SpeechHon IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety): Thank you very much Mr Speaker. One of the unusual experiences of alert level 4—the lockdown as we all called it—was queueing up outside the supermarket. I imagine most members of the House would have had to have done it over some point in time being sent out to do the grocery shopping bring supplies home and it was actually—whilst it was an unusual experience—a very good opportunity to catch up with constituents and see what was on their minds. Almost every single time I queued up outside the supermarket people would just want to say Thank you" they'd want to say "Please tell Jacinda how much we appreciate how hard the Government is working to protect us to save lives and to make sure that New Zealand gets through this." What I suppose I've found a little bit surprising is that that's exactly the same sentiment that's out there right now. You go to the supermarket now and I'm having exactly the same conversations with people—they just want to say how much they appreciate the work that's being done. I think every one of us especially Ministers in the Government would really appreciate that sentiment knowing the long hours the hard work—the effort that's being put in by public sector officials to produce all the policy papers to help us make the difficult decisions to get New Zealand through this—is appreciated. But what I always say to every single one of those people who want to express that thanks and gratitude to the Government is that we need to thank the people of New Zealand the team of 5 million who came together and through our collective action have supressed COVID-19 here in New Zealand. It is easy to forget given the privileged position that we have all created for ourselves—that everybody working together has created—that when you look around the rest of the world we are seeing 100000 new cases of COVID-19 every single day; every single day 100000 new cases and people tragically are continuing to die with the virus all around the world. It's no wonder that the number of people wanting to return to New Zealand or to just come here for the first time continues to increase. We have to manage and support and facilitate people being able to come to New Zealand because they see us as a safe progressive nation where they have the opportunity to thrive—because of the work that the team of 5 million have done.What they tell me they don't want to see is a rush to open the borders. They don't want a bubble with China. They can certainly see the advantages of a bubble with Australia but only if we get there carefully and cautiously. They certainly don't want to see universities running quarantine facilities for students—because what people want above everything else is for us to be able to maintain that privileged position we can move freely around the country we can socialise with our friends and our family where our economy is getting moving again and we're actually creating new jobs. I had a marvellous opportunity just on Friday to go and visit an employer in Palmerston North my constituency where they are working with the Ministry of Social Development to employ people who have recently lost their jobs because of COVID-19. I got the opportunity to speak to two people in particular who had been in long-term employment and had lost their jobs because of the lockdown—because of the impact of this global pandemic that we are facing. They had to go to the Ministry of Social Development (MSD)—Work and Income—for the first time. And they were not people who were used to having to go to a Government agency and ask for support. And frankly they both said that they were nervous about having to do that. But then they also said how wonderful the staff at MSD were how supportive and thoughtful they were and how quick they were to help them redeploy into new work that was available and fitted the skills and experience and attributes that they had. I got to go and see them whilst they were in induction in their first week at a new job still in their hometown of Palmerston North. That's the kind of work that people expect from the Government and that's what we are delivering—whether it be through support for apprentices; not only providing the apprenticeship for free but also subsidising the employer to take on that apprentice and to pay them as an employee in that role the opportunity to create skills for the future and that's what this Government is dedicated to doing. We've got through the initial health crisis. Now we have to make sure that people are able to thrive with an economic recovery."