General Debate

I move, That the House take note of miscellaneous business.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. May I first of all stand on behalf of not just National MPs but, actually, on behalf of the National Party, its many volunteers, and its many supporters and at this time shout out to, mostly, those health professionals that are at the front line and that are doing jobs and putting themselves at personal risk, to those cleaners and workers that are out there and doing that job, to the teachers that are dealing with parents that are full of angst and uncertainty, and, of course, to New Zealanders and probably to people around the world, actually, that are in times of such major uncertainty in not knowing what’s coming along next. Can I just please put us on record in acknowledging all of them in these absolutely unprecedented times.

To start with the good, can I just commend the flu vaccinations and there being more of them being made available sooner for those whom they have prioritised. That certainly, from our perspective, makes sense.

Can I acknowledge the job support package. Thank goodness something is finally here, even though a week before, in this very House, we had been hearing “It’s business as usual. There’s nothing to see.” Certainly, the answers to questions from our side to Grant Robertson on Wednesday last week were just, “It’s business as usual. Carry on.”, and in just a few short days, we—thank goodness—saw that change and we’ve seen some of that support come on board.

There’s no two ways about it. We do question things like $600 million for aviation but only $500 million for health, and $2.8 billion for increasing benefits, which was most likely going to be done, quite frankly, in the Budget. But one has to question it, when we get accused of politics on a daily basis on this, that actually to try and make the package look a bit bigger than what it was going to be—that that was brought forward so that it could be a bigger announcement yesterday than what we would have seen if it had been in the Budget.

We would have liked to have seen more for health, as they are in the times that they are right now. We do worry, as everybody does in this House, about those that are going to lose their jobs, who are in medium-sized or bigger businesses and who haven’t got weeks to wait for the next iteration of what might be coming their way, and these are literally thousands of jobs.

Like, I’m sure, every member of this House—and, actually, probably most of us in society—I mostly, at this point, worry about those who are in overcrowded situations, and what does it mean for them if someone is suspected of having coronavirus or has coronavirus. I worry about those that are in motels at the moment and those that are homeless, and our most vulnerable.

I worry about older people who already feel isolated, who wonder what it means for them if they’re actually now feeling even more isolated because they can’t get the visits and they can’t get the level of contact that is actually part of who we are and that keeps us ticking along and keeps the soul feeling good. For many of them, this will be a truly fearful time.

So I like that Parliament’s talking about what a plan might be and what we may need to do, but I do shout out right now to politicians: we are representatives of the people. We are public servants. This is the time where we don’t stand up and say, “Us first.” It actually, for me, is the time when we say, “Us last.” This is the time when we should be calling out and making sure that we’re doing our bit for the people that we represent in our communities. [Interruption] No, I’m saying it for all members of Parliament, and certainly not just for us.

This is the time when I think that we can be doing what needs to be done, so we will continue to ask the questions. At times they’ll be uncomfortable, and at times people will criticise them and they won’t like them. It is the job of Opposition, I think, more now than ever to actually be asking the questions that need to be asked of the Government as they make huge decisions that affect people’s lives.

We would like to see more transparency. We would like to see the basis of the decisions that were made on Saturday. We asked today and were told “Go through the normal process. You’re not getting that level of paperwork.” We’re constantly told that we should work together, and yet any hand that we reach out is simply not taken up. It’s yet again the words but not the actual practice. I shout out to the people—

Order! The member’s time has expired.

This is a Government with a plan that is well prepared and has been operating off that plan since 6 January, in the face of the global outbreak of COVID-19. We have outstanding health professionals in this country. We have invested, in the last two Budgets, record amounts in health, such that we now have an $18 billion health budget, but, of course, more resources will be needed specifically for this fight.

I do want to acknowledge the leadership of the Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance in making it clear, right from the very start, that financial resources would not be a constraint for health in this fight. Right from the start, we have reallocated resources, and now we have a dedicated $500 million package available to health immediately, with $235 million of that already allocated, to make sure that the public health of New Zealanders is put first, to make sure our people are kept safe, and to make sure that we can follow the World Health Organization advice that we focus on testing, tracing, and self-isolation. That approach thus far has served us well. We have kept COVID-19 at bay as well as any country we might like to compare ourselves to around the world.

There is no room for complacency. We need to continue to take decisive action. It has served us well so far. We moved before other countries on putting restrictions in place for people coming from Iran. We moved before Australia on putting restrictions in place around South Korea and North Italy, and we moved before most of the world to put in place restrictions around all international travel, except for the obvious case of our neighbours in the Pacific that we have a particular duty of care for. New Zealand has moved swiftly, and I want to thank our health professionals, who are using this time, as we speak, to make sure that our health system is as well prepared as it possibly can be for this global epidemic.

