly when they find themselves out of work and so that we can as the economy recovers ramp up the building and construction projects without the reliance on migrant workers that the last Government were so hooked on. We will make sure that we are putting Kiwis back to work. That is what New Zealanders can expect from this side of the House. The same level of focus that we put into the health response we will put into the rebuild response and it is clear that New Zealanders are up for that journey. Our team of 5 million has done an incredible job of fighting COVID-19. Now our team of 5 million needs to band together and continue to rebuild New Zealand in the wake of it.