van Velden Brooke; Salesa JennyBROOKE VAN VELDEN (Deputy Leader—ACT): Thank you Madam Speaker. It is a pleasure to be back in Parliament for the year and what a year it's been already. My thoughts are with everybody who's been affected by the heavy rain the cyclone and the floods and we hope that that's the end of it. But our ACT MPs have been out in the community over these past few weeks listening to New Zealanders to see how we can support them and also to hear what's on their minds so that we can represent them here in this House.What I've seen in the community is the worst of nature but the best of Kiwi spirit. Just on Monday I was in Hawke's Bay and I spent some time in Havelock North. And on Joll Road which had been heavily affected I met volunteers from the neighbouring streets who were cooking warm meals who were providing water and shelter to people—other volunteers who had come to help clear the silt and clear away all of the destroyed property. They had 200 volunteers from the local community come out pick up their own shovels and put on their own gloves to help out the community. There have been neighbours who have been rescuing each other and in Auckland in the following days of the floods I was out there helping the Waitakere Indian Association deliver warm meals to people who had no kitchens no electronics that were working. I saw a woman who was in her nineties who had given up her own bed to somebody else who had no home to go to. I heard from people whose own insurance brokers had turned up to take destroyed walls off their homes. This is a community that's getting together to help each other. There's a lot of stress and a lot of anxiety but it's not where it ends. People have stress and anxiety because of the cyclone and the flood and the heavy rains but because of everyday life as well. In the community I've been hearing from concerned women who feel like crime has increased so far that they no longer feel it's safe to walk to work in our CBDs. They don't feel like it's safe when they leave their work facility to walk home or even walk to public transport but instead they're Ubering home. That's not good enough. We're hearing from families who feel like the cost of living is rising so much that to get food on the table they have to forgo saving anything that week. We're hearing from cafe staff. I was just talking to a cafe owner last week who said it's so hard to find staff that he hasn't had a break all Christmas; he worked the entire way through. We've heard from families with small children that mortgage rate rises are getting them very very stressed. Their repayments will be doubling this year from what they were paying last year. I've heard from people with small children who are worried that they can't even get in to see a doctor. I was in Carterton just last week. They don't have a GP; they need to go to the local hospital in Masterton. But of course I talked to people then in Masterton who said they're worried they can't even get into the hospitals at all. There is so much stress and anxiety and it just feels like everything is so hard. We've heard from people who find it's impossible to get any workers in through the borders builders saying that bureaucracy is increasing and increasing and increasing. And for a young Kiwi it just feels like the path to homeownership is getting harder and harder. Where is that path to homeownership? Where is the path to having a job that keeps up with inflationary costs? And where is that path to a future in New Zealand? Well ACT says what's happening at the moment isn't fair it is hard but we can't have more of the same. We need the Government to cut wasteful spending. We need to simplify immigration. We need to show leadership on crime. We need to simplify our building laws. And we want people to once again feel like they can make a difference in their own lives. The ACT Party has been out there in the community. We are listening we hear ya and we're here to work for New Zealand. We want more substance over spin. We want policies that unite New Zealanders rather than divide us and we want to have hope that tomorrow will be better than today and we need real change and a change of this Government.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): I call on Mark Cameron for five minutes.