Urgent Debates — COVID-19—Trans-Tasman Travel Bubble

I have received a letter from the Hon Judith Collins, seeking to debate under Standing Order 399 the Prime Minister’s announcement yesterday that the Government will be opening the trans-Tasman travel bubble from 19 April 2021. This is a particular case for which there is ministerial responsibility. The response to COVID-19 and, in particular, the opening of New Zealand’s borders to international travellers is a matter that requires the immediate attention of the House. Therefore I call on the Hon Judith Collins to move that the House take note of a matter of urgent public importance.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I move, That the House take note of a matter of urgent public importance.

It’s been 11 months—11 months—from the time that the Prime Minister announced that she was committed to introducing a trans-Tasman bubble, and 11 months until we had yet another announcement to say that in another two weeks it would happen. Eleven months and two weeks. But I am very pleased to know that this trans-Tasman bubble is going to be opened, and I am very pleased on behalf of the National Party that we are going to see some tourism back in Queenstown, in the glacier towns of the South Island, back into Rotorua, into Coromandel, and into Auckland.

It is crucial for New Zealand’s economy but also for the wellbeing of all those people in small and medium sized businesses around the country and all of their employees. It’s no point saying that everyone gets an extra paid holiday when the business is broke and it’s gone under. It’s crucial for everybody in New Zealand that this happens.

It’s also crucial that our nurses and teachers are able to be reunited with their families, many of whom are overseas. We met yesterday, for the National Party, with people who represent our essential workers who have come in from overseas. In many cases, they left their families overseas waiting for their permanent residency to be granted while they’re working on a work permit. Those people have now been separated from their families for over a year. Some of those people have been separated from their families for 500 or even 600 days. It is simply not acceptable.

There are spaces in the managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) facilities that could be used to help those people. They’re essential to New Zealand. That’s how they were able to get here. We should be kind to them and bring their families home to them. It is simply unacceptable that a Government that prides itself on telling everyone else to be kind forgets that they could be kind right now to people who we need for our economy, to drive our economy, and to restore our country.

When we look at what’s happened in the Pacific—just think about that. We have heard nothing from the Government about a Pacific bubble. What about Fiji, Samoa, and Tonga? What about the Cook Islands? We know what’s happening there. It happens on 1 May. We don’t know it from this Government, but we certainly know it from the Cook Islands Government. They’re very free with it and very happy to announce it to everybody, and yet New Zealanders are not allowed to know this information, but thankfully the Cook Islands has told us.

We also know that nothing has been done in relation to Samoa and Tonga and Fiji. Why is that important? Is it just about New Zealanders going and having a winter holiday? No, it’s not. It is very important to our Pacific neighbours and friends that we support their economies. When we look at some of the losses that they have endured because of COVID, we have to ask ourselves: is there something we could be doing better than what we have? And yes, the answer is yes.

We have 400,000 New Zealanders of Pacific origin, Pacific ethnicity, and they want to be able to visit their families. They want their families to be able to visit them. We’ve had Fletcher Melvin from the Cook Islands Chamber of Commerce tell New Zealand media recently, “They need to treat us like adults”, and that’s the plea. I am sick of listening to people of the Labour Party and some in the media who have said to me, “But what if something goes wrong in the Pacific?” Stop treating sovereign nations as though they can’t make their own decisions. It is outrageous. It is paternalistic. It is wrong. Just because New Zealand messed up under this Government—messed up the measles vaccine—doesn’t mean that Samoa and Tonga and Fiji can’t actually make their own decisions. It is crucial.

Have a look at what’s happened to the GDP of these neighbours and our friends in the Pacific. The Cook Islands economy has lost 20 percent of its GDP. Fiji has fallen 19 percent and unemployment is now, in Fiji, at a whopping 27 percent. We could help fix that. We could do our best. Samoa’s GDP has fallen 8.6 percent.

The other thing that could happen is we could actually bring in Recognised Seasonal Employer scheme (RSE) workers, seasonal workers coming in from the Pacific into horticulture and agricultural areas. They could be earning money, which in six months—and this gives you some sense of scale. In six months working as an RSE worker, a Samoan can earn as much money as they can at home in Samoa in seven years. This is how crucial the RSE work scheme is in the Pacific. It is absolutely crucial, and the great thing with it is that the money goes with the person. It goes with that person who’s earned it. It goes back to their aiga. It goes back to their village. It goes back to their home. It doesn’t go through a Government agency. It doesn’t get clipped on the way through by lots of officials who are helping to add value. It actually goes to the people who earn it, and that’s what we should be encouraging.

We have a Government who announced yesterday that, yes, we’ll have the trans-Tasman bubble, but what are they going to do with all those spots available in the managed isolation and quarantine facilities? They’re going to close them—close them. And close them why? Close them because apparently some of them are unsuitable to be used for MIQ for countries where there is a lot of COVID. So why have they been used for countries with a lot of COVID for the last year? Why has that happened?

The National Party raised these issues. We raised these issues and said the Government should be keeping people from COVID-free places separated from places where there’s lots of COVID. We said there should be pre-departure testing. We said there should be saliva testing on a daily basis as well as the nasal tests. We said that. And what we’ve got is, now, a year later, after we’ve had four lockdowns because of COVID coming through MIQ facilities, or at least three of them, I should say, are from that—at least three. A year later—oh, lo and behold—the Government’s worked out that actually it’s not a good idea having people from places where there are COVID hotspots in the same corridor as people who come from Australia.

Well, for goodness’ sake, COVID has been brought into the community through MIQ. It’s taken the Government a year, and instead of saying to those families that we met yesterday, “Here is an opportunity for you to bring your family here.”, who turned up from the Labour Party yesterday? Not one of them. Not one of them. Why didn’t they want to? No, they don’t want to see these hard-working people who have chosen to make New Zealand their home and who want to bring their families here. How can they possibly lecture anyone else about being kind? How can they possibly do that when they’re turning around and saying, “No, we don’t want to bring those people back now because, actually, we don’t have to.”?

💬 Hon Scott Simpson: Heartless.

It is absolutely heartless. And what’s happened to immigration in that time, in COVID-19? Do you think the ministry or the department of immigration would be busy doing what it can to help these families? No—nothing, nothing gone on holiday, apparently working from home. But anyway, what we’re seeing is nothing coming from this.

So, yes, I am very happy for our tourist industry. I’m very happy for our Kiwis who are able to go and visit their families in Australia. And how many times have we heard from the Government, “Something could go wrong.”? And do you know what something could be? You can have an extra three days in Sydney. Well it’s hardly that bad is it? It’s hardly that bad. And yet we’ve had months and months of being told it was too hard, something might go wrong—and, by the way, someone at some stage in Queensland, they had some COVID a couple of weeks back, and didn’t they deal with it very quickly and well, and that’s because the Australians have been all over this since October. From October, we had opportunities as Kiwis to visit there; we just couldn’t come back, and that was one of the problems.

Why is it that we can trust a travel bubble with Australia but not with our Pacific neighbours? Why is that? What is it that is behind all of that? What is behind the attitude that we can’t have a relationship, a good travel bubble, with Samoa or Tonga or Fiji? And those MPs who are here who have some connections to Samoa or Tonga or Fiji—and some of them claim all of that—why aren’t they advocating for their aiga? Why aren’t they advocating for their family? Why aren’t they advocating for their countries of birth? And the answer is because they don’t care. They don’t care and they like to think that they are in charge.

So I have seen, over the years, some pretty interesting work from this Labour Government and I’ve also seen the odd thing—I’ve thought that ours was quite interesting, too—but I’ve never seen anything like I’ve seen on mental health. Never have I seen anything as bad—

💬 SPEAKER: Order! Order! The member will resume her seat. Now, the member has her letter which she wrote to me, which was a very narrow letter. I have been very liberal with her in letting her go way outside what she asked me to debate. Urgent debates are amongst the most narrow that we have. She has gone a long way away from Australia in her discussions, but doing the next jump is just a step too far. I will say, while I’m on my feet, I’ll let whoever follows the Leader of the Opposition have about two minutes to respond to anything that was irrelevant and, after that, there will be strict relevancy. This debate is about the Australian bubble.

Well, I’m happy to continue on the Australian bubble, and I’m very happy to talk about the mental health issues around that Australian bubble and the fact that, actually, every Government should take that into account. We have had constituents—I have personally had constituents, I know my colleagues have, and I’m sure other people, other members of Parliament, have had—contact us about a family member dying in New Zealand: a family member, a mother in a hospice situation, unable to get back to New Zealand to visit their mother when they are dying, being told they can come to the funeral. And of course, that’s of no use when you can’t actually say goodbye to one’s own mother. We’ve had family members say that they’ve got a child in Australia who is suffering from mental health issues and they should be with their daughter or son. One particular woman I know very well had to leave from New Zealand to go to Australia, taking advantage of the Australians opening the travel bubble with New Zealand from October, to be with her daughter for several months and staying there waiting for this bubble to be opened up because her daughter was undergoing an extremely difficult pregnancy. This is the sort of thing where families have been crying out for some kindness, some decency, some understanding that not everybody who asks for something is entitled. Most people who come to us as members of Parliament asking for our help do so because they have actually lost confidence in the ministries and they don’t know where else to turn.

So this travel bubble with Australia is a good thing. We are delighted to see it finally happen. Yes, we do say thank you to the 45,000-plus people who signed our online petition. Yes, we do think that they made a difference. They made a difference because back in February this year the Government had only just started talking to the states of Australia, having given us all the flannel about how, in fact, they were already discussing all of this. It turned out that wasn’t quite correct. So when Scott Morrison, the Prime Minister of Australia, said—pretty much paraphrasing this I am—“Well, the door’s open any time New Zealand wants it.”, I think he also helped to bring this about. He helped to embarrass the current New Zealand Government into doing something. He helped to do that. But everybody who is now able to travel to their families should understand that the Australians have been able to receive us since October last year. They have been willing to receive us since October last year. The door has been open. The trouble is that the New Zealand Government refused to let the Kiwis back in without going through MIQ.

I am delighted that we are getting a victory for the people of New Zealand and their families. I am delighted in our work to make this happen and I am delighted—and I’m delighted—to be able to have the opportunity to speak today in support of all those Kiwis, all those Kiwi families who have missed out for the last six months when it could have happened then. So I am very delighted today.

I think the biggest lesson from that contribution is if you’re going to ask for an urgent debate, it helps to have something to say when the urgent debate request is accepted. If I was being uncharitable, I could remind Judith Collins of all of the things she said during the election campaign about New Zealand’s border—about wanting to charge everybody coming into the country, and talking about the fact that people had had plenty of time to come in prior and therefore we should make it as difficult as possible for people to come back into the country—but of course I’m much more charitable than that.

Today is a good day for New Zealanders, as we look forward to the opening up of free travel between New Zealand and Australia from 19 April—something that we can all look forward to, something that those families that have been separated by our border restrictions will be looking forward to, and something that our tourism industry will be looking forward to as well, as they look forward to welcoming back Australians to New Zealand. To put this into context, before COVID-19, in a typical year, Australians were making up about 40 percent of the arrivals into New Zealand. They brought with them about $2.7 billion in revenue to New Zealand, a lot of that going into our tourism and hospitality sector, and we look forward to welcoming them and their money back into New Zealand in a couple of weeks’ time. It will be good for New Zealand, and it will be good for our businesses.

The Government has taken a cautious approach when it comes to opening up the trans-Tasman bubble. What we didn’t want to see is the border opening and closing willy-nilly without New Zealanders knowing where they would stand in the event of events happening on either side of the Tasman. We made it clear from the beginning that our preference was for a joint decision-making framework. That was what the Australians indicated they wanted initially. Then, they moved on to one where they indicated that they would prefer to keep a unilateral decision-making framework, where each country made its own decisions about whether the green zone would open or close, depending on how they wanted to respond to events on either side of the Tasman. We adapted to that approach.

