Lubeck Marja; Mallard TrevorMARJA LUBECK (Labour): Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare. New Zealand in 2019 was the first country to deliver a Wellbeing Budget and it's that emphasis on wellbeing that has put us in a really good position to counter the challenges that COVID has thrown our way head on unlike many other countries. At the start of this month the world had a devastating headline: 5 million people perished. That's pretty much the whole population of New Zealand. And while many countries are going through their fourth and a fifth wave or even have had continuous waves in New Zealand we've had one of the lowest if not the lowest rates of hospitalisation and death and compared to many other countries we've had relatively more freedoms for much longer times as well. So by going hard and by going early New Zealand has had the best opportunity to minimise the effects of the global pandemic and save people from effects on their livelihoods and ultimately save lives.Now we have the very best tool available in our tool kit which is of course the vaccine and we've had some really fantastic vaccine rates. It's great news that earlier this week I think actually it was Monday Counties Manukau joined the Auckland and Waitematā DHBs and joined the 90 percenters club. It is really up to all of us to make the choice to be able to do more of the things that we love and see the people that we love and also protect those who can't get vaccinated—our under-12s. It's great to see that to date over 3.7 million New Zealanders have had that first vaccine dose and many more are joining them every day. Now we do know that some areas of the Auckland region need a little bit more work and especially in the North when we're looking at the Waitematā area for example. But there's plenty of opportunity for people in these areas to get a vaccination from Wellsford down to Kūmeu and several mobile vaccination vans are touring the country from Muriwai Kaukapakapa Parakai South Head Glorit Port Albert Pākiri Leigh Whangateau. Just walk in. No appointment needed. The vaccination programme is of course a massive logistical exercise but with 89 percent of New Zealand now having had their first dose and 79 percent fully vaccinated as of today we are going very well and it makes me confident that we're on our way to getting more of the restrictions lifted and being close to living life a little bit more normal—a bit more normality. It shows that our strong health response has also been our strongest economic response and that means that we can accelerate the recovery while we leave no one behind because basically what happens is the more people that are vaccinated the safer that we are and as we move into our new COVID-19 Protection Framework the new tools in our tool kit will allow us to keep the spread of COVID-19 as low as possible and it provides a pathway for still keeping New Zealanders safe. It's very hard to imagine that it's a year ago now since election 2020. And of course in the meantime much of our focus needed to be on how we managed COVID as a country. But also we have managed to achieve a hell of a lot: from increasing the minimum wage to getting unemployment down to 3.4 percent increasing benefit levels for the lowest-income households and of course we had a massive boost to apprenticeships. The Government's actions to support the economy during the pandemic have resulted in higher wages and more people at work. We've invested in programmes like Mana in Mahi and Flexi-wage. We've rolled out free apprenticeships along with free trades training in critical areas so that we could grow our trades workforce. The Ministry of Social Development are seeing record amounts of people moving into work so that means that not only is the unemployment the lowest that we've seen in 14 years with 3.4 percent but GDP is up. Our debt is amongst the lowest levels that we see in the OECD and we've experienced record growth while we're at it. So basically that's a combination of this Government's balanced approach and the steady hand of our finance Minister the Hon Grant Robertson. And it has put us in a really strong position as we move into that COVID-19 Protection Framework and that's that silver lining that the Minister has mentioned several times for us to build back better.Now I'm based in the Auckland region and of course having been at home for 83 days before coming back to Parliament this week I'm well aware of how Aucklanders have been toughing it out. Many of them have been in touch—personal and business—and we know it's been very hard. But we do hope that with the easing down of the restrictions it will relieve a little bit more pressure off everyone. And of course that enhanced business support package is taken up by a lot of people. Today retail has opened up in Tāmaki-makau-rau so I'm hoping that everyone—SPEAKER: Order! The member's time has expired.