Williams PotoHon POTO WILLIAMS (Minister for the Community and Voluntary Sector): Thank you Mr Speaker. Like colleagues before me we are experiencing in Christchurch a few days of immense sadness as victims read their statements to the court. I'm just a little overwhelmed overcome by it actually because some of the things that are coming out in statements make me feel that our Muslim community have held on to an enormous amount of grief that they didn't share with us at the time. The victim impact statements have come to represent a whole body of knowledge that they have held apart from us. I want to just send to them my absolute aroha at the distress that they must be feeling but also at the huge amount of forgiveness that is being expressed in the courtroom as we sit here in this Chamber.Extraordinary times have been experienced not only in our city but in our nation and across the world. In my contribution today I want to talk about the quality of leadership. It occurs to me that when we are in our most difficult times we look to those around us for comfort for support but mostly we look to our leaders in the community for how we can find ways to get through. Nothing was surer than what happened in Christchurch on March 15 more than a year ago—that what happened immediately after that was that the community stood together behind our Muslim community but that at the very top of our leadership chain our Prime Minister stood and made some extraordinary statements to the world: that everybody in our community deserves our care our love and our support and that we as a nation should stand with them—and we did. People from across our motu from across Aotearoa stood with the Muslim community in Christchurch at that time. But not only that the world looked to us as well and looked to our leader and saw what an extraordinary amount of empathy support and compassion was being poured out from her and our other leaders into Christchurch.Here we are again at one of the most difficult times that our nation will face. We don't do this alone; we are part of the global response to COVID-19. There is something about the quality of leadership that I think again speaks to how we get through this as well as we can. As a student of leadership I know that there are three key elements to good leadership. The first is respect. How do you gain respect? Well that's through deeds and actions by being consistent in your responses to people and also by being reliable so that people know when times are tough you will always act in a consistent way—you are reliable in that regard—and by doing that you build trust. Trust is really important because there are some times when as a leader you have to take tough decisions that your community may not necessarily agree with but that you know are acting in the best interests of your community. But most of all good leadership is about love—about love for the community; about loving the community enough to take the right decisions when you need to; about how even when people are feeling a little concerned they trust they respect and they know that you are acting in their best interests and they know that above all you have their best interests at heart.I think right now we need to look to our leadership and ask our leaders and those who want to become our leaders whether they have those three elements as a core of their being. Do we respect them? Do we trust them? And do they have love and compassion for us and the community? I have to say that I want to acknowledge our Prime Minister the Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern. She's an absolute—absolute—example of what extraordinary leadership is and what it can achieve in our most difficult times.As I sign off I do want to say to our Muslim communities especially to those at the Linwood Islamic Centre: I hope to see you all soon and you remain in my heart. Thank you Mr Speaker.