Stanford EricaERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): Thank you Madam Speaker. Well the speech from the PM earlier today was absolutely spot on in one respect. She made a comment in particular that struck a chord with the National Party—it struck a chord with me—that was very hard to disagree with. Her words hung in the air: we cannot return to business as usual. And hallelujah because business as usual for the last four years has seen a Government that has mixed up a hot mess of press releases promises and PR spin all served on a bed of lack of delivery lack of detail and a general failure to deliver on anything that they said they would get done. Business as usual from this Government has seen not a single extra ICU bed—a staffed ICU bed—added in two years. Despite everything we saw offshore despite the Prime Minister today saying Well we're probably going to see new variants." not a single extra staffed ICU bed; that's business as usual from this Government.Business as usual from this Government: a health Minister that started the campaign to attract ICU nurses to our shores literally today—two years into the pandemic and he starts that work today. That's business as usual from this Government. A Government that ignored emails from Pfizer for six weeks delaying our vaccination roll-out in 2020. A Government that again ignored emails from our rapid antigen supplier Kudu Spectrum at the end of last year for eight weeks. Very late in the piece finally after business leaders intervened placing an order for 65 million rapid antigen tests right as Chinese New Year hit meaning we will not get delivery of these as early as if we'd placed our order weeks ago but they ignored that email again. Business as usual from this Government; not learning their lessons from 2020. And a Government that literally steals—as it now turns out—rapid antigen tests from the private sector when they realise the levels of their own incompetence.An immigration Minister that literally takes six weeks to sign off immigration instructions to allow rural contractors to get their visas and that was something that Minister Damien O'Connor announced six weeks ago in early December. This is going to mean that we will not have agricultural machinery operators harvesting things like wheat which we need for bread production in the South Island and grains for food production—as we're about to go into an Omicron curve. Business as usual from this Government is disastrous and no more disastrous than has been evident in our managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) systems. The lottery of human misery that has divided Kiwis into the 5 million onshore and the 1 million offshore while the Government reduced the 1 million offshore to being called "cumulative risks" by a Government that divides to rule. They told us they would manage the border but we got DJ Omicron who came and went from this country at his leisure film stars nannies production crews from reality TV shows children's entertainers sports teams The Lion King dancers—I've talked about this for two years now nothing changed while desperate Kiwis in awful situations had to explain things like their very personal and complex medical conditions to non-medical professionals at MIQ who decided who got a spot in MIQ.Pregnant women with high-risk pregnancies stuck in countries where they weren't able to give birth with no visas having to go to court to get an MIQ spot; nurses sitting offshore unable to get in through MIQ to bolster our critically short workforce while split-migrant families have spent three Christmases apart—that is business as usual at our border. Business as usual from this Government saw us being the only country in the world that effectively closed our borders to our own people while gas lighting them by pushing the narrative that they had all the time in the world to come back—"They're only coming back for a holiday." "It's all their own fault." and "They're simply cumulative risks." Business as usual from this Government turned Kiwis against Kiwis in a disgusting display of division; this was business as usual from this kind and caring Government! Did they reprioritise Kiwis over DJs? Nope. Did they increase MIQ capacity? Nope. Did they consider purpose-built MIQ capacity? No. Did they in fact use all of the MIQ rooms that they had available to them? No. They can argue all they like that they were keeping us safe but the things don't add up when sports teams The Wiggles DJs and nannies come and go while desperate Kiwis and healthcare workers get relegated to the bottom of the pile. This has been business as usual for two years.But how about business as usual for bolstering our health workers? Well that's been a complete nightmare from the start. What does business as usual look like? It looks like a health Minister who knew in June last year that health workers including nurses couldn't get in through MIQ and yet it took him until October before he decided to do anything about it. After months and months of screams from the Opposition "You need to have MIQ spots tied to these workers—these critical healthcare workers." finally in October he got around to thinking about it; it wasn't in place until late November. And as it turns out of the 600 spaces that have been available since then only 60 nurses have come in. The Minister will tell us that it's just because well maybe nurses don't want to come here when the reality is that the scheme that he's set up is so bureaucratic in nature and so difficult to get in that nurses and doctors around the world are choosing not to come. That is the truth—nothing to do with the fact that they didn't want to come in the first place.Business as usual has seen a health Minister and an immigration Minister that never had a conversation on how to attract nurses to New Zealand. National proposed residency on arrival for healthcare workers and this was effectively picked up by the Government with access to residence in 2021 for healthcare workers that now enter the country. Migrant nurses were split from their families leaving the country in droves. National lobbied to get them reunited with their families; that finally happened May 2021 14 months after the start of the pandemic. The immigration Minister never kept a record of how many ICU nurses were entering the country—didn't bother to ask them! We knew nurses were coming in but we never knew their speciality; we still don't—we still don't ask that question. And now the health Minister after his summer break two years into the pandemic decides we might need a programme to start attracting ICU nurses to New Zealand. Well here's some free ideas that I'd welcome him to pick up. How about paying them a resettlement fee like we do with teachers? How about paying their Competency Assessment Programme course their competency course? How about expediting their residence? There's a whole lot of ideas that he could be using—there we go free to him—if he wishes to pick them up.Business as usual for the border has seen big announcements and no delivery. Fancy PRs with screams from rooftops "Here we are fixing the problem. We're bringing in workers. We're going to bring in farmers we're going to bring in teachers we're going to bring in port crane operators we're going to bring in vets." The reality was no one ever arrived. Three hundred teachers in July last year; 8 have come in. Two hundred dairy farm workers; none have been delivered. Port crane operators in 2021; none have been delivered. Sixty vets; 7 have arrived. Two hundred rural contractors to drive the heavy machinery to harvest wheat and grains announced in December; none have arrived. And guess what? We need those grains and wheat being harvested right now. One hundred and ninety seven people were interested in that scheme; now only 40 are left because of this Government's business-as-usual approach to the border. And it's against this backdrop that we see just recently their opening up to the world scheme against the backdrop of continued failure of border exceptions; where no one's getting in the country against a backdrop of people like Charlotte Bellis not being able to come home to give birth to their baby; the backdrop of very negative press. And again we get business as usual from this border announcement because when you take a look at it it lacks so much detail.The Prime Minister and her Minister of Immigration have said "It's going be great; we're going to get 20000 extra critical workers in in Phase 1 and 2. We're going to have all these extra workers they're going to be paid 1.5 times the minimum wage and they'll be attracted to New Zealand." Well the question is: why would they come? The Minister has already said they can't have access to their resident '21 scheme; so that's closed to them. There's literally no pathway to residence right now for anyone entering the country under this new scheme that they're setting up to attract 20000 critical workers. If you were a highly skilled well-paid professional overseas wanting some certainty about the future for you and your family in New Zealand why would you come when there is no pathway to residence for you? The answer to that is: they will not come. The second part of that is why would they come if they can't leave? Because this Government have made it very clear to migrants onshore: you are not allowed to leave and you are not allowed to come back until October. So you're a highly trained skilled professional overseas no pathway to residence no ability to leave the country if your mother gets sick or your father dies or you've got an emergency overseas—they can't leave and come back again.It's this business-as-usual lack of detail that this Government perpetuates day after day after day. New Zealanders deserve better. This country deserves better. We need a Government that is focused on the detail on getting things done on picking up the phone sometimes when that's required. Instead we've got a Government that lacks any ambition any get up and go or any mojo."