Woods MeganHon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Minister of Energy and Resources): This is a great week. This is the week that marks the second anniversary of our Government. Some people said it wouldn't last but look at us now. This is indeed our cotton anniversary so just a note to the Opposition: it is customary to give gifts. I'd like to point out to you that cotton is the traditional gift for this anniversary and it is very very fitting that it should be because it symbolises the threads coming together even more interconnected over time something that I'm sure the Opposition look at with great envy about interconnectedness and unity when they look over this side of the House.It is with great pride that we look back on our two years of progress in Government. When we came together as a Government what we did was do something that was a first in New Zealand. What we have achieved is a Government where all parties that make up this Government have maintained a distinct public voice and public support. This is a true MMP Government and of that we are proud. I would like to acknowledge the cooperation that has gone into making this work with our Prime Minister the Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern the Deputy Prime Minister and the Greens co-leaders who have made this Government work so well. Since coming to office we have achieved great progress for New Zealanders. After nine years of neglect too many issues were ignored and New Zealanders were paying the price. If we don't start fixing these problems now things will only get worse and that is something that New Zealanders recognised. We are getting things back on track. It's going to take time but we have made a start.Let's have a look at what we have achieved over this time. We're immensely proud of the big investments in mental health that we have made so people can get help at their local GP. We are immensely proud of the fact that we have provided more addiction treatment beds and services than ever in this country. We are immensely proud that we have funded new cancer treatment equipment like radiation machines and new cancer drugs. We've started to clean up our rivers and are supporting farmers to fence off their waterways and plant trees. We've increased school funding so parents don't have to pay school donations and NCEA fees. We've supported businesses to invest in innovation and diversification and we are investing in trades training. We've banned offshore speculators and we've stopped the sell-off of State houses. We've built more than 2300 new State houses this year to September. This is more than any Government since the 1970s and we are rightly proud of that.In addition to that in addition to this progress that we've made we have been delivering more jobs and higher wages with unemployment down to 3.9 percent and wages growing at 4.4 percent a year. We have extended paid parental leave to 26 weeks by 2020. We've helped a million New Zealanders heat their homes with winter energy payments. We've got a family income package to help 384000 families by an average of $75 a week. We've banned single-use plastic bags to help clean up our environment and we have reduced doctors' fees for around 600000 New Zealanders so they now have access to healthcare.There were many problems that we faced when we came into Government. We had to start addressing this. We couldn't bury our head in the sand as the previous Government had and simply ignore the long-term challenges and issues it faced. What have we heard from the Opposition over the two years of progress that we have been showing for New Zealanders? We have heard negativity and no new ideas. We stand by our progress on this side of the House.