Today, I am calling on all New Zealanders to unite in the fight against COVID-19. Together, we can get through this. This will involve all of us taking the steps that we can take to make sure that we’re keeping our loved ones safe, to make sure that we’re looking out for the most vulnerable in our communities. It means simple things like making sure we do not go out when we’re not well. It means observing social distancing where otherwise we might want to give the hongi or the handshake. It means washing our hands frequently to ensure that we’re observing the best hygiene practices, and coughing and sneezing into our elbows. These are simple things, but they will make a huge difference for New Zealanders as we unite to fight COVID-19.

Our strong response in health is a part of our strong economic response. We know that keeping our people safe will help to protect our economy, and that is why, at the very start, we have gone hard and gone early to keep New Zealanders safe. We know that we will see more cases of COVID-19 in New Zealand, so we are continuing to plan for that reality.

I want to speak briefly to a couple of the items in the package that was announced yesterday, the $500 million set aside as a dedicated initial health package: $40 million immediately into public health, with a strong emphasis on contact tracing. That nearly doubles the current annual spend on public health and is so important for those vital services to contain COVID-19. Also, $50 million more will go into primary care, including funding for community-based assessment centres, equipment, and logistics.

Of course, also today, the Hon Julie Anne Genter and I announced an early start to the flu vaccination campaign, bringing it forward from its usual April start to ensure that our elderly and our most vulnerable and those who care at the front line, our healthcare workers, are protected from the start of this—to make sure that before the flu season, more people can be protected. We have 30 percent more flu vaccine than our record season last year. This is, again, because we have acted early. It will help to keep New Zealanders safe and reduce the demands on our hospitals in the peak flu season.

This is a Government that’s prepared, that has a plan, but we are all going to need to unite as a country to together fight COVID-19.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. We all stand here today during challenging times for many New Zealanders and many people all around the world. We all see the international stories. Day by day, the gravity of the situation is deepening, and the lengths that various Governments have gone to around the world to try and hold back the tide of this disease are quite astonishing and unparalleled in terms of closing down economies and keeping people at home. We all wonder about what the outcome of this will be, and we’re naturally concerned—concerned about the health of ourselves and our families and our neighbourhoods, and also about our economy and our ability to have good jobs and to care for our families and to have some security in the future.

We note and acknowledge the Government’s very substantial package yesterday. In broad terms, of course, of that package, about 2 percent of GDP has been focused to the short-term battle against this disease—about $6 billion. The other $6 billion, roughly, will be spent over the next four years and is not directly related to the coronavirus but for long-term things, such as increasing benefits. Now, that may well be appropriate, but we do need to recognise that the package, in terms of trying to deal with the short-term economic issue that we’re facing around coronavirus, equates to about 2 percent of GDP. It’s interesting; the United Kingdom, overnight, was talking about 15 percent of GDP. So notwithstanding the talk that we’ve heard about the size of this package, we do need to recognise that in international terms, it’s relatively modest.

Our point that we would be making here in the National Party is that we agree with the focus on wage subsidies in terms of helping people stay in their jobs and helping businesses. It’s not a business support package; it’s a workers support package that we need and what we’re getting. It’s about keeping workers in their jobs and keeping those businesses ticking over. Our primary point yesterday was to make the point that if you’re spending $12 billion, you’re actually better to spend most of that money on saving jobs today, not on something in four years’ time. That’s what we wanted: more urgent action. When we called for the package a number of weeks ago—actually, two weeks ago; certainly a week ago—we were talking about swift and substantial action. We’ve got a reasonable amount of action, and some of it is swift but most of it is not. So we’re making a very clear call to the Government to move faster and more urgently and more substantially in order to save jobs.

I was disappointed, frankly, today in the Minister’s answers around the numbers of people. It’s all a bit confusing: $5.1 billion has been allocated to these wage subsidies. Even in urgent and critical times, basic questions should be answered and we should have the basic detail and assumptions upon which it’s made. So if you’re spending $5.1 billion to give a subsidy of $580-odd a week, that’s about 730,000 workers you’re talking about subsidising in the next three months. It’s very hard to understand, because only about 900,000 workers would be eligible for it. The implication seems to be that the Minister thinks that nearly 80 percent of eligible workers will be being subsidised in the next three months. That, I hope, is not the case. It’s a very bleak outcome if that’s what he is thinking, but I’m not sure the figures have been gone through in any detail.

It is not correct and not acceptable that this Government says that they refuse to release the Cabinet papers and the information upon which this decision was made. We need to see, right now, what the Cabinet paper said and the assumptions that underlined that decision of nearly $5 billion of expenditure. We need to see that now. We don’t want to wait six months or two months or three months—however long the Government usually takes to answer these basic questions. Likewise, for the major decision on Saturday about closing our borders, we need to see the Cabinet paper and understand the arguments that were used.

