O'Connor GregGREG O'CONNOR (Labour—Ōhāriu): Thank you Madam Speaker. Recently I had a period in my life when I was a little bit distracted about what was going on in the real world—it was around the death of a close relation—but at the end of it I came and I sat down and watched my telly one night just thinking that I would have a catch-up with what's happening around the world. There was a poll result that came out—I believe it might have been on Newshub—and the poll was actually pretty good for this side of the House. But in reflecting on the poll I heard the commentator make a comment about despite the omnishambles" and I thought "Have I missed something here? During this period of distraction have I gone into some sort of a time warp of the kind that I am reminded of when I look at the demographic across the other side of the House?" So I thought I had better do some research because I may have missed a little period of my life because when I went into this possible time warp things were looking quite good for New Zealand. So when I went into this perhaps time warp there had been a COVID outbreak. The world was facing a COVID pandemic. So I thought "Well with something that serious probably a pretty good way to judge how you're going as a country is how many people have died." because this is a pandemic that does have a high mortality rate and it also leaves many of those who are infected quite debilitated for some time. I thought "Well in New Zealand we like to look at other countries and the first country we always look at is Australia. We'll see how the Aussies are going." because many times in this House when we're being persuaded and we're being harangued about what we should be doing quite often our Aussie neighbours are mentioned. So I thought "Oh let's go and see how they're going in Australia shall we: 164 deaths per million—hmm that seems higher than I remember. But anyway we'll just go to Denmark the old Scandinavians. Scandinavia—you know good old social democratic countries. They get it pretty right. They look after their people. Oh 667 deaths per million people. Israel—always in the news Israel."—they're on their fourth booster I believe now—"988 per million people." It goes on. Sweden—oh we were told that Sweden had got it right: "Leave it with the health authorities. Don't have a leader like Jacinda Ardern who is involved in the decision making." I thought "The Swedes have got it—oh 1592 per million. We could go to the United States of course: 2711 per million." and then I thought "Obviously this had all happened while I was in that time warp that I'm reminded of whenever I look at the Opposition and I had better have a look at how we're going in New Zealand because we must be pretty bad if we're in some sort of omnishambles: 10.34 deaths per million." I thought "Oh that's pretty good actually. I wonder what all this criticism is all about. We're doing pretty well." But then in that same story there was actually a mention made around building saying that we're doing terribly in the building statistics. So I thought "Oh I'd better have a look at that." In fact what I could see from September 2017 to December 2021 was that we've had 166922 new buildings consented and this compares with 188000 for the 10 years of the Key-English Government. So I thought "Boy we're doing pretty well there. I wonder how many people we've got actually involved in the building industry." Between 2017 and 2021 the construction sector added 31700 jobs. Well it would appear that actually we're doing quite a bit about that which ails us. I've run out of time. I could go through our inflation rates but just before I do finish—and I would like the Opposition and those who are looking at ways in which they can put the boot into Government to remember this—I will leave you with this. There is one group of people that I would really like to pay tribute to and that is our managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) workers who at some time last year went from being the heroes of the piece—and I'll put it right down to actually a previous Prime Minister who started using words like hermit kingdom. All of a sudden they became the bad guys. They became the jailers and all of a sudden the job where they had been hailed became very difficult. So I would just remind anyone opposite who's going to stand here and put the boot into our MIQ system to just remember how well those people have done by us. Thank you Madam Speaker. ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): I call Shanan Halbert—five minutes."