We will still be keeping in regular communication, at a Government-to-Government level, at a health system to health system level, to make sure we are sharing the information so that we can continue to keep the green zone open as much as we possibly can, that any ceasing of those green flights is only done if we absolutely need to do that, and that people understand the reasons for any pause in trans-Tasman travel that may occur—why we’re doing it, how long we think it might last for—so that people know what to expect and they can plan for that as they consider whether or not they want to travel across the Tasman.

We have been working closely with the airlines, with the airports, to make sure that trans-Tasman travel is safe. To put that into context, at Auckland Airport one of the things that we wanted to see was a physical separation between those coming from known non - green zone countries—so, in this case, Australia—and other countries where they could potentially be bringing COVID-19 with them. Auckland Airport created a plan that allows them to separate those passengers completely. There are still some issues they’re working through around how they would handle red zone passengers, to make sure that they’re not standing around and potentially spreading COVID-19 amongst themselves. They’re still working through that with health officials to provide the reassurance that we are looking for. And we’re confident that the infection prevention and control audits that will be happening this week will give us the information, the certainty that we’re looking for to be able to sign off on that, and the health teams are working on that at the moment.

In terms of the green zone travel, that will actually be the bulk of the Auckland international airport. In Wellington, it will be the only part of the international terminal. They won’t be accepting any red zone flights. And in Christchurch, work is being done again to separate out red zone and green zone travel. Queenstown will only be accepting green zone flights from international destinations—so, in other words, only from Australia at this point. That gives people confidence that one of the key transmission points in international travel at the moment—being in transit in the airports—won’t be a risk for green zone travellers coming into New Zealand.

In terms of the airlines, we’ve worked with them to ensure that they are using crews that are separate. There are separate crews flying on the green zone flights to those flying on the red zone flights. There is a process in place to ensure that planes that are flying, both green and red zone flights are sanitised thoroughly between flights, again to reduce any risk of unwanted COVID-19 transmission. It’s been important that we make sure that all of those arrangements are in place.

We have released the response framework. It sets out how we would respond to a case whether it was in New Zealand or Australia, whether we would continue in the sorts of cases that would see us continuing with green zone travel or whether we would pause for a period—and when I say a pause, we’re talking about maybe up to 72 hours while we gather more information—or whether we would suspend. We would be looking to suspend in the case of widespread community transmission on either side of the Tasman. So we’ve set out the framework that gives people an idea of what they can expect. But “flyer beware” needs to be one of their watchwords here. They won’t be able to get travel insurance for some of the potential scenarios that people will face when they’re crossing the Tasman, and we wanted to be clear with them about what to expect.

In terms of the implications of trans-Tasman travel for New Zealand and for managed isolation, we are working our way through that. We have been separating higher-risk and lower-risk passengers in many instances, so we do have some managed isolation facilities that we have only been using for trans-Tasman travellers and those coming from the Pacific. They are less suitable for receiving passengers where the risk profile is higher and where there are likely to be higher concentrations of passengers coming in with COVID-19. So we’re working our way through that. That’s one of the implications of the trans-Tasman travel zone that we’re working our way through.

We do also have to consider the Pacific in these conversations. We’re in discussions with the Cook Islands about a safe travel zone between New Zealand and the Cook Islands, and one of the things that they are discussing with us is what our arrangements are with Australia so that they understand what the movement of Australians through New Zealand to the Cook Islands might be. That is one of the things that they want to understand at this point, and early indications are that they would expect anyone coming from Australia to remain in New Zealand for 14 days before being able to travel to the Cook Islands. So that is one of the things that we’re working through with them.

When it comes to extending the safe zone to other countries, including places like Samoa and Tonga, the key message here is that they have to want that too. We can’t unilaterally make that decision. It has to be a two-way decision. At the moment, some of those countries are not letting their own citizens return, so when we’re talking about Recognised Seasonal Employer scheme (RSE) workers, for example—and in another contribution that Judith Collins made she was saying we should have more and more RSE workers coming into New Zealand. One of the impediments to that is that some of those countries aren’t allowing their RSE workers back into their home countries at the end of their time as RSE workers. So we have to work through that very carefully, otherwise those RSE workers end up being stranded in New Zealand, because some of those countries simply are not accepting people in their country. That is their choice. As Judith Collins says, we should respect the sovereignty of those other countries. We won’t impose our will upon them. We have to work with the rules that they are setting for who they will accept and who they won’t.

One of the comments from the National Party has been about why we didn’t move faster on the trans-Tasman bubble. Let’s bear in mind that the National Party, the week before the big Melbourne outbreak, was saying that we should have been allowing people free travel between New Zealand and Australia at that point. Had we been doing that, New Zealand probably would’ve ended up with an alert level escalation, which we were able to avoid by being cautious and by being careful. Of course, they wanted to open up to just about everybody at that point, including China—something that they don’t seem to be talking about any more.

Our caution—making sure that we’re doing this well, doing it thoroughly, and doing it safely—is one of the reasons that New Zealand as a country has had some of the fewest restrictions of any country in the world over the last year. We’ve been cautious for a reason—because we have been freer than everybody else and we have been freer than everybody else because of that caution. Our Government has not been willing to put that at risk.

So as we’ve been debating the trans-Tasman bubble, we have been making sure that we have been taking care of the details. We’ve been making sure that we have everything ready so that when this starts, we can continue it. We have been making sure that people will be certain about what they can expect when they’re travelling across the Ditch. Either way, we will be welcoming Australians to New Zealand. Australia will be welcoming New Zealanders there. This is good for both of our countries.

Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. Tēnā koutou e te Whare. I rise on behalf of the Green Party, and the first thing I’d like to do is congratulate the Government on how well they’ve handled the COVID-19 crisis and the fact that we’ve reached this fantastic development of being in a position to be able to have a safe travel bubble with Australia, and even working on it with other countries like the Cook Islands.

I also want to acknowledge all of those who have been in the unfortunate position of being separated from their loved ones and families because of this global pandemic. There’s no question that this has been an extremely difficult time. It’s been over a year, and people have been separated from their families. My parents are in the United States. They are unable to see their grandsons in person—haven’t for over a year—and who knows when we’ll be able to see each other in person, because, unfortunately, I don’t think the United States is going to be in a position to have a safe travel bubble with New Zealand any time soon, as much as my parents would love to come and see their grandsons. So it is a very difficult situation.

I was quite astounded at the tone from the Leader of the Opposition, who seemed to be blaming the Government for the situation of the global pandemic, whereas I’d say here in New Zealand, and certainly elsewhere in the world, people are looking with envy at New Zealand and looking at what the Government has done and have said, actually, they’ve done a really good job and have done their best to make sure that people are safe. We haven’t had our health system overwhelmed. I think I saw last week, and this is—

💬 SPEAKER: Order! I’ve let the member run for about a minute and a half, and she is now going to move away from a general discussion of the pandemic, back to the subject of the debate. I thought the Minister did a good job in relating each of his comments back to the Australian bubble.

Mr Speaker, obviously we’re very happy to be able to have this travel bubble with Australia, and that would not be possible if we had 5,000 deaths last week, as the United States has. That would not be possible if COVID had run rampant across this country. And, while it has taken over a year to get to this situation of having a safe travel bubble, I think the reason we can be confident now is precisely for the reason that the Government has taken a cautious approach, as the Minister himself said earlier in his speech.

One of the main reasons that the Leader of the Opposition cited as this being good news was for tourism and economic reasons, and that that was the reason why we should open up sooner to a travel bubble with the Pacific. From the Green Party’s perspective, I think we would say it is far more important that we focus on the human aspect of this. As the Government had said last year, the best economic response is a public health response. There is no economic benefit when you have people getting sick and unable to go to work, and dying.

So I can certainly understand the hesitation and why it is taking longer than some may like to get a safe travel bubble with some countries in the Pacific, and of course we would like that, but I think that, to be fair, the people of the Pacific are valuable in and of themselves, and our relationship is valuable in and of itself. We’re not doing them a favour by letting people come over and pick our fruit for poor wages and conditions. I think that’s really an insult. If we really want to take seriously our obligations to the Pacific, as close neighbours and having a close relationship, the way to do that is to take significant action on climate change, not something I’ve ever heard the Leader of the Opposition refer to, because they’re existentially threatened by climate change.

And, as for the tourism benefits—[Interruption] I realise a bunch of people on this side of the House don’t believe in climate change. You might want to catch up with the global consensus—

💬 SPEAKER: Order! Order! The members were reacting, I think, to something which the member had, not even in a tenuous way, attached to this debate. This is now her second warning to stay narrow. I can also say that sort of reacting to the member’s comments probably doesn’t help.

Mr Speaker, I’m sorry; I thought we had up to two minutes to respond to the off-topic things that the Leader of the Opposition had referred to.

💬 SPEAKER: And the member’s now used 4½ minutes.

Mr Speaker, it’s less than 4½ minutes that I’ve been referring to the Leader of the Opposition’s speech—anyway.

Tourism may well benefit from this safe travel bubble with Australia, but we do need to ensure that we are protecting our natural environment and getting the very best out of this relationship that we have, because it is entirely possible it could be zero-sum. We might get additional Australians coming over and visiting New Zealand but at higher costs to our infrastructure, higher costs to our environment, and with more New Zealanders going to Australia. So, I mean, in that case, it could be absolutely zero-sum, except with additional carbon emissions.

It’s vitally important that we take this opportunity of having had a reset, during the break that we had from general tourism, that, as we open up with the safe travel bubble, we are taking the opportunity to make sure that the jobs that are generated by tourism are sustainable, that they’re high-wage, that they are good, safe conditions, that people aren’t in a precarious situation, that this is not just a race to the bottom, where we’re writing off our environment for the benefit of some supposed tourism dollars, which will make GDP go up. But GDP is not a measure of improving the wellbeing of our society. It’s not a measure of the sustainability of our biophysical environment, which we need to sustain us.

So the thing that I think the Green Party would most like to emphasise, the greatest benefit of the safe travel bubble, is the ability for whānau to reunite and see one another, and it really is that human aspect that is most important to our relationship with people in other countries, whether that be Australia or the Pacific or other countries. We must recognise our common humanity, and those human relationships are by far and away the most valuable thing. That is something that I think many of us have realised during this pandemic. It’s not about the dollars and cents; it’s actually about the human relationships. It’s about our health and our wellbeing and our ability to connect, and that, during this great reset of having had a pause to travel, we have an opportunity to reimagine how this could be done in a way that genuinely will benefit people and enhance our wellbeing, enhance our natural environment, our ability to combat climate change, and address inequity in our society and across the world.

Yesterday, our Prime Minister announced the implementation of quarantine-free travel with Australia. As a trans-Tasman bubble, that will allow a free flow of travel between our two countries, starting on 19 April. I must admit, never in my time have I seen such an outpouring of love for Australia from Kiwis up and down this country. I am a little bit concerned that when the Wallabies play the All Blacks, it won’t start with a haka; it might start with a team cuddle.

But, anyway, it is great news for our tourism industry, and the operators, many of whom have done it hard over the last 12 months. And if there is one industry in particular that has really taken one for the team, it has been the tourism industry. I visited a number of the hotspots that have a significant reliance on international tourism—I’m talking about Queenstown; I’m talking about Te Ānau, the glaciers, Kaikōura, for example. They understand why we’ve done what we’ve done in terms of keeping our population safe, and that’s what they tell me. They say, “We understand we need to do this.” But, goodness me, they have waited for this Australian bubble, and they are very, very pleased we are here.

