Luxton JoJO LUXTON (Labour—Rangitata): Thank you Madam Speaker. I'd like to begin my contribution this afternoon by saying a thankyou. I want to say thank you to all our health workers all our managed isolation and quarantine facility (MIQ) workers all our essential workers who have been on the front line since the beginning of this pandemic here in New Zealand. Sometimes I think we don't give them enough thanks and acknowledge them enough. So that's how I wanted to begin my contribution.I for one am extremely grateful and relieved to be living here in New Zealand and as Dr Deborah Russell mentioned earlier a year ago with her daughter having been overseas my daughter was also overseas and she only just came home in December. So that whole entire time of her being away has been an extremely stressful and anxious time for our family. To have her home here in New Zealand where it is safe so safe compared to other countries has been a huge relief to us as a family and she herself upon coming home has acknowledged—and is quite astounded now as she's experiencing it firsthand—the freedoms that we have here in New Zealand and that we are living relatively normal lives albeit with a few lockdowns here and there over the time we've been in this really lucky position.I have a friend who's living in Scotland and has had to home-school her children for almost a year. So actually we are very very lucky here in New Zealand. Andrew Bayly brought up the fact that $40 billion has been spent so far. Well I would rather spend $40 billion and take on some debt than suffer the loss of tens of thousands of Kiwis' lives as was modelled at the very beginning of this pandemic here in New Zealand.I'd like to move on to something a little bit more localised and in my electorate—some of the great initiatives that this Government has been putting into place to help support communities around New Zealand. I want to talk about the free school lunch package that this Government has initiated. I want to pay tribute to the 1211 free school lunches that are going out to our children around Timaru. Because of this recent initiative and the growth in the initiative of free school lunches now including the secondary schools 13 jobs have been created in Timaru and 12 of those 13 have been women. Of those women the majority are mothers and these mothers are appreciating the opportunity to be either back in the workforce or to be able to undertake work after having lost their job through COVID. We know that women have been disproportionately affected by COVID-19 many of them being parents as well as having to take on extra work or even being a front-line worker. Actually a lot of our women have been essential workers on those front lines—nurses MIQ staff—so we know that women have been disproportionately affected here.But what I want to say is that there is a woman—the operations manager Mataia. I just want to quote something that she has said with regard to the additional roll-out of free school lunches. She has said There's less child absenteeism more positive behaviour better mental health and they have more energy in the afternoons." That to my mind is a very very good thing and money very well spent.I just want to quickly touch on the regional apprenticeship initiative fund that Venture Timaru has been administering on behalf of the Government though mid south and north Canterbury. All 100 apprenticeships have now been filled and Nigel Davenport says "This is a real success story of targeted support that really hits the spot." So there are 100 new apprentices throughout north south and mid-Canterbury which is a win and once again I am so grateful and feel lucky to live in New Zealand."