SpeechTourismNAISI CHEN (Deputy Chairperson of the Economic Development Science and Innovation Committee): Thank you Mr Chair. It's a pleasure to start off today's debate and question the Minister of Tourism on behalf of the Economic Development Science and Innovation Committee. As the deputy chairperson I have the pleasure of coming back to the Chamber and reporting to the committee about what we heard during our process. Can I start by acknowledging every single business and every single participant in the tourism sector. We know that COVID has been tough for you. We know that the border restriction has been tough for your business and for your industry and we want to acknowledge that but at the same time we just thank you for your contribution to helping us keep New Zealand safe and for the sacrifices that you've all made to make sure that we had the best healthcare response so that now we can focus on our economic recovery.I just want to note the progress we've made already and just look back on the time when we had our annual review with the Tourism Board to even today where we are now open to all the visa waiver countries and especially Australia—a few weeks back now. Already we're seeing that increase in volume not only through our airport but also in our tourism destinations remembering this week that the Prime Minister had listed places like Wairarapa that have seen a really noticeable increase in their tourism numbers. So it's great to be able to see and welcome back tourists.During the review this year we heard from the Tourism Board of New Zealand and we questioned them on many aspects of how they kept New Zealand's brand alive overseas. We heard that even though we may have had closed borders the New Zealand Tourism Board and Tourism New Zealand which is the organisation they oversee have worked really hard to make sure that New Zealand as a destination for tourism still stays at the forefront of our major tourism market. I was especially pleased to hear about the fact that they were still continuing training with our offshore partners and they told us they had trained 15000 travel sellers in China alone and that they had organised different kinds of online seminars to make sure that our partners overseas were still able to promote New Zealand as a tourism destination. We were really glad to hear that at the end of it 64000 travel agents had been briefed by our tourism agency and they were still able to connect with us and upskill their knowledge on New Zealand as a tourism destination. We were also really pleased to hear about the fact that the Do Something New New Zealand" campaign had achieved great success in New Zealand and that our domestic tourism had reached unprecedented volumes during the 2020-21 year. I thought it was really nice to hear that people chose not to just sit on their hands but actually tried to remedy the situation to the best of our possibilities. And just this week having opened to international tourists we know that we have achieved our full potential in domestic tourism and now I think is the time for us to open back up to the world again and we are able to do that to the safest possible standard.I'd like to hear from the Minister of Tourism about the investment he and the Government have made to the tourism sector to Tourism New Zealand and how that money has been used to keep our international branding alive and to keep us attractive as a tourism destination to overseas tourists and how we've been able to keep that connection going despite all of the challenges of COVID."