But the reason we are in a position to be able to open up our international borders is because of the fantastic work that this Government and the people of New Zealand have done in terms of managing the global pandemic. I’ve got a very good friend in Paris at the moment, and have talked to her a bit. They are in lockdown again, and she has said to me, “Goodness me, I’d love to be in New Zealand.” I was on an OECD call recently, and all 38 people from around the world said, “If only we could be in New Zealand.” But they can’t. We are here, and we live in paradise, and of that there’s no doubt. But I do want to thank Kiwis for the way that they have all responded fantastically. In fact, the work that Tourism New Zealand has done in Australia shows that 95 percent of Australians view New Zealand’s response positively, and this is only enhancing our brand in Australia when Australians are looking to book a holiday over here.

What will the bubble mean to the New Zealand tourism industry? Well, we have already seen a significant interest from Australians to travel here. Already, for example, over 11,000 Australians have visited newzealand.com, compared to a daily average of 2,000. Of those Australians surveyed by Tourism New Zealand, around 77 percent have said that they will come here for a holiday. That compares to the other quarter who say they’re coming to visit friends and family. So Australians want to come here. They want to go on a holiday; they want to spend money in our country. Over half Australians surveyed say they are motivated to have a holiday that includes fun and engagement—56 percent—and to relax and to refresh—

💬 David Seymour: What about the other 44?

Mr Seymour, maybe you should relax and refresh just a little bit as well—just chill out, which is—

💬 SPEAKER: Order!

I was responding to—anyway.

💬 SPEAKER: Order! It pays not to—it pays not to.

It’s a great opportunity for tourism operators and small businesses that often rely on tourism as well to offer an experience that will appeal to all Australian visitors.

In 2019, Australians spent around $2.7 billion in New Zealand. However, a report released by the Australian Treasury in January of this year showed that Australian businesses and households had saved around $200 billion during the pandemic. That’s $200 billion. So I suspect that what we will see when the borders open is a surge in tourism, in the way that New Zealanders travelled when we came out of lockdown, and New Zealanders didn’t stop travelling. And let’s not forget, however, that domestic tourism has historically made up around 60 percent of the total tourism market. And when we asked New Zealanders to “Try something new, New Zealand.”, they did. And Queenstown, for example, experienced over a 70 percent increase in domestic spend in January 2021 compared to January 2020. But I acknowledge that the people of Queenstown have done it tough, and overall spend in Queenstown was down by about 34 percent due to the lack of international visitors, even though there was an increase in domestic spend of over 70 percent. This is why the mayor of Queenstown, Jim Boult, said, upon the announcement of the bubble yesterday, and I quote, “For many, many businesses, this is survival. This is the thing that will keep businesses afloat … I … cannot express … how happy I am at today’s announcement. This [is the thing that] will make a really big difference for those people who have been struggling.”

Tourism Industry Aotearoa said, and I quote, “Travel operators from around the country are breathing a sigh of relief. … [They] can now take bookings with confidence and scale up their staffing. … The timing means that ski regions in particular will receive a boost in the coming months, [as] in normal times more than 70 percent of the overseas visitors who ski in New Zealand are from Australia.” And Business Events Industry Aotearoa New Zealand has said, and I quote, that “This is much-deserved relief for our business events industry … Business events are planned and booked well in advance, and [this] news will give Australian organisers the confidence needed to plan … their events in New Zealand, not just for this year but further ahead.”

I have also seen and received a number of messages and reports from the Canterbury chamber of commerce, airports, Ngāi Tahu, all of whom have echoed the sentiment that they are over the moon with this. But the only reason, I would like to reiterate, we are in this is because the Government has taken a health response. We have been conservative in the way that we have responded to COVID, but as a consequence of the health response, it means that we have had very few deaths and we are actually held up as an exemplar globally for the way that we have managed the pandemic.

This will not be all one-way traffic. This is not just about Australians coming to New Zealand. We have to also be aware that there will be New Zealanders who go across to Australia. And whilst Australians spent about $2.7 billion in New Zealand in 2019, New Zealanders also spent about $2.1 billion in Australia. New Zealanders will travel. I take my hat off to the regional tourism organisations (RTOs), who have done an amazing work in attracting New Zealanders to travel domestically, and I would especially like to acknowledge Hamish and the team at Tourism Hawke’s Bay, our local RTO, who really did an amazing job of attracting Aucklanders and Wellingtonians into Hawke’s Bay, and who will now shift their focus not just from domestic tourism but to Australia. But I also understand that there will be Aucklanders and Wellingtonians—who in the past travelled to Hawke’s Bay to experience our fantastic wine, our food, our art deco, our wonderful Hawke’s Bay culture—who will now decide to go to Sydney for the weekend, who will take a holiday in Melbourne, who will go to the Gold Coast. So we do recognise that even though Tourism New Zealand believes that this will contribute about a billion dollars—about a billion dollars—to our economy by the end of the year, which is absolutely fantastic, it won’t be one-way traffic.

The other thing I will also say is that Tourism New Zealand, over the last 12 months, has been doing a lot of work in terms of keeping our brand alive and priming the Australian market, ready for when the borders are open. They’re about to kick off an amazing campaign about “Stop dreaming Australia, and get over here.” I’ve seen it—it’s a really clever campaign. In fact, you know, Tourism New Zealand are famous for their campaigns, and I would argue the 100% Pure New Zealand campaign is probably the world’s global preeminent tourism campaign. But they’re going to get Australians across here in a way that I don’t think we have seen before, because, of course, there’s a whole lot of pent up demand in Australia; there’s only one place to go: it is New Zealand.

But what I would say to tourism operators is that there are things that they can do to make the Australian experience really worthwhile so they head back home and they tell all their mates and cobbers to come back over to this side of the Ditch. First of all, when we start vaccinating the general population, I would urge tourism operators to ensure that, in fact, their workers get the vaccine as well, because they will be front-facing. This will be important. We have to offer an experience that plays into our global brand, and I will admit that I have been critical in the past that some of the operators have been guilty of paying minimum wages, providing no training whatsoever, and not offering the level of experience that I think that New Zealanders should be offering to our overseas guests. Train your staff, get your staff ready, get them prepared, because when these Australians come over, they will be spending money in our economies. They will be supporting New Zealanders, so we need to ensure that the experience that they get—the experience New Zealand delivers—is absolutely 100 percent first-class.

In summing up, I think this Australian bubble announcement will be fantastic for the New Zealand tourism industry. It will get the industry through to the end of the year. It’ll get the industry through until the international borders open, and until this time, this will provide a much-needed boost to an industry that has done it incredibly hard. Thank you very much.

Well, thank you very much, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of ACT to join in this debate. I want to start by saying that the opening of quarantine-free travel into New Zealand from Australia is a great event for so many people in this country.

It is a great event for our tourism industry, which, in many cases, has been decimated by the lack of tourists. The Minister of Tourism is right when he says that New Zealanders have done a pretty good job of getting out and supporting the tourism industry, but we know it is not enough. That is why you’ve got hotels closing at Fox and Franz Josef, that’s why you’ve got people going out of business. Because, as any tourism industry operator will tell you quietly, they love Kiwis, but Aussies leave more dollars in the till. So it is a good day for them.

It is a tremendous day for so many of us in New Zealand who have friends and relatives, cousins, and connections in Australia, who will be able to see them for the first time—in some cases—in several years. I’ve just found out that one of my best friends who’s recently had a baby in Sydney is coming for Anzac Day. There are going to be many stories like that. So it is a great day for many of the family and social connections.

And it is a great day for many of those businesses that you might not think were connected with travel, all of those businesses that are importers or exporters or work on projects collaboratively across the Ditch, who will be able to renew relationships and meet face to face, because we all love Zoom, but we know that it is no substitute for meeting people in person. And those relationships in business need to be renewed.

So for all those reasons, it is a great day and we should acknowledge that. But we also need to acknowledge that this has come at least six months too late. We need some honesty and some transparency about what this so-called bubble means. It is not a bubble; it is a bubble illusion. The Ardern bubble takes you straight back to October. It is actually a time-travel bubble. It takes us to where New South Wales was in October 2020.

And you listen to the Prime Minister yesterday, she said, “We’re now going to treat Australia as if it’s a region of New Zealand. If there’s a hot spot, we won’t let people travel out of there to here.” Really? She said that there is going to be a traffic light system that we’re either going to continue, suspend, or stop travel from Australia—green, orange, or red. And then she said that there are going to be different planes at the airport. We’re going to separate out different travellers depending on where they’ve come from. She said all this as though she was hoping for a Nobel Prize. New South Wales did all those things in October. And when I asked her in the House yesterday, “How is it that they did it then, and we can’t do it now?”, she said, “Oh, but they’re not a country.” Well, actually, New South Wales has been dealing with all of the other Australian states as if they were other countries, just as we will be dealing with the Australian states on a case by case basis and, as the Minister for COVID-19 Response said yesterday, managing our border unilaterally. So that is the first thing we need to be clear about: we are doing nothing different from what New South Wales achieved six months ago.

And the next thing, we say, is that if all of those benefits for our tourism industry, for our personal relationships, for our business connections with our cousins across the Ditch are truly great benefits on 19 April, they would have been greater benefits back on 16 October, when New South Wales opened to New Zealand. They would have been even better benefits when the Prime Minister said on 16 April, last year, that we would have the world’s smartest borders. It has taken a year of messing around to get this far. And it doesn’t just matter because of all of that lost opportunity that has occurred while this Government has been spinning its wheels and spinning the public on travel from Australia; it matters because it tells us something about this Government’s ability to deal with complex tasks in response to COVID-19.

It matters because the tasks that the Government will have to undertake in responding to COVID-19 are going to become more complex. And the reason for that was set out in ACT’s excellent report—I have to say—COVID Response Plan 2.0, which says that we are moving into a different and more complex paradigm. And there are four megatrends that underline that. One of them is vaccination, the second is the variants which may undermine vaccinations, and, finally, new technologies and fatigue with our existing responses. Now, I put it to you that if it takes six months to catch up with what the New South Welsh people of the world were able to do last October, how are we placed to face that world?

Well, I think, this is a time that we need to be honest with each other, and our Government must be transparent with us and accept that it hasn’t done a good job, it hasn’t gone hard and early; it has actually been incredibly late at doing incredibly simple things. We introduced a few principles that might be helpful for doing better at these kinds of things in the future. We said that in response to those megatrends of vaccination and variants of new technologies and fatigue, actually, we need better principles that will allow us to do things like we’ve just done, better and faster. We need more transparency. The Government should be open about what really happened. It had the opportunity to open up to Australia, just as Australian states were opening up to each other and us last October.

It should be faster at adopting new technology. We heard today that there is going to be some use of thermometers to check people’s temperature as they come in. That’s the kind of thing the Taiwanese were doing last March. We are just too slow in our tech uptake, and when we do get technology, it is stuff that other countries were doing a year ago.

We’ve got to become more proportionate to risk. We made Australians stay in managed isolation and quarantine next to people from hot spots for six months, when there was no risk. This goes back to transparency. There have been three cases of COVID19 arriving from Australia in the last six months. Will the Ministry of Health tell us where they came from, when they came, or whether they were even Australians or people transiting from Australia? No, they won’t. That is the level of transparency we get from this Government. But, actually, what that shows us is that had we had a New South Wales - style hot spot system—opening our border, and closing it when there were risks. I suspect all of those cases would have been stopped from coming to New Zealand because they would have come from places that were identified as a hot spot at the time. But we are not managing risk in the way that we should.

We need a culture of admitting failure. This Government needs to be honest about the fact that it has not done well with this policy of a bubble, that, actually, it needs to do better, and it will need to do much better in a COVID 2.0 world than it has done so far.

And, finally, we’re going to need a culture of focusing on the wellbeing of all New Zealanders. There has been far too much harm done by failing to properly balance what the Government describes as the health risks of travel from Australia with all of the other costs that we’ve suffered over the last six months of being needlessly closed to them.