Finally, I do think it’s also critically important that the private sector is out there trying to raise extra money to keep jobs and save jobs, and that’s capital raising. A lot of big companies are out there right now, wanting to raise more capital. The first thing that a Government should do should be to make it easier for them to do the task. They should be sending a clear message to the Financial Markets Authority and the stock exchange to be swift with their regulatory work—don’t muck around for two weeks but turn things around in 24 hours—and lift the threshold so that companies can raise that money that they need critically and swiftly. It’s all about saving jobs. That should be the primary focus from an economic point of view. Of course, one of the best things we can do is get on top of this disease quickly, and that’s why all of us right here today are encouraging the Government and authorities to test, test, test—get those tests out quickly so that we can understand the size and gravity of this problem. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. There’s a line that I recall, from when I was a lad at St Stephen’s School, out of the Bible: “But the hour cometh, and now is”. Without a doubt, every single member of the House wants to align their interests, I am absolutely sure, with the inevitable challenges, hardship, uncertainty, and pain that lies ahead of us with the arrival of the viral black swan: an event no one contemplated, an event that has long and dangerous consequences, and will be rationalised post-event for many years to come.

Every single Kiwi is looking to their democratically elected representatives to show reassurance, not to delve into gratuitous displays of pettiness or divisiveness. Now, there’s a balance to be struck between the democratic responsibility of Her Majesty’s loyal Opposition to test the thinking, but not to feast on the inevitable sadness, uncertainty, and volatility in the community. This particular package, articulated yesterday, now over $12 billion, will inject confidence, will inject cash, will inject re-assurance into the many firms that are saddled with the burden of having to get rid of employees or, indeed, in some cases, even close their businesses. This truly is a set of circumstances that no one in this House has actually been through. Sure, the economic impact may be analogous to what some of us lived through in the late 1980s, or it may have resonances for that which befell us in 2007 and 2008. But, with the dangerous implications for human health, this moves it to an entirely different level.

When we go into the regions, and we will be making announcements for the Tai Rāwhiti—but that’s not the only region. All of these programmes start somewhere. For several weeks we’ve been working on cobbling together, with coherence and with a level of cut-through, a package for the forestry industry. But it’s not only the forestry industry. The other side of the House have been quoting statistics—quite dangerous, in my view, the way in which they are throwing those statistics around about the huge layoff problems in the tourism sector. That is why the wage subsidy, the actual ability of people to put their hands up: “I may be affected. I need to socially isolate. I need some fiscal assistance so we can continue to live.” That is a very compassionate, that is a very relevant, set of ideas in our proposal. But there will be several eras, segments in this journey. This is just the beginning.

Slowly but surely, I’ve no doubt that businesses themselves are putting themselves on a war footing, because such is the systemic nature of the challenges, not of our own making. Markets overseas are clogging up, supply lines, logistics are clogging up. This is restricting our ability to conduct business as usual. But I’ve every confidence that the investors, the enterprises, the men and women of the land, will continue to generate food, generate produce and exports. And where we need to, as a Government, ensure that supply lines and logistical problems can be solved, we will solve them.

We know we are a country that has a prodigious ability to turn our fortunes around. We have our legacy industries and we are about to learn how profoundly important those legacy industries are in terms of continuing to generate output. This is not a time for rural or urban, young or old, blue or red, black or white; this is a time for Kiwis to bind together. This is a time for this House to show we’ll rise above pettiness and point scoring. I do say, however, we were let down by the Leader of the Opposition yesterday.

Madam Speaker, thank you very much. I want to start by recognising the hard work and commitment of our health workers, health professionals, and thousands of people up and down New Zealand who are in surgeries and doctors’ studios, in our hospitals, and, indeed, in ambulances, who are doing more than we would normally ask of them.

Of course, there’s great uncertainty for them. They need to know that this Parliament recognises just what they’re going through and that we will continue to work hard to make sure they are as safe as they can be. I also want to recognise or think of parents in New Zealand, at the moment, of children, particularly smaller children, because they too will be facing great uncertainty. I know in my electorate, but also here in Wellington, from around the country, there will be parents who are not sure whether they should send their children to school or, in some cases, will be choosing not to. And that’s understandable that as with everybody in this House, parents and others are concerned about the impact of this virus upon New Zealand and concerned for their loved ones.

That brings me to the need for there to be clear and precise and concise information made available from the Government, but also from members of Parliament in all aspects. The reason for that is as this virus has unfolded and will continue to change as quickly as it has, the more information that is available to the public, the better position they will be in to manage their own circumstances. We need to make sure that the clear advice the Government has been given from health professionals is made available to this Parliament, but to parents and to New Zealanders also so they know about how they can best decide how it is they go about arranging their everyday lives, because it is important that parents know that their children are safe at school, if they choose to send them there.

I hear what the Minister of Education has said earlier, but I think there is a lot of information—a wealth of information or advice—coming to the Government that I think they must release, and that they must put aside their normal political decision making when it comes to releasing information, because these are unprecedented times. It’s important that this House is aware—but everybody is aware—of exactly what’s happening.

