SpeechHon NANAIA MAHUTA (Minister of Foreign Affairs): E hotuhotu ana te whatumanawa e mākū ana te papa i te rirohanga o te manukura e Georgina Beyer haere e moe e au tō moe Pai Mārire.[My heart sobs and the earth is wet at the loss of the esteemed Georgina Beyer. May you rest in peace. Pai Mārire.]I just wanted to pay a brief tribute to Georgina Beyer. Certainly for the time that I knew her when she served in this House she was unequivocal about her ability to give voice to the rights of the transgender community and more importantly to try and educate many members of Parliament in her time about the need to achieve equality of representation for the LGBTQI community. May she rest in peace. Can I also acknowledge that this is International Women's Day. Throughout the country when we think about the challenges that are facing many of our communities be they big or small the role of women in our communities is a significant contribution to the type of nation that we are. The tone of this particular debate has been set against a specific context and for my part I want to acknowledge the challenging and complex world that we are in. We have experienced a global pandemic crisis and conflict in terms of Russia's aggression and a war in Ukraine and then there's climate change. If I come back to the challenge of climate change just recently as New Zealand has experienced Cyclone Gabrielle and the impact on many of our communities throughout the country so too has Vanuatu experienced tropical Cyclone Judy as well as tropical Cyclone Kevin. So we know both at a local level within our region and then at a global level the earthquake in Türkiye as well as Syria the impact of climate change.So I want to join with other statements in this House and acknowledge the Prime Minister. While we are living in this complex and challenging time I want to acknowledge the clear pragmatic and caring leadership of a Prime Minister who knows that we must ensure that we take decisions for this time against this complex backdrop. And why? Because more and more we need innovative solutions. We need communities to understand how important they are to respond to some of these complex challenges. Now the Prime Minister in his own words has said that we will focus on the bread and butter issues. The clarity of that statement means for a lot of New Zealanders that we will go back to basics and the basics are about people about community and about what we can do for one another. We saw evidence of that against the response to Cyclone Gabrielle and how communities rallied around very quickly by their own volition to be able to support those in need and there were many stories of people who were suffering themselves yet still went as first responders to be able to undertake the things that they knew were necessary so that their community could be supported. At this point I really do want to acknowledge many members of Parliament who within their own communities actually stood side by side with first responders community iwi and also their local networks to be able to ensure that we did what we knew to do best which was support people in their time of need because by working together that's what it's going to take. In many ways that echoes the clarity of the statement the pragmatic and caring nature of the statement that was reflected by our Prime Minister. He said we will be a Government who supports families and businesses through difficult economic conditions. We won't take a hands-off approach or an austere approach of saying it's not our problem. We will lean in because we know that cost of living pressures are real. We know that it's going to be important to focus on the things that matter: an economy that is working for everybody making sure people have incomes that will be able to provide bread and butter and hopefully support each other in their time of need and by being able to tackle some of the real systemic challenges like getting Kiwis into work by focusing on training by lifting incomes and things like that. Also we need to have strengthened public services because we know that when we have an effective health system that when our young people are fully engaged and that when we are able to deliver the services that people rely on day in day out that makes a really big difference. By and large much of the commentary of my colleagues on this side of the House has talked about why it's important to lay the economic foundation that is necessary for this time against a backdrop of climate change. I'm so proud there's been a strong emphasis on tackling the country's infrastructure needs. What we saw during Cyclone Gabrielle is actually some of the greatest fragilities in our infrastructure network. Now I'll only talk about my own electorate in Hauraki-Waikato but going up the Coromandel Peninsula where roads are cutting people off from their communities or similarly out to Raglan where roads were dropping out we know that we need to do more to have more resilient infrastructure and it's not just about roads. It's about energy it's about power it's about water to our communities and it's about houses and homes. Now that's the type of message that I'm sure many of our communities want to hear. We are a Government who will invest in getting this not just right but getting this into a position of greater resilience because we know that climate change will lead to greater or more frequent natural weather events. For that to occur it's going to take leadership at all levels and again I come back to the example shown through Cyclone Gabrielle and the community that is working alongside its local leaders at all levels and then alongside local government and central government. The cyclone recovery response that the Prime Minister announced and setting up regional groups to be able to ensure locality plans and approaches to deliver on responses that will work community by community is the way to go. This is no longer a command and control situation. We have to be responsive to the needs and the impacts of the cyclone as it has affected people and I'm looking forward to ensuring that certainly within our particular region we've got greater local voice about what those solutions could look like and how to prioritise the investment decisions in infrastructure—for example in the social network and social fabric of the impacts of the cyclone that will be very helpful to our whānau. I wouldn't be able to complete the speech without perhaps moving through to one of the areas where I have a specific interest and that is in the area of climate change. It concerns me quite a bit as I move around the Pacific and I recognise the stark impact of climate change on Pacific communities as to what we need to think about here in New Zealand and sea-level rise is a prescient kind of challenge for the people of the Pacific but so too is it for our coastal communities. Again I think about our communities all over New Zealand and in my own electorate—certainly in the Coromandel—they are having to significantly consider the prospect of relocating or moving back. These are not easy issues—these are not easy issues—and these are going to be the challenges that a clear pragmatic and caring Government will need to grapple with as we respond to the challenges of our time and hear the views of our communities. Also fixed-income communities: I think about the challenge that they have right at this moment. That's why our Government is responding in the way that we are. We're providing supports to families and communities and fixed - low-income peoples in a way that will help them move through this difficult and challenging time. Were we not to do it like some believe we shouldn't we're basically assigning these very people these communities those most in need into a place of helplessness and that is not who we are as a Government. I'm proud of our Prime Minister who continues to assert that we will take action we will respond to the bread and butter issues and we will get back to basics and address the needs of our community in a very pragmatic way because we live in a time when these challenges are so complex ever-changing and compounding many of the things that our families are experiencing. It gives me great pleasure to be able to speak in favour of the Prime Minister's statement and I hope that those who are listening to this debate continue to go back to his statement to hear what the direction of this country will be over the next coming months because it is one that cares about people. Tēnā tātou.