That is the kind of intelligent approach that we should be taking to our COVID-19 response. It is the kind of response that is going to be needed as vaccines and variants and new technologies and fatigue with simply locking down and closing the border make the old ways unsustainable. As the rest of the world gets vaccinated and gets moving again, we are going to have to be ready to participate in that new paradigm. And if patting itself on the back and seeking gratitude and congratulations the way this Government has in the last 24 hours reflect the strength and sophistication of our response to COVID-19, New Zealand will be getting left behind in this new paradigm, and the people will finally see that this Government has not been adept; it has not gone hard and early; it has been lucky to govern a country that is very isolated, with a population that is very cooperative.

It’s a great day for New Zealanders; it is a terrible day for this Government that must do better. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

What a day, where we can look forward to a future with our Anzac comrades with confidence and optimism about the future. We have confidence in our trans-Tasman bubble and the Australian systems that will keep us safe and in our New Zealand systems, and today I want to talk more about that. But before I do, I want to say welcome to Australian visitors that will come to New Zealand when the trans-Tasman bubble opens.

I’m from the South Island—from Te Ānau—and I know that many there are looking forward to welcoming visitors back to New Zealand. I hope Australians consider visiting Fiordland National Park. Even during what’s traditionally been the off season, the national park and its waterfalls are particularly good to see during winter, when there’s more rainfall. Also in Queenstown and Wānaka, the ski fields have a commodity that is missing in Australia—or at least in shorter supply—which is snow. I hope Australian colleagues will take the time to visit our ski fields.

But what is it that makes our quarantine-free travel bubble with Australia safe? Well, the overarching consideration is that we have a partner we can trust. We know the Australians have good testing systems and strong reporting of COVID—we can rely on their data. We know they use accurate testing methods. Their response is a very strong one, and it has closely followed ours across the last year. We also have a framework for dealing with outbreaks. This includes how we would respond should there be any cases in Australia, and it mirrors the alert level system we have in New Zealand, so people planning travel can consider that there’ll be roughly similar responses to a case in Australia to the types of responses we’ve mounted to cases here. For example, cases that are clearly linked to the border where reliable contact tracing information is quickly obtained would not necessarily require disruption to travel. However, those that are more complicated, where it’s not clear and may reflect community transmission—i.e., the case is unlinked to the border—may require a short pause in the travel bubble. Similarly, travel may be suspended if there is a larger outbreak or multiple unlinked cases and a longer period of time is required to understand what is going on.

What does this mean for travellers? It means that this is not a return to pre - COVID19 travel. It means that in order to make sure that New Zealand is safe from outbreaks of COVID-19, travellers will need to take extra precautions. That means being prepared for disruption in case they are unable to return. It may mean, if they are in Australia in a hot spot, that they may need a pre-departure test before they return to New Zealand. It may also mean that if they have returned to New Zealand from a place that has subsequently been shown to be a site of COVID transmission, they may need to isolate in New Zealand, and that may be self-isolation or in managed isolation, depending on the risk.

That means we have to take the approach of flyer beware, and people need to be prepared for disruption during travel. That means thinking about how you would look after yourself if you were required to shelter in place for a time while there. And people have also been warned that insurance may not cover their travel, so it is not a return to business as usual.

Contact tracing arrangements between our two countries are also a really important way of keeping New Zealand safe during this time. Travellers to Australia from New Zealand must use the local state contact tracing app when they are there. The country’s apps are not interoperable. Similarly, visitors to New Zealand will be asked to download the New Zealand contract tracer app and instructed on how to use it. Contact details from travellers are available through a number of sources, and that can be accessed by our finding service should we need to trace back following an outbreak in Australia.

I recently gave a speech to the Australasian Society for Infectious Diseases specialists about our COVID-19 response. Of course, in many ways Australia and New Zealand’s responses are very similar, and we reflected on that. One of the key things relates to our testing regimes. Both countries have some of the highest rates of COVID-19 negativity in their tests done in the world. That reflects our similar approach to managing COVID19: trying to drive the number of cases down to zero. What that means is that we are looking for a needle in a haystack, so we have high testing rates and low positivity numbers. And what that means is that we can have high confidence in Australia as a partner for this quarantine-free travel.

Finally, you’ve heard of arrangements for making sure that travel itself doesn’t become a vehicle for transmission. We’ll be making sure that travellers to New Zealand wear masks on the aeroplanes and that green and red zones are separated at airports, and that airports undergo infection prevention and control reviews.

The quarantine-free travel zone also gives us the opportunity to reconsider how we use managed isolation. And I think this is important, because the managed isolation system is a very difficult system to run—doing a very important job. It has facilitated the return of over hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders, but there are also risks in running managed isolation facilities, and we have been open about the fact there have been some instances of in-facility transmission that has led to community transmission. It is a risk. And over the course of the response, we’ve learnt more about the situations in which this has happened—in particular, the evidence for airborne spread of COVID-19 has become more clear over time. That’s meant that we have rolled out audits of the ventilation and learnt more about the different facilities that we are using and their suitability as managed isolation facilities. That means, when we think about the capacity in managed isolation that is freed up from having quarantine-free travel with Australia, we can make some decisions that lower the risk profile in managed isolation overall.

Firstly, this means we can keep some reserved capacity in case there are outbreaks that mean we need to isolate travellers from Australia in New Zealand in managed isolation facilities. But secondly, we have some ability to think about the overall risk profile of people in managed isolation. I think it would raise risk in our managed isolation system overall if we filled up the places that are currently used by people from low-risk countries from people visiting from places where there is high transmission intensity. So another positive aspect of this trans-Tasman bubble is the ability to think more strategically about the managed isolation system.

And the managed isolation system has attracted the question: why don’t we have purpose-built quarantine facilities?

💬 Chris Bishop: Yeah, good question!

It is a good question, to which one cannot magic up a purpose-built quarantine facility during a pandemic at short notice. But also I ask those who pose that question—I have worked in a hospital that is a purpose-built facility with respiratory isolation wards, and these are wards where we have negative pressure rooms, where the air is sucked out so that bacteria and viruses leave via the HEPA-filtered system—

💬 Simon Court: Yep. I’ve been a patient there.

I was not your doctor—and each room has an anteroom, and the staff that work on these respiratory wards are particularly trained in prevention control. And yet, transmission and transmission of COVID happens in these types of facilities. It has happened in New Zealand. It has happened all around the world. So while it is important that we continue to focus on options for improving the facilities in which we quarantine people, we should also understand that there is no easy solution here, and we need to think carefully about how we balance the risk across the system as a whole.

💬 Simon Court: Vaccines!

We’re doing that too. While I don’t want to offend the 18,000 people living in Palau, the quarantine-free travel zone between Australia and New Zealand is unique in the world—countries of this size being able to travel freely without risk of COVID. This was reported in Al Jazeera, BBC, and The New York Times because of precisely how unique travel without risk is now. The fact that we have a quarantine-free travel bubble shows confidence in our systems and Australia’s systems.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I don’t want to spend too much time talking about the benefits of a trans-Tasman bubble, because they have been well iterated for the House by previous speakers from both sides. The tourism benefits, as the Minister of Tourism explained to the House, are well known, but I actually believe that in time it will be the human benefits that we will look back on when we talk about the events of 2021 and the human cost of not having a bubble in place for the last year. There have been friends and whānau and family separated, in some cases for many months, across this border between New Zealand and Australia—mums who haven’t seen their babies, dads who haven’t seen their kids, grandparents who haven’t seen their grandchildren and great-grandchildren. I, for one, am looking forward to going to Australia and seeing one of my best friends who’s just given birth to twins in Sydney. People will, I believe, look back on this period and say, “Thank heavens we’ve got the bubble open now.”, and the human hardship has been immense.

But in my contribution I want to talk about how we got to this point. I want to talk about some of the excuses given by the Government, and I want to talk about the implications of having the bubble in place. Firstly, how did we get here? The idea of a bubble was first talked about in May last year.

💬 Hon Louise Upston: When?

After the lockdown, in May. And I think people, rightly, said back then, “It would be great to have the bubble up and running. We don’t have to have it straight away, because we’ve just done the lockdown and we’ve gone through the various levels.”, and, you know, the world was pressing in on New Zealand. But the idea of a bubble was a good one.

Then the negotiations started with the Australians. I want to make the point that the Government’s negotiating strategy has been poor. The reason I say that is they went for a joint decision-making framework. My understanding is that what was actually sought by the New Zealand Cabinet was a treaty that would be signed between the Government of New Zealand and the Government of Australia—almost like a Closer Economic Relations, a CER-type arrangement. It would be a formal treaty with all the i’s dotted and all the t’s crossed around what would happen in the event of an outbreak. It would be a formal treaty.

It became clear as months went by that that was a mistake. We don’t know exactly what happened in the negotiations—and I’ve lodged an Official Information Act request to the Government and the Prime Minister to find out exactly what happened, and I hope that we will now have that information released because the decision has been made, and to the extent that it’s possible, without prejudicing the international relations of New Zealand, I hope that we will get to the bottom of exactly what happened in the negotiations—but we wanted a joint decision-making framework.

Then what happened in October is the Australian Government just said, “Well, New Zealanders can come.” It is true that at various points various states put in place restrictions for New Zealanders to come. There was a flare-up in New Zealand and that various states would administer the border. But the general rule was that New Zealanders could go to Australia quarantine-free. And so then in December last year, we had the announcement from the Government right at the very tail end of the parliamentary year that the hope was a bubble would be up and running by the first quarter. So that’s the month just gone, the end of March 2021. Professor Baker said actually it was possible then—we’re talking about December, remember—but the hope was we’d get one up and running by the end of March.

But in February this year, the talks broke down after 11 rounds of talks, and I want to tell the House what I think happened. What I think happened is Australia shut its borders temporarily to New Zealand after we had the Valentine’s Day cluster. This is the Papatoetoe cluster that everyone got very worried about for a couple of weeks. Australia temporarily closed the border and the Prime Minister criticised the Australian Government and said, “We’re not very happy about that. They shouldn’t have done that. We’re doing a great job managing COVID in New Zealand.”, etc., etc. And I think the Australians’ point of view at that point was, “Well, hang on a minute. You’re sitting in here in the joint decision-making framework with us, arguing that you should retain the ability to close off the New Zealand border when there’s a flare-up in Australia, and now here you are, Prime Minister, criticising the Australian Government for doing precisely what you are arguing for in the negotiations.” And I think the Australians said, “Well, that doesn’t really make a lot of sense, actually.”, and they’d be right. So then the talks broke down.

It became very clear at that point that what should happen is what has eventually happened, which is a unilateral decision-making framework, for want of a better phrase, by both countries. In other words, the Australians do what they want to do as their sovereign country, as they’ve done since October last year. They’ve said that New Zealanders can come to Australia quarantine-free, and it’s incumbent upon you, New Zealand, to sort out what you do with your border because you, New Zealand, are a sovereign country. And that’s when Scott Morrison came out and said, “Well, I’m happy for Australians to go to Queenstown and”—and I’m pleased he said “Wellington”, my home region, and he listed a few other places. He said, “I’m very happy for Australians, but it’s up to New Zealand.” And that’s what put the pressure, alongside the petition launched by the National Party, for the Government to move.

I do want to respond to some people who say—[Interruption] Well, members over there laugh, but I can tell you something for free, Miss Boyack. The officials only got their A into G after that petition got launched and members opposite started being flooded with emails from people saying, “Why is the Government not moving on a trans-Tasman bubble?”

💬 Hon Stuart Nash: Oh rubbish!

It’s absolutely true, Stuart Nash. I know that for a fact. But I do want to respond to some people out there who say: if there’s a flare-up and Australia closes the border temporarily, the National Party will be out there saying, “What a disaster. You know, the Government’s been terrible. What a disaster and they should never have done it.” We will not do that. Even Jimmy Neesham, you know, a great cricketer—

💬 Simon Court: “Little Jimmy Neesham”!

