Davidson MaramaMARAMA DAVIDSON (Co-Leader—Green): Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare. Tēnā koutou e hoa kaimahi. For many of us here the past five weeks have been the longest consecutive time that we have all stayed at home stayed put—if it's like me for my entire political career—and it is quite bizarre to see people in the actual flesh today and to see our colleagues many of whom we've seen on a day-to-day two-screen two-dimensional basis. I greet all of us in coming back to the House today and learning this new way of working that we're all getting used to in the precinct.We should be proud of what we have achieved in Aotearoa over the last five weeks. We've shown our capacity as whānau as friends as colleagues and neighbours to come together to make a difference to people's actual lives. And we've shown that above all else it is the wellbeing of our whānau and our communities that matters most of all. So today as some of us return to work or reconnect with the people and the places we've missed I ask us to reflect on what the last five weeks have taught us about who we are what we value and how we can build a future for the generations that follow us.For me that has been a profound reminder that ensuring the health and wellbeing of our people and our planet is a collective effort. Over the last five weeks we've worked together to stop the spread of COVID-19 and now we must move forward together to reimagine an Aotearoa where everyone can live decent lives. Every one of us has a role to play in connecting the extraordinary work we have done to overcome what we hope was the worst of COVID-19 with the future we want to create tomorrow for ourselves our families and our communities.What we see around the world is that COVID-19 has revealed one particularly striking thing about our economic approach—that is that it does not give sufficient thought for everyone we deeply rely on: the people who go to work every day to earn just enough to provide for their families; the people who make sure supermarket shelves are stocked with everything we all need; the people who care for us when we need them most like midwives and nurses and health carers and cleaners. I hope that the wake-up call is that all of us are valued members of our community.Here in Aotearoa—you see right now I'm valuing the people who used to bring us some water and I wish I had remembered that memo—successive Governments lauded GDP as our prime measure of progress but that focus can camouflage the real truth. For decades our economic progress has come with a number of underlying conditions the starkest of which are inequality and ecological instability. Our Government has done an incredible job so far of supporting those who need it most but in some ways the need for that support is a symptom of the way we run things. For thousands work has become increasingly precarious. There are more zero-hours or short-term contracts more self-employed people with erratic incomes.Of course these things interact with one another. Inequality means that some people have been affected more than others by the COVID-19 lockdown in terms of not only their health but the resources they have to get through. Those with the least support and resource have felt a desperation even with the support we have put in place. So as we rebuild we must take stock and learn what a more stable fairer more equitable future will look like. If we do not take this opportunity to redesign our future we will be leaving thousands of people to worry that should something like this happen again they may not find a way through. Before COVID-19 hit we already had too much inequality in Aotearoa New Zealand. We cannot allow that to worsen. We need to ensure that low-income families are a priority in the economic recovery. We also need to protect and restore the natural world that we depend on. Any separation of health and economic policy from environmental policy would be a mistake. Our health and our economy entirely depend on a healthy natural environment.Right now our Government's priority is understandably getting things going again but soon the conversation is bound to turn to what we do about the debt we have accumulated. How should the burden of paying it back fall between generations between different levels of income and between different parts of the country? When that happens I ask that we remember how we have come to define essential" over the last four weeks—and again I want to acknowledge not just the Parliament staff who would be here today keeping us lubricated and watered but all of the Parliament staff who have continued to work for every single one of us over this time in interesting and often challenging situations from homes from places that aren't particularly set up comfortably to work from and they have been going above and beyond through all of this unknown nature of what we've all been working through.We must not ask the people who have got us through some of whom are amongst the lowest paid to bear the big costs of recovery. And I'll add again right now I am really feeling for students who are being asked to pay rent for halls of residence that they are not actually able to live in right now. I'm pleased to see that there is some advocacy and action on the issue including from people like our spokesperson Chlöe Swarbrick alongside other politicians to see a fair outcome for those students.If we get that right we could emerge from the crisis more connected more prosperous and more equal—a New Zealand where people no matter where they are from have everything they need to lead fulfilling meaningful and prosperous lives where our precious plants and animals are protected and our wild places are looked after for future generations. It won't be easy but if the last five weeks has taught us anything it is this: when we as a community work towards shared goals with hope and with courage anything is possible.Before I finish off I also wanted to acknowledge the hardships that people have experienced including those who have passed away through contracting COVID-19 but also those who have lost loved ones over this time to other causes and have had to bear a different way of grieving our loved ones in saying goodbye and farewelling them—a way that is often even more hurtful because of the lack of connection that we have been able to afford at this time. I think of you all and I think many of us would have examples of that in our own families and communities.Both the crisis of COVID-19 and the many other challenges we face from inequality to degradation of our natural environment reveal that our world is inextricably interconnected. The health and wellbeing of people and planet are as strong or as fragile as those connections. If we are to hand our children and grandchildren a better planet we have to strengthen these connections. Kia ora."