SpeechSHANAN HALBERT (Labour—Northcote): Thank you Madam Speaker. It's wonderful to stand here. Together we have risen to the challenge of COVID-19 in our third year. We see this challenge and it's an incredibly frustrating time for all New Zealanders but can I say we are the best in the world. I repeat: we are the best in the world. Now I know this because I've followed it closely. People can yell and shout all they want but we know we have incredible vaccination rates across this country. That is what has kept us safe from COVID-19—through Delta and now through Omicron. We've done an incredible job at running our economy ensuring that unemployment remains low. In fact on the North Shore of Auckland 10 percent of people have moved into employment off benefits. That's an incredible number in this time in a pandemic.I want to go back to our infrastructure. We know that in growing Auckland we have to invest in our infrastructure. It's no longer fit for purpose and Aucklanders know this. I listened to Simeon Brown this afternoon talking about transport—and no he had no ideas—but what Aucklanders face is ongoing congestion that we have to address. We have growing emissions since 1990 that are out of this world and we've got to take action now and we've got to invest in infrastructure for Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland to ensure that it meets our needs now but also for future generations. Yes that does include light rail. Yes that does include North Shore Northern Busway extension. Those things are important.Why I believe in our Prime Minister's statement and the words of this Government is because we have delivered on transport and infrastructure. In fact if I go back and—it's been 15 years since a Labour MP has held a seat on Auckland's North Shore—as we look to the transport projects or under-delivery of 15 years and I look back to the Northern Busway that was the last piece of transport infrastructure that was delivered to North Shore people in Auckland. The last. Now it's up to this Government to deliver again. In fact I move forward to the Northcote housing development: we've got on and delivered and built houses. We've built 300 so far and this time next year we will have doubled that doubled the houses up to 600 up to almost 2000 at the completion of this.In addition to building houses we've focused on infrastructure in the ground. I've heard lots about three waters and the scaremongering that sits there but I come back to people in my community want to protect our water. They want infrastructure that's going to support our growing community and the intensification that we've seen. We've seen the start of this Government—in my own community $13.5 million has been invested in water infrastructure. We've got to ask ourselves: what do we want moving forwards? We want infrastructure that supports our growth. We want infrastructure that enables us to move around our city when we want how we want and we've got to build good public transport to enable us to do that.I'm so proud of our plan to not only build light rail in Auckland and get on with that but integrate it into the additional harbour crossing. Yes all parties have talked it up. We've known for a long time that we have to do it but this Government is delivering on it. We've invested in it—$100 million has gone into the Auckland Transport Alignment Project plan to get that started already. That's why we're here where we are now.But what is important is that people believe in this Government and our ability to deliver our stability and our unity as a caucus to get on and do the things that we said. So investment in infrastructure getting on with our economic recovery and ensuring that people continue to have good jobs that they are paid the wages that they need to be paid and that they are able to operate in what are difficult times and times that will continue to be difficult.Lastly and coming back to infrastructure again I'm proud of the change that we're seeing in our health system the investment in our hospitals. I come back to North Shore Hospital—120 additional beds $5.5 million over the COVID period invested in increasing the number of ICU beds should we need it when Omicron comes largely into play and we're seeing tens of thousands—[Time expired]