—off to the Indian Premier League—did he say, “Who’s Jimmy Neesham?” You know who Jimmy Neesham is. He’s a great cricketer. We should get him for the parliamentary cricket team; we’re going to need him on Friday. But Jimmy Neesham said, “Oh National will criticise it.” And I just want to say to Mr Neesham and to others who have illuminated this view or amplified this view: we will not do that. The reason is that we believe both countries, Australia and New Zealand, should manage our borders flexibly. And it may well be that there will be a flare-up in Australia in the same way there may well be a flare-up in New Zealand, and it will take a bit of political nose-holding by both sides of the Tasman, but also both sides of the House in New Zealand, to get through that period. It will do that, and we’re not going to criticise—I’d just note the caveat—unless we think there is real culpability on the Government; for example, an avoidable mistake at the border or an avoidable series of events that leads to some culpability. But in the event that there’s a minor outbreak in Auckland and the Australians say, “Well, if you come from Auckland to Sydney, you can’t come for a week.”, we’re not going to get stuck into that, and if I do, members opposite should feel free to lay into me.

All these excuses were given by the Government: the airports weren’t ready. Well, they were signed off in October. They said, “The airlines need more time.” Well, of course they need a bit of time, but if you give them a date, they’ll make it happen, and that’s what we’ve now done. I mean, Air New Zealand is selling flights to Sydney and even Hobart, of all places, and I know that Ben McKay from the Australian Associated Press is very excited about people going off to Hobart. Then they said, “Oh, what about the tracer apps?” Well, you know, the logical thing’s happened. We’ll use the Australian ones while we’re over there and Australians will use the New Zealand ones. Then they said, “Well, what happens in the event of an outbreak?” And again, the logical thing has happened, which is that it’s flyer beware, caveat emptor—you might get stuck and people will travel with that knowledge. If you treat people as adults, then they will make up their own mind. And then they said, “Oh, well, Australians can’t leave.”, because the Australians had this rule in place that said Australians basically can’t leave without a visa. And we said, “Well, once New Zealand opens its borders, that will go by the wayside.”, and actually even before New Zealand opens its borders, Scott Morrison and the Australian Government, as a sign of good faith, I suspect, dropped that. So there have been a whole bunch of excuses.

Just finally, on the implications: this frees up a lot of space in managed isolation and quarantine. Yesterday, the Prime Minister said, “We’ve now discovered that a small number of facilities are only suitable for low-risk passengers.”, which raises a lot of questions: what are these facilities and why have there been people from high-risk destinations in facilities not suitable for high-risk passengers up to this point, and when will they be closed down? And there’s a whole bunch of implications from that. But of course, now we’ve got choices and optionality around Recognised Seasonal Employer scheme workers and split migrant families and critical workers that Judith Collins and other members on this side of the House have commented on.

This is a good day. It should have come sooner. We do welcome it. Let’s get on with it and bring the Aussies to New Zealand.

When that last speaker, Chris Bishop, began his speech, I was nodding in agreement, but then he suddenly went into this inane diatribe of abuse and tirade—just the usual pattern of criticism, of whining, of whinging—and it just reveals what’s happening on that side. They’re living in a bubble. They’re living in a bubble of unhappiness, of woeful disconnection from reality.

What people need to be aware of is that, when the announcement was made by our Prime Minister and Mr Hipkins that we will be opening up the border on 19 April, there was joy that swept through from Northland to Invercargill. This morning, businesses from all over New Zealand were celebrating the news that we’re now able to have this quarantine-free zone between New Zealand and Australia, something that is a testament to the leadership and the strategy of this Government: that we went hard and early and that we believe strongly the best economic response is a strong, strong health response. That’s why we’re here.

💬 Chris Bishop: Can’t you speak in more than clichés?

If we had ever followed any of that inane criticism from there, it would be much, much worse. It would have been much, much worse.

💬 Chris Bishop: Why aren’t you in Cabinet?

Listen to that—listen to that diatribe. No one—no one—out there in the real world believes anything that they say.

We are safe. We are safe only because of the elimination strategy of this Government, and what a wonderful joy it is to be a member of the Government that prioritises people’s lives and their livelihoods. Because, if we had followed their example, our hospitals would be inundated. I suspect the fatalities would have been much, much worse, as we’ve seen in other nations, who have taken the approach that they advocated for from the beginning, because they did not see people as a priority. Well, the news reveals it on the airwaves, on our social media.

I’m really pleased, also, because there’s a family in Fiji—the Johansson family. Elder and Sister Johansson have been living in Fiji for quite some time on a church mission. They will be returning to New Zealand this Thursday, and they have been called on another mission in Australia. They are embracing this news with much delight, because they’ll have an opportunity to visit with their families in Māngere, and then they’ll be travelling to serve out a period of several years in Australia.

But that’s not all. I have heard today how our Pacific communities are relishing the opportunity to be able to visit, like others, family members, sons and daughters, uncles and aunts. I have warned some of our families: flyer beware, and that it will probably be much safer if they’re staying with relatives—just in case—because, whilst we’re saying we can move with confidence, the virus is still ravaging worldwide. We’re still seeing numbers of deaths, numbers of infections spreading internationally, and so we move with confidence, but we’ve always needed to be alert and to be vigilant.

I want to say I’ve heard criticism also about why we have not opened it up to the Pacific. We are working apace in order to work with the Pacific to make sure that they are receiving the vaccination that we’re able to provide support on. But I think when the Opposition are calling, “Why are we not opening up the borders to the Pacific?”, it also reveals their ignorance of where the Pacific are, because the diaspora in New Zealand are very conservative. They have played this role of keeping New Zealand safe in a huge way. They’ve played their part as members of the team of 5 million New Zealanders, because, if you look at the test rates of Pacific peoples, they had the highest test rate of any other population cohort. That’s a significant indication of how much they have valued the leadership and the direction that has come from Dr Ashley Bloomfield, our Prime Minister, and those Ministers responsible for the roll-out of messages around COVID-19.

So, even those countries, Realm Island countries—Niue, for example—they’re not wanting to open up their borders; they’re wanting to follow the example of New Zealand. And though Samoa, Fiji, Tuvalu, and Tonga have all indicated they want to be able to vaccinate their population, they’re not rushing to open up their borders at all, and the diaspora here have also been quite strong in that message: we do not want to be responsible for exporting COVID-19 to the Pacific, which is relatively COVID-19 - free. So I think, again, the opening of the borders in Australia is a signal and a strong testament that the strategy of elimination has worked—that the strategy and the strong leadership that has been advocated strongly by our Prime Minister and this Government actually is working. So I think the result speaks for itself, of what we have seen right throughout yesterday, today, and, I suspect, all week through.

I know that many of my cousins out in Victoria have had a struggling time because of the number of waves and the community transmission that has happened there. Whilst we’re looking at Australia as one country, what we’ve also got to be mindful of is that Australia has its own governance structures in terms of the different states, and so we do need to be vigilant. I’m really pleased at the measures of protection and the layers of protection that our officials have been working really, really hard at to make sure that our borders—the people arriving at the airport, the separation of travellers from other parts of the world—are going to be significant. I’d be keen to travel myself if the whips will allow me a couple of weeks off at some stage to test out the borders. But I am not intending to do that. But it is a good sign. It is a good thing that is happening here, but, whilst we open that up, and whilst businesses are relishing that idea, I think I would just simply say that we need to be cautious.

I think the good thing for New Zealand is we have now rolled out the vaccine to our border workers, our front-line workers, and their families. I know that Minister Hipkins, Minister Little, and my other health Ministers have all been vaccinated to give confidence to that border workforce. I will take the jab tomorrow afternoon. I’ve always hated needles and am not looking forward to that needle, but I believe it’s important to give confidence to what’s happening and keeping New Zealand safe. I think it’s also important to give confidence to the rest of our population, who constantly ask me, “Is the COVID19 vaccine safe?” I will say, “Absolutely it is safe. Absolutely it is safe.” It’s the first time ever that you’ve seen global coordination, global collaboration of our scientists, as well as the United Nations, come together to rapidly produce a set of vaccines that are safe. But, more importantly for us in New Zealand, we have our Medsafe, our regulator of all vaccines, which has also given its approval for Pfizer and is working through the process of giving approval to the other vaccines. That’s going to be important for us to continually build our confidence in moving around.

But to the Pacific communities who are looking forward to travelling to Australia, stay safe. Travel with confidence but always remember the mask. This is a different world that we live in, and so the social distancing, the wearing of masks, the washing of hands—that has to be the new pattern of how we conduct our affairs. And, as much as we celebrate our festivals with confidence—and Pasifika is this weekend—again it’s a word: remember the mask. If you’re sick, stay home, and that means, to my father, you don’t need to travel at this time—just simply stay home until you’re well.

Anyway, it’s a great day. It marks a significant success in our strategy of elimination, but there’s still much, much more to do this year. As our Prime Minister said, it’s the “year of the vaccine”, and we’ve still got to stay on course.

The debate having concluded, the motion lapsed.

General Debate

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

First of all, I just want to say congratulations to the Hon Aupito William Sio—good on you, mate; he’s just left—on having the needle tomorrow, having the injection tomorrow. Andrew Little had his today. I asked him if it hurt and he said he didn’t even feel it. Mind you, Andrew has got pretty thick skin, so that’s pretty good.

What I would like to do is outline, very briefly, some of the initiatives that we are doing in the micro, small, and medium business space in terms of building resilience and getting businesses building back better in terms of the COVID recovery. Just a little bit of a background: we all know that small businesses are the backbone of our country. They form 97 percent of our companies, about 28 percent of GDP, about 40 percent of employees, and this is where the jobs are growing in our economy at the moment. So I will outline some of the work that will allow a level of resilience to be built that we haven’t seen before, through increasing digitisation, thus enabling small businesses to engage with markets and consumers online in a way that was probably not imagined pre-COVID.

McKinsey, which is an American consultancy, said that in the States they saw five years’ worth of digitisation taken up in eight weeks. Now, this was an American study, but from what I have seen, I suspect it’s probably the same in New Zealand, and even pre-COVID—but certainly during COVID, and in this time as we recover—I have been saying ever since I’ve been the Minister for Small Business that I think this is probably the last generation of business owners that will survive, let alone thrive, without being digitally enabled. The reason I say that is nearly every single Government initiative that is targeting the small-business sector involves some form of digital enablement. Whether that’s e-invoicing, which will allow small businesses to be paid and to pay within 10 days—in fact, at the moment the Government is paying 95 percent of its invoices within 10 working days, and in terms of cash flow and dealing with the Government, that is huge.

💬 Hon Dr David Clark: Big step forward!

It is a really big step forward. The thing is that the 20th of the month following is now an anachronism that no longer needs to be in terms of payment for small businesses—or any business. We have a joint Australasian working party on e-invoicing. We’re working as one with the Australians to make it easier—or as easy as possible—for New Zealand businesses to interact with their Australian counterparts when they decide to head offshore. But e-invoicing is going global, and we need to keep up—we are keeping up—and there’s some fantastic work being done on that. In fact, I would argue the way e-invoicing is being rolled out across the State sector is that a business will not be able to interact with the Government unless they are e-invoicing enabled.

IRD transformation, GST online, payday filing—what we find is when Inland Revenue rolls out an initiative, there’s normally a bit of a spike in terms of, you know, people that are unhappy with Inland Revenue. Then, after these things have become embedded, small-business owners throw up their hands and say, “Goodness me, why weren’t we doing this five years ago?” Inland Revenue had a key performance indicator around business transformation that said by 2025 they wanted 82 percent of small businesses to be working on digital platforms. That has already been achieved, five years earlier.