I just want to, for a moment, just take up the Hon Shane Jones. Look, I know it’s very, very difficult and it’s very challenging, but we can’t, on the one hand, say that everyone must come together and not be political, and then be political. That’s all I’m going to say about that. And the reason for that is there are many New Zealanders—tune in to the radio station or listen to talkback radio. There are so many questions being raised, and they’re concerned. And sometimes they will appear to be from a place of anger, but they’re not, they’re from uncertainty and they’re from concern, and they’re because people want to know that everything is going to be OK.

So when the Opposition raises issues with the Government, as I have in this House, as Simon Bridges has, and every other member has, it’s to seek information, not to trip up or catch out, but to seek information to make sure that everything that has been done, that can be done, is being done. I think that if we can leave at the doorstep this notion that if you ask a question you must be being political, then, actually, the House will work much better, and New Zealanders will be happy with that, and we’ll be taking our responsibility seriously. Again, I want to leave it there.

I would say to the Government that the package they’ve announced has been welcomed, and it’s welcomed by the Opposition, but we need to make sure that everything that can be done is being done. I think another area they must revisit very, very quickly is those medium sized businesses and, particularly, the tourism businesses that this package won’t deliver for. Indeed, if you are a medium or large sized business and you’ve lost 30 or 40 percent of your income, or you’re going to, then, actually, you may well have 100 or 200 employees, and the decision of how you keep them on is exactly the same as for a business that only has 10 employees. The consequence for the economy, but actually for those workers, is much, much graver, because there will be cases in the coming days and the coming week where hundreds and hundreds of employees are let go in larger companies because this package doesn’t deliver for them.

I think the Government needs to raise the cap and realise that it’s not just about small businesses. Yes, we understand that they had to rush there so very, very quickly. Release the advice as to why it’s only the small businesses, but actually what we need to do, particularly for tourism businesses, is lift that cap and realise that some of them are not going to survive based on the package that was announced yesterday.

In my electorate, and in Queensland, and in every part of New Zealand, there are tourism businesses that have no bookings—they have nobody coming through. They have no money arriving this week. We need to keep those businesses there and people employed in them because, actually, otherwise the harm to our communities and to our economy is going to be so much greater than it is today. So good announcement as a start yesterday, but the Government needs to go much, much further, and they need to quickly.

I want to start off by acknowledging the spirit of New Zealanders and the huge amount of compassion, kindness, understanding, and resilience that we’re seeing out there in the face of COVID-19.

Yesterday I saw a person who runs their own business. They are a caterer. They have lost a lot of business already because they work on film and TV series sets, and they spoke to me about the fact that they are already looking for ways to diversify. They understand that this is happening internationally and so, of course, we are impacted as a country. But then they spoke to me about their concerns for other New Zealanders. I’ve spoken to many New Zealanders who had organised once-in-a-lifetime trips overseas in the upcoming months and now know that that may not be a reality for them, but, despite being disappointed, they have said that they understand the measures that we as a Government have taken—they respect those measures, and all they want is for the best interests of New Zealanders to be served.

I have seen people go out of their way to look out for the best interests of their communities. In fact, I saw online someone put a letter in their neighbours’ letterboxes, saying, “Dear neighbours, as we face uncertain times because of COVID-19, we think it’s important that we all pull together and look to help one another if needed in the coming weeks and months. Although we don’t know each other well, now is a great time to come together as a local community and offer support, should anyone need it. We are happy to run errands, help with washing, and to cook meals for anyone who is unwell or self-isolating. If you are willing to be part of a community support group with a focus on helping us get through this bloody virus as best we can, then please message us or drop a note in our letterbox.” And that is the spirit of New Zealanders that we are seeing at this time, and I commend that.

I also commend the great amount of effort and work that has been put in by our public sector. I am the Minister for Social Development, but I see it across the board, whether it be the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Education, Inland Revenue, the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, Treasury—all ministries are working, they are agile, and they are doing us proud, I think, and we need to acknowledge their work.

Already we have made announcements that impact or are being undertaken across Government agencies, and I know that even with the Ministry of Social Development (MSD), we have had many people working long hours, including 40 of my staff who were in the Wellington office on the weekend, to work out the detail and mechanics around some of the things we are doing, and there are many things. We’ve spoken about some of them today. There will be the wage subsidy that the Ministry of Social Development will administer, the self-isolation subsidy. There is already the rapid response teams in 16 regions—we’re looking to roll them out; in nine, they are already standing up. There is the Government helpline that MSD is running, and actually just yesterday they received 4,500 phone calls. There is the stand-down period that will be dropped as of 23 March, and we are also seeing a fiscal stimulus package in the form of benefit increases and also a doubling of the winter energy payment.

That is just some of what this Government is doing. And yes, as Ministers, we needed to act quickly to agree on policies that we could move forward and that would have a positive impact in response to COVID-19. But we could not do that by ourselves; we needed the efforts of all of those people as well to support us.

