Shaw JamesHon JAMES SHAW (Co-Leader—Green): Thank you Mr Speaker. Normally I would start an adjournment debate speech with a series of badly written and even more poorly executed dad jokes but with the—Hon Member: Go on!Hon JAMES SHAW: I'm sorry to disappoint the honourable member. But with the mounting toll that COVID-19 is racking up around the world with yesterday's release of the royal commission report into the terrorist attack of March 15th and with today's commemoration of the tragic events of Whakaari / White Island 12 months ago I have to say it feels out of place. So I want to start by acknowledging the families in New Zealand and around the world who are facing now a second holiday period without a loved one lost at Whakaari and those who survived but with horrific injuries and their families and their supporters. You are in our hearts and we continue to share in your grief. We also close the year remembering those that we lost on 15 March 2019. I'd like to acknowledge the bravery of those families who are still grappling to understand with broken hearts how someone who is so filled with hatred could take their loved ones from them. As we all face the future we do continue to draw inspiration from your strength and compassion.In the coming weeks families friends and loved ones around Aotearoa will gather together to celebrate to share meals to reflect and to remember. That we can do this when so many around the world cannot is in no small part thanks to all of those who made the COVID response so successful—from our nurses our pharmacists and our doctors to our farmers and our suppliers and our delivery drivers our supermarket staff our dairy owners—thank you. These challenges should remind us of the huge job that we have in the coming years to make things better for people all across Aotearoa. Earlier this afternoon I met on the steps of Parliament a group representing every part of the generational spectrum. Finn at 11 years old the youngest of the group presented me with a letter addressed to every member of this House to follow the advice of the Climate Change Commission and to take bold action on climate change. It also served as a reminder to me that as we eventually emerge into the light at the end of the COVID-19 tunnel the climate crisis is still there and waiting for us to respond to it and our people are watching to see whether we are up to the task.I would like to thank the people who make this work possible from the cleaners to the restaurant staff to the IT teams who keep everything running from Hansard to the Library to the Clerk's office to your own office Mr Speaker—thank you. And finally a thankyou to those in the Public Service who have kept the Government going under extraordinary pressure.I also want to give thanks to the Green Party team. Our parliamentary ministerial and party staff our volunteers and our supporters poured their hearts out this year to get us over the line and were rewarded for their efforts. To them I say thank you. Now we've made much of our success in recent weeks in expanding our caucus for the first time in 10 years winning an electorate seat for the first time in 21 years and both starting and finishing a period in Government as a support partner above the 5 percent threshold. But the election did also bring with it some losses and so I'd like to take this opportunity to acknowledge and thank on the record the extraordinary contribution of three remarkable women who served alongside me as the Green Party's first Ministers in Government: the Hon Eugenie Sage former Minister of Conservation Associate Minister for the Environment and Minister for Land Information; the Hon Julie Anne Genter former Minister for Women and Associate Minister of Transport and of Health; and Jan Logie former Parliamentary Under-Secretary of Justice for Domestic and Sexual Violence Issues. For their incredible hard work and for the legacy that they each leave behind all I can say is thank you.Yesterday's motion responding to the March 15 terrorist attack and today's commemoration of the Whakaari disaster one year ago also brought up other memories of the last 18 or so months from my own very close encounter with a highly disturbed member of the public on March 14 to the first of the major school strikes for the climate only an hour before the terrorist started his rampage on the 15th to the follow-up school strikes in September that brought 170000 citizens on to the streets around the country demanding that we take bold action on climate change to the shock of seeing our own skies turn orange as Australia burned over the summer. We have lived through extraordinary times. It reminded me of a passage by the former Czech poet dissident and president Václav Havel who wrote I think there are good reasons for suggesting that the modern age has ended. Today many things indicate that we are going through a transitional period when it seems that something is on the way out and something else is painfully being born. It is as if something were decaying crumbling and exhausting itself whilst something still indistinct were arising from the rubble."We have crossed the Rubicon of 2020 with all of its tragedy and hardship; 2021 brings a new hope that we can shape a future that has a place for all of us that leaves no one behind and that works for everyone. Merry Christmas and a happy New Year."