The topic that I really I want to talk about is Digital Boost—well, I’ll outline in the last minute I’ve got. Digital Boost is really an online digital training network that allows small businesses to learn and to pick up digital tools, to learn digital capacities and competency in their own time. They go online at digitalboost.co.nz and there’s a series of videos that they can engage with at any point in time, and it also provides a whole lot of case studies for businesses that have gone through the Digital Boost experience. It is really a fantastic resource for business owners and operators who may actually be a little bit, you know, digitally incompetent—their words—but it’s up to them. It’s up to them!

💬 Marja Lubeck: Challenged!

Digitally challenged! That’s the word, thanks, Marja. We all know these—it’s the older generation that are incredibly good at what they do, but they really haven’t engaged in digital technology in a way that this current generation have. But it is there to help businesses engage in 21st century commerce, engage with the Government, but find a pathway forward on their own terms, in their own time. Keven Mealamu is up there as a digital ambassador. He’s transformed his business due to Digital Boost. I visited a business in Franz Josef Glacier that’s managed to transform their business to allow them to take advantage of digital opportunities in a way they haven’t in the past. Digitalboost.co.nz—visit it!

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. I rise to give voice to the many thousands of vulnerable New Zealanders who trusted this Government. They turned up to the mental health inquiry and shared their personal and often traumatic stories about their experience with the mental health system. Those vulnerable New Zealanders trusted this Government. The Labour Party rode into power on the back of many people’s pain in 2017. They have promised big, and yet again they have failed to deliver. The gap is galling, between their rhetoric and what they had to deliver.

The recently released annual report for mental health and addiction services, the first annual report of that mental health inquiry—because it’s been delayed for so long—was the Government’s first opportunity to prove to those vulnerable New Zealanders that they had listened to their stories, they had responded, and they had made a change to the mental health system, which they claimed they would do. And what did they do? They gave those vulnerable New Zealanders a kick in the guts. Why? The data was missing. Numbers accessing specialist mental health services were gone. Numbers accessing community mental health services were stripped out. Consumer survey satisfaction gone, along with suicide statistics. Here we had a Government that was trusted with stories from vulnerable New Zealanders, telling their desperate, often traumatic stories. This Government promised they would make a difference, and they have failed to deliver.

What do we hear? We hear the Minister of Health, with his head in the sand, with his response that the Government has no legal obligation to produce that report. Well, if they don’t have a legal obligation, they have a moral obligation to deliver that report. Many people look at that report every year. Those data sets have been delivered in that format for over a decade, and in the first annual report under this Labour Government, they have stripped out data. Why? Well, Stuff, under the Official Information Act, were able to reveal emails from the Ministry of Health officials who introduced a term into the public sector, called “a risk lens”. They did not want negative statistics. That is something we would expect in North Korea, in Zimbabwe, in Myanmar—and here we are in New Zealand. How can New Zealanders have confidence in the public sector?

And not only that, there were some Ministry of Health officials who challenged that and said no—they are accurate statistics and it’s not about whether it’s negative or positive. That data was accurate and if it did not stay in that report, some officials were worried there were going to be no other opportunities for the public to see that data.

And what do we learn? The director-general, Dr Ashley Bloomfield, signed that first report off in July 2020. Something has changed since he first signed that report off. Here we are—March 2021 and another report was pushed out just before Easter. Remember the Mental Health and Wellbeing Commission report that was buried on the day of the tsunami warnings and the COVID level changes? Here we have another report disgracefully pushed out, and what we do know is that Ministry of Health officials fought hard not to report negative statistics. They want to run a risk lens over it to protect the Government.

This Minister of Health needs to take responsibility. He needs to release the data today to New Zealanders. He not only needs to release the data; he needs to tell New Zealanders whether he knew that data was going to be stripped out of the annual report. And, finally, this Minister needs to assure New Zealanders that no one at the Minister of Health’s office instructed Ministry of Health officials to doctor that report. We need to have faith in the New Zealand public sector, and this report doesn’t give us faith.

E te whetū o te ata whītikina mai, titiro mai ki tou pononga Morehu e noho toimaha nei. Homai te taro o te ora ki runga i to mātou hoa, ki a Kiritapu. E Ihoa o ngā mano, otirā ngā ariki manaakitia i a ia. Piki te ora, piki te kaha, piki te māramatanga. Māngai ae, Pai Mārire.

[Oh, bright morning star, shine down, look down upon your Morehu servant who is currently burdened. Oh, Jehovah of the Multitudes, oh Lord, provide our friend Kiritapu with nourishment. May her health, her energy, and her enlightenment be uplifted. Amen; goodness and peace.]

I wanted to begin with a mihi to Kiritapu. I, alongside many, many others, acknowledge your courage and wish you a speedy recovery, e hoa.

The trans-Tasman travel bubble announced by our Prime Minister yesterday represents a new chapter in our response to, and recovery from, COVID-19. This arrangement with Australia is a world first: a quarantine-free zone between two countries who are both still maintaining an elimination strategy in response to COVID-19. We’re doing this as it is safe to do so and are making sure we don’t jeopardise the hard work New Zealanders have put in to make sure our response is one that works for all of us.

As foreign affairs Minister, I am supportive of the reopening to the world, starting with Australia, our nearest and closest neighbour, and see this as a great step for foreign relations. We’re in a great position to start our rebuild towards a new normal: resetting our economies, our relationships, and our shared aspirations across the Pacific. The opening of the trans-Tasman border will enable kanohi ki te kanohi engagement, and I look forward to seeing my Australian counterpart in person very soon. The Australian relationship is important to New Zealand. We are neighbours. We have whānau who will look forward to reconnecting with each other across the Tasman.

The decision to initiate a quarantine-free travel bubble with Australia was not taken lightly. A health response remains central to our decision, and it wasn’t something that could be just rushed or that we could take for granted. It’s important to remember that at this moment and until more people are vaccinated, our borders are the first line of defence against this global pandemic. Travel will be a little different to what it has been in the past, and travellers will need to recognise this isn’t travel as usual. But this is an important step in reopening our country to the world, starting with Australia.

New Zealand has been internationally recognised for its response to COVID-19, both for our work supporting whānau through initiatives like the wage subsidy business support scheme, lifting the benefit, and coming together in responding to the need across the Pacific in relation to COVID-19, and the seasonal weather events they have been experiencing as well. Our responsibility has been widespread.

At the border, we needed to make sure we could open safely, and there were conditions that needed to be undertaken to address things like establishing our response framework—which is new online—and this will ensure that we are ready if there are outbreaks of COVID-19. We needed to have measures in place to effectively contact trace travellers from Australia to protect New Zealanders. Technical issues needed to be resolved. We needed appropriate regulatory mechanisms in place for border agencies. Airlines, airports, and, agencies needed to be ready. Much work has already been done here, with crew separation and red and green zones at our airports, but they needed time to be in place that meant that we could open safely.

And finally, the Director-General of Health needed to provide advice that he was satisfied we are ready, and we are at that point. I acknowledge the hard work and commitment of all those involved in ensuring our readiness at the border, across the health system, and in the public sector. So we’re now in a fortunate position to implement a trans-Tasman bubble. Benefits for whānau, business, and the tourism sector will follow.

There have been a number from the New Zealand tourism sector who see this as a positive-sum game. In fact, Prime Minister Morrison said yesterday that it’s great that this can be done in time for Anzac Day, reinforcing how special the relationship is between New Zealand and Australia. Ngāi Tahu Tourism welcomed the announcement and said that this travel bubble “means the chance to showcase once again some of the most beautiful parts of our country”.

While we can rightly be optimistic about the borders opening, this will only work if we remain vigilant and aware that our continued focus on a health response means that we can enjoy such travel privileges and an economic recovery that works for our country.

Madam Speaker, tuatahi e tika ana ki te tautoko i te mihi ki a Kiritapu Allan. Tēnei te mihi ki a ia. Ko te tūmanako ka piki ake tana oranga i tēnei wā.

[Madam Speaker, it is only right that I support the acknowledgment to Kiritapu Allan. I wish to also acknowledge her. The hope is that her health will improve in due course.]

Just a lot of aroha from our team going out to our tuahine Kiritapu Allan, who’s going through a tough time at the moment, but she has big support from our Government—and also from the Opposition too. We acknowledge the support from the Opposition in terms of their aroha given to Kiritapu.

I wanted to use this short time to just correct my friend and whanaunga, Rawiri Waititi. He seems a bit confused lately over some of the wins that the Māori Party have had over the last few years, and so I thought I’d take this chance just to correct him over a few things. Doing a good job for his people, no doubt about that, but I watched him on TV claiming victory for kaupapa like the Māori wards: Māori wards was apparently all due to the Māori Party. Rawiri needs to look back a little bit, because the Māori Party wasn’t born when we started the fight for the Māori wards. In fact, I recall speaking about the Māori wards here in the House in 2002, and as I remember, the Māori Party started in 2004, so a little bit off there—the whanaunga—but kei te pai, you know, he gets a bit excited and he’s had a lot of support from the media, sadly. But never mind. So this is a kaupapa that is very dear to us, driven by Minister Mahuta, and finally giving recognition to Māori in terms of the different councils around the country. Sadly, Hamilton is a bit off target there, but never mind, we have got that firmly entrenched.

Rawiri also claimed success over the Ture Whenua—I think someone needs to remind him that Te Ururoa Flavell probably lost his seat because of his stance on Te Ture Whenua Māori Bill. Māori were enraged with the way that the Māori Party were treating Ture Whenua, and in fact there were protests going up everywhere at the time. The Minister Meka Whaitiri put up a big challenge in that area and talked about Māori having more access to their land, talked about a more friendly Māori Land Court, and Te Ururoa Flavell, in the end, actually put a halt on what was happening in the Ture Whenua area. He wasn’t able to save himself though, Tāmati Coffey came through. But I was fascinated that Rawiri would, again, claim success in that area.

He also claimed success, I think, in Ihumātao—I think he forgot, along with his National Party mates, that they were the reason for the debacle in Ihumātao. If it wasn’t for the Māori Party and the National Party, Ihumātao would not have happened—

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: Rubbish! What a fib.

—they put them in a special housing area, that’s a disgrace. And if Nick Smith could remind his coalition partner that they were in fact responsible for the debacle, and we all know that the National Party would have dragged those Māoris out by the throat, unlike ourselves who set up a wonderful solution, a very pro-Māori, pro-whānau solution that we were very proud of, and it was another success for Māori and the Labour Party. But I just need the National Party to remind Rawiri, before he goes on Marae and all the other shows claiming success, that it wasn’t the Māori Party’s success—it was the Māori and the Labour Party who drove it. We need some acknowledgment, particularly from Mr Luxon, who is—

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: Oh, so you drove the campaign?

We drove the campaign, absolutely. I’m sorry we can’t drive the campaign to get you on the front bench, but your mate on the side there has probably got more of an opportunity as he sinks the National Party leadership.

Also, another big win for the Māori and Labour: the procurement process. What a wonderful process there—finally Māori getting more opportunity in terms of business, and that’s incredibly important, the 5 percent that we’ve won. Another success: the Public Service Act now demanding that mainstream agencies deliver for Māori. We’ve got leadership being recognised, and management being recognised, and an emphasis on Māori leadership happening. The Hon Carmel Sepuloni knows this because she’s driving that sort of process through her different agencies at the moment, and doing some great work. Proud of the work that Minister Sepuloni is doing.

But I want to finish by congratulating Rawiri Waititi, because the Māori Party did do one great thing in the last election, in the last campaign: they named “Oranga Tamariki”. So congratulations to the Māori Party! They gave Oranga Tamariki their name. Well done, Rawiri and the Māori Party.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It is a pleasure to take this short five-minute call this afternoon. There’s actually a lot that I want to cover in my five minutes—I’ll see how far I can get through my list.