At this time, I do recognise those that are experiencing uncertainty, whether it be those that are business owners or those that are employees and wondering what will come next. I also recognise our social services and the fact that many of them have already indicated to us that they are experiencing a level of demand due to the extenuating circumstances. There are lots of New Zealanders out there that are working to not only look after themselves but to look after others, and I want to acknowledge that today.

We heard at the beginning, from the first National Party speaker, that the Opposition has a role in holding us to account. Nobody in this House would disagree, but during trying times we all have the responsibility to work together in the best interest of our country.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. I want to make one thing clear, and that is that with the decisive action we took yesterday, we can now potentially prevent the worst of this. This is why we went hard and we went early. As the Prime Minister said, and she reiterated yesterday, the health of New Zealanders is our number one priority. We also know that the best protection for our economy is getting this virus under control. That is the number one priority for the Minister of Health, and it’s the number one priority for this Government. And we’re taking decisive and necessary steps in the national interest. There will undoubtedly be disruption, and I think that’s been highlighted by the Minister of Finance and the Prime Minister, but the potential cost of not acting now is too high. Things are changing rapidly—they are changing rapidly. But the thing is that we have got a plan. As the Minister of Finance has said, the plan will change as it needs to. It is fluid.

One of my roles is as the Minister of Revenue, and I would like to highlight just four tax items that we announced yesterday that I think will help small to medium and large businesses. The thing I want to make clear, first and foremost, though, is the wage subsidy package we are talking about is not just available to small to medium businesses, which has been suggested; it is available to all businesses. However, there is a cap of $150,000. The first thing I would say to any business that is in trouble is, first of all, contact your bank. The second thing I would say is contact your tax agent or go online and look at the resources from Inland Revenue.

Now, I just want to outline four tax items. The first one is depreciation for commercial and industrial buildings, and this includes hotels and motels; it does not include Airbnbs. The reason we are doing this is because we believe that we need to help the productive economy. If we allow companies that own these commercial industrial buildings to depreciate value—which, actually, used to be the case until 2010—this will help. And let me give you one example: a building worth $3 million at 2 percent depreciation—that’s $60,000 in the first year—that’s $16,800 less tax that the person will have to pay.

The second thing I’d like to talk about is the low-value asset write-off. What this is is from 1 April this year, a company can buy an item worth $5,000 or less and they do not have to depreciate that; they can write it off immediately. What the Tax Working Group told us is that this was a real bugbear—it increased compliance costs. So what we want to do is decrease compliance costs and really encourage small to medium enterprises, our businessmen and businesswomen around the country, to go out there and buy and buy local.

The third thing is provisional tax. What we’ve done is we’ve said that we’re increasing the provisional tax threshold from $2,500 to $5,000. That means if you’re earning around about $18,000, a businessperson does not have to pay in instalments; they can pay at the end of the year, which actually is February 2022.

This is about 95,000 companies—this will improve their cash flow. They can, if they want to, pay early. They can, if they want to, enter into tax pooling arrangements, but they don’t have to. We think this will help 95,000 businesses. The fourth is use of money interest. Now, this applies from 14 February, and this is targeted. So what we’re saying is businesses who find that their income has dropped by 30 percent compared to a year ago, and have talked to their bank, and who are impacted by COVID-19, they can have use of money interest wiped from any tax debt. But they will have to enter into an instalment with Inland Revenue to pay their tax back; they just won’t pay any interest on that. And again, we think this will help. But my advice—I just want to reiterate this—is if a business is finding themselves in trouble, please do not bury your head in the sand. Talk to your bank, talk to your tax agent, and come up with an instalment. That is what we want businesses to do.

In the period ahead, we are going to ask a tremendous amount of our health professionals. They are going to have put themselves, literally, on the front line of an outbreak the scale and length of which we know not yet, but by the actions of the Government, and the scenes that we have seen around the world, they are going to be very, very difficult times. I want to pay tribute to them, because they are going to need to work incredibly long hours, put aside their own affairs, neglect their own families—some of whom will have their own needs—in order to care for those who will be unwell. And indeed, given the Minister for Social Development and Minister of Revenue have also spoken, those public sector staff are also going to be at the front line of the needs of New Zealanders as a consequence of this outbreak.

We have been hearing the Government saying that they can’t candy-coat this, this is serious, and yet we don’t have an admission—yet—that a sustained community outbreak is coming. I think we need to be honest about that, because it changes the plan that the Minister of Health talks about. He says we’ve got a plan, we’ve had it since 6 January, and yet these are conversations we weren’t having only five or six days ago.

Now, I have been in contact with health professionals in Italy and in the United Kingdom and I will not elaborate on the things they have been telling me, but in my long years in the health sector I have never heard the like. I ask this: are we really so naive as to think that those countries, those advanced nations like South Korea, Germany, Japan, Spain, Italy, and the United Kingdom were not hearing from the same public health experts that we are hearing from? And don’t we have an opportunity to change our plan, to be more nimble, more proactive? The only difference I can see is that it started earlier and it started in the last month of winter.

