Wall Louisa; Mallard TrevorLOUISA WALL (Labour): Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare. Can I officially congratulate you on being a Speaker. It's very exciting to see two men and two women who formally preside over this House and so congratulations. I also want to acknowledge all the MPs who have joined this 53rd Parliament. I have enjoyed listening to many of your maiden speeches and I look forward to your contributions in the House because for all of us it is an absolute pleasure to serve the people of Aotearoa New Zealand and that's why we're all here. I want to emphasise from the Speech from the Throne and this Address in Reply debate the priority of our Government.We make no apologies for prioritising the health and wellbeing of New Zealanders and having an elimination strategy that ensures that we remain safe whilst at the same time allowing our uri—those of us who don't live in Aotearoa the diaspora who have chosen to come home. They're the majority of the people who are venturing through our managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) facilities. They're returning citizens and I'm sure all of us would provide that space for them would allow them to continue to come home. In addition we have made some allowances for some particular employees with certain business leaders and for me it really does speak to the social contract that is allowing us to continue to function our economy to function and that partnership between Government and business.I want to thank our front-line workers our customs and immigration Air New Zealand staff cleaners our health and disability workforce our district health board and primary health organisation professionals and all the MIQ staff that have kept us safe. I really did want to focus on an attitude by some of our business leaders and I want to take the opportunity to acknowledge Kiri Hannifin and the team at Countdown. They were named as one of the businesses where somebody who had COVID had gone to and it ended up not being right. They weren't actually visited but they closed their store and they cleaned their store and when they were informed that actually they didn't really have to do it because they hadn't been visited what Kiri said was that they'd rather be safe than sorry. They put their workers first and they put the safety of their staff and customers first. The reason I wanted to highlight that was about that precautionary attitude that vigilance that focus on people putting our people first to ensure that we all remain safe and that we can have a relatively good experience in our country as opposed to what we've seen in other parts of the world.In terms of our priority I know much has been said about maybe not understanding our priorities and I also want to emphasise our investment in people and how we've done that. I want to focus on the $320 million investment in trades training and our focus on the building and construction area on agriculture on the manufacturing sector on community health counselling and care work. The reason that we did that was in response to something that happened when National were in power in 2017. There was a massive reduction in apprenticeships by 38 percent—50000 people dropped out of that sector. So we've been incredibly proactive learning from history but investing with our business leaders in sectors that obviously will keep our economy going. I think that as a priority is something that we all should be incredibly proud of. Again it emphasises the partnership between Government and the business community. Kia ora.SPEAKER: I call on Damien Smith to make his maiden statement.