But I just wanted to first start with acknowledging that on 1 April, we saw a whole lot of changes come into effect which benefited over 1.4 million people. I did an interview with Te Hiku Radio about the increase in minimum wage and what that means for our whānau. So over 175,500 people are better off as a result of the increase in our minimum wage, now at $20 per hour. I want to particularly acknowledge those who worked hard during COVID, protecting us and providing essential services, and many of those will be those that are receiving the increase in the minimum wage. They are our supermarket workers. They are our cleaners. They are our security guards. So I think we all believe, in this House, for the fantastic work that they have done to protect us and to continue to provide those essential services, that they deserve an increase in their wages. So to the 175,500 people who are benefiting from that increase: that came in on 1 April.

The next thing I wanted to acknowledge was the Minister for Social Development and Employment, who is in the House this afternoon, and over 830,000 superannuitants who are better off as a result of the indexing of our main benefits and superannuation to wages and also those who are on main benefits. These are substantial increases that people are receiving as of 1 April, and I’m proud to be part of this Government who has brought those changes about.

The second thing I want to talk about is in terms of steps forward in our recovery. This morning, I was reflecting on the fact that this time last year, we were in lockdown. Our borders had just been closed. We were in unprecedented times amongst a global pandemic. And to think a year later, we have people receiving the first roll-out of the vaccinations, and just this week we have announced that we will be opening the border in the trans-Tasman bubble. I didn’t think either of those things would happen so quickly. It has felt like an extremely long time—a year. The number of grandmothers who I have met on the streets in Northland who tell me that they miss their mokopuna so dearly are now going to have that opportunity to either travel over there or for them to come to Aotearoa.

So I want to acknowledge the team who have done the work in the background to ensure that it is safe, that we have the best systems in place to be able to do this. Remember: these are unprecedented times; this is uncharted territory. There is no rule book or no playbook; we are designing it. There may be risks. We have tried to put in place all of the things we can do to mitigate that risk. It is a wonderful opportunity, but I’m sure those who will take advantage of it also recognise the responsibility that they have. It comes with a risk that if something should emerge, that they will have to change their plans. But I look forward, particularly as the MP for Northland, to welcome visitors to Te Tai Tokerau to come and enjoy what our tourism has to offer. And I look forward to the Minister of Tourism coming on Friday.

Now, I just wanted to also acknowledge—in the 1½ minutes that I’ve got left—a few other initiatives that have recently been announced. Te Ara ō Hine—support for Māori and Pasifika midwives in training. This is a significant development and I want to acknowledge all of those who are working or training in this area.

I also want to acknowledge that we announced that there would be free period products in all schools and kura. This is something that is dear to my heart, something I have passionately campaigned on since 2017. It is a wonderful development and I look forward to all of those schools and kura signing up to be part of this initiative.

Finally—I do only have 45 seconds left—I want to take the opportunity to recognise Kiritapu Allan, a friend and our colleague, who got the devastating news that she is now battling cervical cancer, but her message to all was to take care of your health, to Smear your Mea, wahine mā, and if you notice changes, to see your doctor—don’t wait.

Finally, I’ll leave the final message as a happy birthday to my auntie Isey Cross, who turned 102. She is the star of the movie James & Isey, which the Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage and I had the privilege of attending the premiere of at the Civic with 700 other people in a packed-out theatre. Happy birthday, Auntie.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. On a very unusually beautiful day in Wellington yesterday, out here on the forecourt, a protest came to Parliament: the split - migrant families’ protest. They came from all over New Zealand. They made the journey yesterday. They held placards. They held photos of the children they hadn’t seen in a year. The placards told us how many days they hadn’t been able to hold their children for. I said to one man when I looked at his son’s picture—I said, “Oh my gosh, he’s so young.” His boy was the same age as my boy and when I said that he turned away from me in tears.

They have no voice. They came to Parliament yesterday to call for an urgent select committee inquiry so that they would have a voice—and we heard them yesterday. The National Party MPs that went down there to the forecourt yesterday—we heard them. The Green Party members, to their credit, heard them as well and so did the ACT Party members. In fact, almost every party in this House heard their message. But where were Labour? Where was Priyanca Radhakrishnan, the Minister for ethnic communities, sticking up for ethnic communities? Where was she yesterday? Was she there? No, she wasn’t there. What about Ibrahim Omer—a migrant himself who told us this wonderful story in the House during his maiden speech, which brought me to tears. It was a fantastic speech of his struggles in this country as a migrant. Where was he yesterday to stick up for the migrant families who were here yesterday telling us about their struggles? Well, he wasn’t there. Where was Marja Lubeck? Where was Vanushi Walters? Where was Naisi Chen? Where was Dr Gaurav Sharma? Not a single Labour MP yesterday came down to care for these split migrant families. Not a single one of them yesterday.

The PM has always heralded her super-diverse caucus—this wonderful UN of a caucus that she has. But where was this wonderful diverse caucus yesterday in probably the first opportunity they’ve had here in Parliament to stick up for our migrant communities, our ethnic communities—where were they? Well, they weren’t there. As usual, all talk and no delivery as yesterday our migrant families were utterly let down by this Government.

Where was Minister Faafoi—our Minister of Immigration? Actually, I have to say I’m not surprised he wasn’t there. Who would want to go down and look in the face of the abject human misery that is a result, a direct result, of his absolute failure in this portfolio? How could he go down there and look in the faces of the people he’s been ignoring for nine months? Question time after question time, the Minister hides behind excuses for his inaction. His number one excuse—managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) capacity. Well, not any more—the trans-Tasman bubble’s open; 1,800 spots every fortnight are being freed up. Even yesterday, our Prime Minister, the Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern, laughed and smiled as she said, “And look, MIQ spaces are not being used at the moment because it’s winter and it’s getting colder and people don’t want to come.” You don’t think migrant families know that? They look every single day at the number of MIQ spaces that aren’t being used and they cry for the children that they have who can’t get in through MIQ because this Prime Minister doesn’t care about them.

Her second excuse: our borders are closed. Of course our borders are closed. Well, actually, no, they’re not. Not if you’re a band or a nanny or a comedian or a children’s entertainer or a Lion King dancer. Why, Jacinda Ardern, hey presto, quickly found room for the Wiggles to come in. She gets directly contacted by The Amazing Race producers. They’ve got a direct line to her. Stephen Colbert gets heard by the COVID committee, the highest court in the land when it comes to COVID issues. We let in drag queens, we let in the Queen tribute band, but our split migrant families have no vehicle. They can’t pick up the phone to the Prime Minister. They can’t tell the Prime Minister about their heartache. They can’t go to the COVID committee.

Another phrase that the immigration Minister uses constantly in question time, as he did yesterday: “We understand their difficulties.” He says it every single time. The split migrant families don’t want to hear this because, Minister, you don’t understand—sorry he doesn’t understand. Let me give him some insight. They gave up everything to be here. They are maintaining two homes on separate sides of the world. They’ve lost all their savings. Their kids have mental health problems. Their relationships are breaking down. They’ve missed kids’ milestones. They have mental anguish at not being able to hold their babies who they haven’t seen in a year. And what does he say to them? He says, “Be patient.” I would have loved to hear him say that yesterday to the face of the man who left his four-day-old baby in South Africa to come here, whose kid is now 14 months old. I would have loved to hear Minister Faafoi say, “Just be patient.”

Every day, the Prime Minister got up at 1 o’clock and told us to be kind. But as it turns out, they were empty words: “Do as I say, but not as I do.” Here we have now the choice to do the right thing, manage the risk, reunite migrant families, and do the right thing for once. Be kind.

Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare. After that speech, I do feel the need to bring it up a notch and bring some positivity back into this House. It’s actually a real pleasure to take a call today, because it has been a week of some great steps forward in our recovery and rebuild.

Just to start with a couple of headlines: health Minister Andrew Little announced more support for mums and whānau struggling with alcohol and other drugs. Sport and recreation Minister Grant Robertson and economic development Minister Stuart Nash have welcomed confirmation that New Zealand will host the opening ceremony and the opening match of the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup.

Then, of course, we had the housing package, and we had the announcement yesterday of the opening of the quarantine-free travel bubble with Australia, giving our economic recovery a further boost. But wait, there’s more—of course! On 1 April, we had a raft of changes that will come into force that will raise incomes for more than 1.4 million New Zealanders. It includes a boost to the minimum wage, but also a 3.1 percent increase to main benefits and superannuation. We also are seeing the largest rise in abatement levels in two decades. Basically, that means that people who are on a main benefit and who are also working part-time will now be able to receive more of the money that they earn. So lifting the minimum wage is really about fairness for our workers, and roughly around 175,000 people will receive a pay rise in that time.

So if we look, for example, as a comparison, during their nine years in Government, National increased the minimum wage by $3.25. In comparison, since 2017, when we got into Government, we have already lifted it by $4.25. In real terms, that means that a full-time worker on the minimum wage now earns an extra $170 before tax, thanks to Labour’s changes. For a Kiwi working full time on the minimum wage, they will be earning an extra $44 a week before tax, and it’s estimated that in the economy, that will mean an extra $216 million going around. And that’s not a risk to the economy; that is a responsible and compassionate step to give Kiwis more money in hand and help New Zealand with its economic recovery.

Many of the people who will benefit from this rise are also the same people that we all benefited from in our COVID response. Now, my colleague Willow-Jean, the MP for Northland, already mentioned this, of course, but these are the people that kept us going during COVID, and we can’t say this enough, and I, again, would like to take this opportunity to actually mihi our essential workers who kept New Zealand going during those most unprecedented times. These are our supermarket workers, our security guards, our cleaners, our bus drivers, and all the other essential workers that we depended on so heavily when we had this lockdown last year.

The people who will benefit from this pay rise of the minimum wage are exactly the people who will need this, and the minimum is, after all, exactly what it is: it’s just a minimum. And the workers who are getting it went above and beyond for us, and they deserve not only our gratitude for what they did, and continued recognition for what they did for the country, but they also deserve this minimum wage increase.

So there is obviously a lot more to do, and our Government does recognise this, but this is positive progress in the right direction that will see New Zealand better off. And, of course, when compared to some of the rhetoric that we hear from the other side, it is very clear who New Zealanders picked to lead them through the unprecedented times and the challenging times that we’ve had over the last year—that was our brilliant Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, leading our team of 5 million, all through hard work and sacrifices, to get us on top of this epidemic and make sure that we, compared to other countries, are able to kick-start our economies. So we are united and we are focused and we are getting on with the job of getting Aotearoa New Zealand through an unprecedented time in our history.

We already did this before the pandemic arrived on our shores. We were sowing the seeds of change, we continue to do this, and we have actually only been able to accelerate it due to the fact that we went hard and early when COVID arrived on our shores. We do also know that we won’t be able to solve all of our problems overnight—they are longstanding issues—but we have already laid the foundation for change in our first time, and, of course, first term, and we are continuing in the right direction.

I will also express my aroha for Kiritapu Allan.

Like the seas rising around the Pacific, I also rise to take this call. It’s a reminder for me that Pasifika peoples are on the front lines of climate change. I also want to acknowledge the leadership of our young people who are also rising and mobilising again this Friday for the School Strike 4 Climate. It is they that have been holding our generation to account for kicking the can down the road and also, for some of our generation, denying the very existence of the climate can.

Pacific Island countries have contributed almost nothing to the causes of the climate crisis, yet are being hit first and hardest by its impacts. The severe injustice of the climate crisis in the Pacific has been matched only by the determination of Pacific leaders and peoples to lead the world to a more just and sustainable future. This was front of mind for me when, on the early morning of the autumn equinox, I sat on the Vaka Haunui: a traditional voyaging waka to take part in a climate talanoa, organised by Pacific Vision Aotearoa with the inasi kava club on the water of the Auckland harbour. It is always a dawn ceremony; it’s never a morning ceremony or a lunchtime ceremony. So when we gathered in the dark, we could see the golden rays stream across the water, and I could feel the mauri on the water. We talked about climate justice through our connected, Pacific ancestral ways: the sharing of kava, vaka, sailing, and voyaging.