OK—we’re now into autumn, but I think we have a significant opportunity because the costs of not doing so could be as great as that which is being faced by those countries. And the Minister talks about the three things that we need to be doing: testing, tracing, and self-isolation. Well, I want to focus on the first of those: testing—test, test, test. I was really disappointed in what I believe were constructive and important questions in question time today not being answered by the Minister.

The simple question is this: at Logan Park High School in Dunedin are the 150 staff and students who are being tested there—all symptomatic or are some of them asymptomatic? If the answer to the question is the former, then we should shut down the city, and if the answer to the question is the latter—fantastic. What that means is we are going to get ahead of the curve, because what we know from overseas experience is that asymptomatic carriers of the virus become symptomatic spreaders of the virus and if we know who those people are, we can stop the spread. I was critical yesterday in congratulating the Government on the $500 million health package, but worried that we’re still nickel and diming this, that there are mixed messages with our health professionals who are being told by the Prime Minister they have the discretion, but being told by the Director-General of Health that they’ve got to stick to the programme, which is the 14 March guidelines for testing.

I applaud the Government’s investments in things like primary care resources, telehealth, community-based assessment centres. These are really good ideas. I worry that the influenza vaccine ordering is not going to be enough and I know there’s some more money in the future for that. So that should be brought forward. I also worry about our ICU capacity. But my simple message is this: let’s not stick to a rigid set of criteria. We need to broaden the testing regime because when we know where it is, we can know what to do about it. And actually, we may be able to free people up if they test negative. They can go back to their lives, back to their communities, back to their schools now. The message has to be this to our health professionals: leave it to them. I agree with them on that, but they must test, test, test.

Thank you, Madam Speaker, for the opportunity. These are exceptional times and it requires an exceptional response from all of us. On Saturday, our Prime Minister, the Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern, announced some of the strictest border measures compared to other countries in the world, and this is basically because it is the health of New Zealanders that are at risk and it is actually on all of us to ensure that COVID-19, novel coronavirus is actually kept out.

Now, the New Zealand Customs Service is the oldest Government department in Aotearoa New Zealand. Customs’ purpose is to stop potential dangers, hazards, and threats from entering New Zealand and, in the recent past, Madam Speaker, that focus has been on illegal drugs. You would know—I’ve spoken about it in this House previously—in 2019, Customs was able to stop three tonnes of illegal drugs from hitting our streets. Nowadays, the focus of the New Zealand Customs Service is on stopping COVID-19 at the border and Customs is working right alongside our healthcare workers. I also would like to add my words to both the Hon Michael Woodhouse as well as the Hon David Clark, our Minister of Health, in thanking our health workers for the work that they’re doing right now, but also thanking them in advance for the work that we all would expect them to do in the very near future.

Customs’ priority at the moment is to ensure that New Zealand Customs Service works right alongside our border force. And that includes public health, it also includes aviation security, it includes the Ministry for Primary Industries, and it also includes some of the police who are now at the border, mainly to ensure the new rules that our Prime Minister announced on Saturday—especially the fact that we expect every single person with the exclusion of those who are coming from the Pacific to self-isolate themselves for 14 days. We expect people to actually adhere to that.

I want to talk about what’s happening at Auckland international airport, because that is the largest port. So since the announcement that our Prime Minister made, these are some of the things that are happening at Auckland international airport. On the plane, for all international planes, there is an announcement there that actually tells people about the strict regulations and rules that we have around COVID-19. Second, passengers are given a health card and in addition to that, of course, the Customs form that they have to fill out: the arrival card. Third, there are extensive signs right across the airports, right across all of our international airports that you cannot miss, about the fact that we are really strict at our border. Fourth, passengers are now spoken to by a health official and have explained to them the self-isolation that they must actually do. And passengers are also questioned by these health officials.

There are, in addition, announcements at the airport, via the public address system, emphasising just that New Zealand has a zero-tolerance approach at the moment. Every single passenger, as you know, because we’ve closed our e-gates, has to go through Customs and they’re manually processed in that way and they are asked again about self-isolation, they’re given a card to call the Healthline, and after that they then go to the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI), and MPI also asks our passengers that come through our international airports, and makes them know about self-isolation.

After all of this is done, what I do want to emphasise is that Customs, Immigration New Zealand, as well as the police, and as well as public health officials, they all have powers now so that—and we know from media reports that there are now people that are about to be deported—if people are coming to Aotearoa New Zealand and are not prepared to self-isolate for a period of 14 days, they will face the full force of New Zealand law. It includes fines, it includes imprisonment, and it includes being put on the plane and deported.

This is a virus that we all have to fight together. The Director-General of Health earlier on today appealed to everyone, “Please dob in someone who doesn’t adhere to self-isolation rules.”

New Zealand does face a challenge of a scale possibly unlike any one that we have in the past. We’ve seen global financial shocks—actually, I think, in the last decade or two, we’ve seen more natural disasters than we would have liked; and we’ve had more than our fair share. But what I do believe, in a country like New Zealand, is that, actually, we’re up for it. New Zealand as a country has weathered many storms, and I actually think it brings out the best in people. That is the opportunity for us as a country and communities to come together to deal with some of the challenges that we are still quite uncertain on.

There are a couple of things that I think are important. One of those that comes to mind is that no matter what happens we need to remain calm. You know, there is official advice, whether it’s through the Ministry of Health or whether it’s the Ministry of Education. One thing that I would say is, particularly for older New Zealanders, the feedback I’ve had through my electorate offices is that we actually need to make more information available in many different ways and not rely on New Zealanders having access to the internet to get the most up-to-date information. New Zealanders up and down this country would agree—and definitely the National Party, as our leader, Simon Bridges, and deputy leader, Paula Bennett, have both acknowledged that New Zealanders are pleased with the support package that the Government has put forward.

It’s an absolute relief to see an increase in the testing that’s available. It’s fantastic to see that the flu vaccine time frames have been brought ahead. It’s fantastic to see that there will be a public campaign, because I do think that’s really critical in terms of good communication, clarity, and keeping people calm.

There were a few surprises, though, in the package for me. The first one—as our health spokesperson Michael Woodhouse said—was the small amount that went to health, because our health professionals each and every day, before there is a virus outbreak like this, do do an extraordinary job for us and our families. So I was somewhat surprised that the level of funding into health was as small as it is, given the size of the challenge ahead of us.

In the weeks that have already gone past, the bit that surprised me was that the Government was very fast to act to get people on benefit faster, when, actually, I believe they should have focused on actually supporting people to stay in their jobs because, at the end of the day, that’s the certainty that a lot of families have been looking for; some have been delivered to with this package.

One of the other questions that’s come through to my office in a number of different directions is the difference between the increase in the benefit of $25 a week, which is permanent, and the winter energy payment, which is only for a year. The Prime Minister has said she’s very happy to provide information to the Opposition so that that can assist us in doing our job—I’m really keen to see the Cabinet papers as to what the difference is between that. Why is the benefit increase permanent and the winter energy payment only a year? I suspect that’s because the benefit increase was planned anyway and was going to be delivered in this year’s Budget.

There are a couple of other questions I’ve had from constituents. What about new businesses—businesses that haven’t been trading for 12 months that still might have 20 or 30 employees but haven’t got 12 months trading records? So that’s one. Another is a group of tertiary students that are also having work difficulties, who work part time to support themselves.

So my questions last week and this week have been about, you know, what are the forecast numbers of the people who will be unemployed or who will join the benefit numbers, because, actually, until you know what the numbers are, how do you make that plan? New Zealanders want certainty. They want to know that there is a plan going forward, and, although the situation is changing, that the plan can then be adjusted according to whatever those circumstances are—and that’s what we will continue to be interested to see. Our job as the Opposition is to ask questions and is to challenge, and that’s absolutely what we need to do.

My final message is—we’re facing uncertain times—to stay calm and, more importantly, stay connected. Self-isolated doesn’t mean cutting yourself off from your loved ones and community.

I’m proud of the budget package that was announced yesterday by this Government. I’m proud that we all work together—the Labour Party, New Zealand First, and the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand. “He waka eke noa” was often said yesterday, and it is absolutely true that we are all in this together and must look out for each other. Working together as a Parliament is something that we should have always been doing, long before a global political crisis approached us. So I’m proud and relieved that this Government very quickly stepped up to announce a budget package yesterday; it’s the first great step in our response to the COVID-19 virus.

Again, looking after people with the least resources and the least support is part of the core responsibility of parliaments at all times, but especially right now. It’s that collective care and responsibility that is going to get us through.

What I was disappointed to hear from the Leader of the Opposition, Simon Bridges, was when we pit each other against each other—when groups and communities were set against each other. That is the opposite of the approach and the attitude that we will need to get through this. So I wanted to be clear to this House and to the country that the Leader of the Opposition needs to read the room collectively: New Zealanders want us to work together. That was an uncalled for tone and attitude that was put on this House yesterday.

For far too long as a nation, Governments and politicians have left people out in the cold to fend for themselves. We now know that that is the opposite of what we need to be doing in our response to this COVID-19. The impact of leaving people out in the cold has long added to more anxiety and panic for people, and that is why it is in everyone’s best interest to not pit groups of people against each other, to make sure that those at the hard edges of our communities, who will bear the brunt of whatever is about to come, are featured in our discussions and debates.

Also, I was pleased to see, of course, that Māori tribal authorities are swinging into action, wanting to coordinate and provide assistance and resources. I wanted to acknowledge that, at the community level and at our grassroots level, groups and New Zealanders are showing ourselves once again to be ready to provide and care for each other collectively. I want to acknowledge community organisations and not-for-profits who also will receive some help, from yesterday, but we need to also bear them in mind at the front of our responses.

The Greens know that support for people in abusive relationships is also going to be essential—as they find it hard already to leave those relationships without support, but especially with the added stress of COVID-19. That’s why the Minister’s package yesterday is supporting New Zealanders to get through, with the $500 million extra to help services at the front line; making sure that people can stay at work, with the wage subsidy; making sure people who have to self-isolate can continue to be paid; raising benefits by $25 a week. Something that I’m very proud of is that the Greens are a part of this Government to help push those sorts of changes through—changes that the Welfare Expert Advisory Group wanted us to urgently prioritise. So we’re very pleased to see that alongside doubling the winter energy payment and waiving interest and making it easier for small and medium sized businesses to keep workers in work. We know that this extra strain when people are finding themselves out of work is something that this Government can help with, and we have shown that we are ready to step up and recognise that.

People are relieved and have been in contact with me personally—[Member sneezes] Sorry; I didn’t have a tissue, but I will—in tears of relief and happiness at the announcement of the package yesterday. So I am really proud that we can give people hope and that people know this is the first step. Again, leadership is required in these very times, and I am proud of the leadership that we are showing here—again, that people want to see us work together, that people want to see us loving people, caring for our land, looking after our elders, and understanding that all of the groups and communities who make up our beautiful country are all worthy of being valued, that there is no time or room in this political House to pit groups of people against each other. We also know that pulling everyone together will help slow the virus down. This is good for everyone. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

I think there comes a time in every nation’s history—probably in world history—when we just know we’re on the verge of some big change, and I just think about what it must have probably been like in 1939, when war was declared, with the recent memory of World War One. The world would have understood the implications of it, and everyone would have sat, thinking, “Woah, something big is happening here.” And I’m thinking now of the 80,000 New Zealanders who are overseas. Every one of them—and the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Rt Hon Winston Peters, has today recommended that those people come home—will be sitting in Europe, they’ll be sitting in Asia and Africa and different places now, thinking, “Woah, we didn’t think this would happen a month ago or six months ago.” But they’re going to come home; they’ll be seeking flights. And that’s what it must have been like when war was declared.

We are at war. We are at war with the COVID-19 virus, and, like every war, there will be change. The world will never be the same. So, when that happens, it’s the time to look at how well equipped we are. I look at my own career—the times when times have got very hard. I think of when, as a young police officer, we had the Mongrel Mob decide to take us on in Porirua, or the Nomads decide to take us on in Masterton. But we won because we were well led, because we knew what victory looked like. We knew we had to win. Failure wasn’t an option. And that’s where we find ourselves now as a nation. The world won’t be the same again.

I don’t blame the Opposition for doing what they’re doing. They’re doing what their job is. They’re like the rest of us: we’re all very much in trepidation, and when we’re in trepidation, we’re looking for ways; we’re looking for what we’re going to do next. Well, I feel very lucky to be on this side of the House, because I’m getting to sit and watch. Because the one thing we all should be looking for is leadership. I can tell you now, from where I am looking, we’ve got it on this side of the House. I’m not one given to superlatives, I’m not one given to going over the top, but I do have to say that I’ve watched the Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern grow through these crises we’ve had. If she grew one leg after the first one, this time last year, she’s grown more.

What I can assure those listening, those across the House, who don’t get to see what’s happening behind closed doors in particular, is that we’re in good shape to face this. Really, on behalf of certainly my electorate, those in Ōhāriu, I can give them assurance that, while this isn’t going to be a perfect outcome—there are going to be casualties; there will be business casualties; the world will not be the perfect place, probably not for anyone—what we are is in a great shape, as good a shape as we could be, to actually take this battle on.

The other thing that it’s important to do at this stage is to have the right facts at hand—I suppose to know the enemy. There’s an old saying—I grew up in the country—that said “It’s not the pedigree of the bull; it’s the pedigree of the man”—I should say “woman” in this day and age—“who’s trying to sell you the bull which is more important.” So what I would ask New Zealanders to do is, when they’re looking at what’s happening, actually have a look at who’s telling you what. Go to the websites; do not listen to the radio jocks, do not look at what the latest thing that you’ve seen on the web—on the latest website—is. Go to the people who actually know what they’re talking about.

We’re very fortunate to have Dr Ashley Bloomfield every day giving us the numbers. If you listened to the rumours leading up to the facts every day, when that press conference takes place, you would think we had thousands. So what I would implore those listening at home, what I would implore those sitting opposite, to do is actually work with facts. Although, again, I can fully understand the positions you’re taking—you’re looking for that reassurance that everyone is—look no further for reassurance than the front row of this side of the House, because we have got the leadership to take us into this. If we have mixed leadership, if we are indecisive at any stage in this, if we double-guess ourselves, that will be the worst we can do. So all I can ask, New Zealand, is—yes, the war has started; yes, we’re going into battle; we need good leadership; we need supported leadership; we have it—give faith and we will get through this.

The debate having concluded, the motion lapsed.