I reflected on the vaka itself being a symbol to help us remember that before there were any borders and territorial lines that carved up the Pacific by colonial powers, it was vaka that helped keep and maintain our connections throughout all of Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa. It was on vaka that our Pacific ancestors voyaged back and forth across the vast Pacific Ocean, unhindered by the so-called borders and territorial lines as they visited different islands, along with coming here to Aotearoa. Their skill was based on knowledge of the stars, sailing directions, and reading the waves and clouds to determine currents and to predict weather. They were deeply imbedded into their environment. I like to think that we, the descendants of those early navigators, can draw on their prowess and commitment as we navigate the myriad of issues relating to climate change.

We were fortunate to be joined by the Minister for Pacific Peoples, the Hon Aupito William Sio, who, among his many significant comments, said something that actually sat with me for a few days: that while we are rolling out the vaccine for COVID-19 and supporting Pacific countries to do so, unfortunately there is no vaccine for climate change—if it was only that simple.

Yes we are a country that must account for its emissions, but we need to think about that in the context of the region that we live in. We live in the Pacific—not Europe, not the Americas—the place on the planet that is the most vulnerable to climate inaction. Yes we need to commit to climate action in Aotearoa to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees, but we also need to ensure our immigration policy is welcoming to Pacific peoples becoming displaced by climate change.

Climate action means we all take a part. He waka eke noa: a waka that we are all on board, but it also means that when we are on that waka, it’s important that we are all paddling, and, even more importantly, paddling in the same direction. I also note that He Waka Eke Noa is also the name of the Primary Sector Climate Action Partnership. We have to get to a point where we have to stop giving out hallway passes. Almost half of our emissions come from agriculture. For decades, farms were treated like factories, prioritising quantity over quality and popping out pollution. Many Governments told farmers, “Make more milk powder. Don’t worry about the effects on the environment.” The tools farmers need to deal with changes in the climate and changes in their market were taken from them. We have to change, and many farmers know it. We have eight harvest cycles left before it’s too late and we are hit by our climate change tipping point—this is what the scientists are telling us: eight harvests to change the way we grow our food.

Many farmers are already changing. It is time for the Government to support them to change. We can work with our rural communities to transform our agriculture and horticultural sectors from being one of the biggest causes of climate change into being one of the biggest solutions to climate change. First, we have to stop using nitrogen fertilisers. They pollute our water, they create emissions, and they enable more cows in places where cows have no good reason to be. What dirty coal is to electricity, nitrogen fertilisers are to farming. We can live without it. There are alternatives and we need to use them for the health of our land and air and the health of our ocean.

As a reminder of all this, I am left with the words of Reverend Sumalie, who joined us that day on the vaka, and he spoke about his home island of Tuvalu. And he reminded us that if we save Tuvalu, we save the world. Let’s save Tuvalu.

Mālō e lelei, Madam Speaker. Can I start by acknowledging my parliamentary colleague the Hon Kiritapu Allan. As a new member of this House, she has been extremely welcoming to this place, and my thoughts are with her and her whānau as she’s on her recovery journey.

It’s a great day because some 24 hours ago the Government made its trans-Tasman bubble announcement because of our successful management of COVID-19. I do want to acknowledge those who have been working hard on ensuring that that announcement has become a reality and our next step to our recovery. It is a recovery, because we are in the midst of a global pandemic, all around us, all around the world, and I often think that perhaps the Opposition seem to forget that. I am delighted that my colleagues, Mr McAnulty and Mr McKelvie—from across the way there—who are fellow racing enthusiasts, may actually get this analogy, and that is the Opposition seem to have their blinkers on, on the way to the starting gate. The reality is that perhaps they should just be scratched before they even leave the gates, full stop. Why? Because they seem to be focused on knee-jerk reactions without understanding, actually, the full picture and the broader approach as to what is going on around them here in New Zealand. The Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister have made it very clear, and for the benefit of the Opposition, let me reiterate to them. This side of the House actually make no apology for prioritising the health, safety, and wellbeing of New Zealanders during this unprecedented time. I constantly hear thanks from members of my community, and I know that members on this side of the House hear the same thing as they go about their duties as well. There’s no doubt in my mind, and in the minds of the community, that we are a Government of action, and we are not prepared to simply put everything at risk.

Can I just paint a picture to provide some context for those in New Zealand right now? We have young people, we have rangatahi, who are able to go to school and engage in education and training. We have people who are in employment. We have people that can go about church and other faith-based opportunities. We have people—individually and collectively—who are able to play sports, whether that’s during the week or in the weekends. We have mass gatherings that are enjoyed by many, many people. We’re able to travel domestically and, in the matter of a couple of weeks, we will be able to travel internationally. We simply are the envy of the world.

I have to say that last week was a fantastic week. We finished the visit from the first leader of a Government, actually, in over a year, and that’s the Cook Islands Prime Minister, Prime Minister Brown. I have to say that I am disappointed, if not I am appalled, at the comments from the Leader of the Opposition this morning, especially when she is the spokesperson for Pacific peoples. She infers, actually, that people on this side of the House who are of Pacific heritage—because us 10 members in the Pasifika caucus here on this side of the House, and my colleague who has just resumed his seat: that’s it, 11; over there, I don’t see it. Now what I would like to say, actually, is that it is appalling that the Opposition spokesperson adopts that view because, quite simply, the 11 Pasifika members that have heritage here in this Parliament are concerned about the islands, we are concerned about small nations, and we are not prepared to place at risk those very communities by simply allowing us to go there without things being done properly. I reflect back to my last visit to the island of Aitutaki. The hospital there has fewer hospital beds than Palmerston North Hospital would have in one particular wing. So we’re not talking about apples with apples; it is quite different.

I guess, though, in reality, the Opposition have a little bit of a dilemma. Because if they are to replace that spokesperson for Pasifika peoples, just look at them, who could they have? Is there an element of choice there? Is there an element of choice? Talofa, talofa, talofa, is what we say on this side of the House. Now, what I would say is that my colleagues have previously spoken about a number of changes that have come in last week, and I’m really proud of that. I’m proud of the fact that people in my community of Palmerston North are going to have an increased minimum wage. I am proud of the fact that, actually, the very people who we talked about as a House around last night’s Social Security (Subsequent Child Policy Removal) Amendment Bill are the very people who will benefit from the decisions that this Government has delivered over the last week. So it’s a great time to be a member of a Government that is focused on its community, is focused on delivering, and we look forward to continuing to do that as part of our recovery for all New Zealanders. Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Thank you for the opportunity to speak in this debate. Public safety is being put at risk under this Government. The Government has lost control of law and order in New Zealand, and is putting New Zealanders’ safety at risk. Our streets are becoming less safe. Our police officers are being assaulted more and more often and having firearms presented at them more often. Our corrections officers are being assaulted more often in our prisons. Gangs are taking control of our streets. New Zealanders have had enough and it’s time for this Government to take control of law and order in New Zealand.

New Zealanders don’t deserve to be put at risk on the streets. Under this Government, we have seen the number of serious assaults in New Zealand double. In 2017, there were 10,681 serious assaults recorded in New Zealand. In 2020, there were 21,252 serious assaults on our streets. This is four years of failure by this Government when it comes to law and order. The number of our police officers who are being assaulted has increased. Last year, 1,348 people were charged with assaulting police officers in New Zealand, something that is unbelievable. And do you know what the saddest fact is? Gang members are recruiting faster than the New Zealand Police. There has been a 48 percent increase in gang membership in New Zealand, and the Police have only recruited 1,300 new police officers, under this Government.

This Government has blinkers on. They’re not interested in the facts, they’re not interested in the statistics, and they’re not interested in New Zealanders’ safety, which is becoming incredibly concerning. I was in Paihia on Thursday for a public meeting where locals, business owners, community groups, the community patrol, and wardens in that town turned up saying, “We don’t see the police on our streets.” The local police station is not even being manned on a regular basis in that community. Kelvin Davis, one of the local members of Parliament up there, decided to decline the event after first saying he was going to be there. Five minutes before it started he said he couldn’t make it and didn’t show up. That was an absolute disgrace for the people of Paihia.

What is this Government doing about law and order? Well, they promised 1,800 new police over three years. It is now 3½ years since they came into office and we’ve only got 1,347 new officers on the beat. Of those 1,800, 700 were to be focused on tackling gangs and organised crime, and how many of them have they delivered? Two hundred and thirty-nine new officers focused on tackling gang and organised crime. Police have not got the resources that this Government promised. New Zealanders have not got the resources that this Government promised.

And did you know that at the same time that they haven’t delivered on their promise of new police—the 1,800 new police—the police training college is sitting empty? They’re not taking a new wing of recruits until May of this year, and they won’t be on the beat until September or later this year. That is unbelievable and unacceptable. The excuse that they’re giving for not taking new recruits is that the attrition rate is too low. Well, when they started the 1,800 programme they said that the attrition rate was too high so they were not going to be able to meet the programme. Now they’re saying it’s too low. Well, New Zealanders have had enough of the excuses and are wanting to see action and delivery from this Government.

This Government has an opportunity to take law and order seriously. They need to keep to their word. They need to deliver on their promises. They could bring forward funding to make sure those police are delivered, to make sure those police are trained, to make sure they’ve got the tools they need to be able to do their job and keep safe. I find it shocking that police officers are becoming afraid of turning up to jobs because they think it’s too risky. They’re afraid of having a gun pointed at them when they turn up, because they don’t have the back-up and the support they need. It’s time this Government listened to front-line officers on the street, on the beat, who are doing the hard work but don’t feel the support that they’ve got from this Government. Then they’ve got policies coming through saying they can’t pursue, they can’t go and eradicate marijuana, they can’t do all these other policies they’ve being doing for years. This needs leadership from the Government. It has its blinkers on when it comes to law and order, and I’m calling on this Government to take this issue seriously before those statistics get even worse.

As my colleagues have mentioned, yesterday the Prime Minister announced that as of 19 April, Kiwis and Aussies can travel back and forth without needing to book a spot in managed isolation and quarantine. I know that that’s going to be a huge relief for many people in my electorate, who, like many across the country, have missed their friends and their family over the last 12 months. It’s been a long and, at times, hard year, but the combined effect of our efforts means that friends and families can again be reunited. I’ve heard from many grandparents in my electorate who have missed the birth of a new grandchild, and I know it will bring them great joy to finally be able to meet their grandchild. That is a good thing.

So too is the fact that last week we introduced a range of measures that will raise the incomes of 1.4 million New Zealanders, and that’s a crucial step to making sure we build back better and further our recovery. Last week, minimum wages went up to $20 an hour. Pensions and benefits, which were indexed to increases in wages, also went up, because, despite the odds, last year wages in New Zealand increased by 3.1 percent. Abatement thresholds were also changed, and what that means is that people receiving a benefit and in part-time work can keep more of what they earn. That is great news for people in my electorate too. You see, a few years ago, when the previous Government was in, Whanganui was called a ghost town by a visiting reporter, and that was at the point where we had a so-called rock star economy. Well, we didn’t see that rock star economy in the regions. Instead, what we saw was shops closing, more and more families living in cars, and we didn’t see wage growth. Times were tough for families—unnecessarily so—but what a difference a few years makes when you’ve got a Government that backs the regions, that invests in our regions, that works in partnership with our regions, and we’ve felt the benefit of that in my electorate, where we feel more hope and more optimism now through a global pandemic than we did when we had a so-called rock star economy.

COVID has been tough on us all, but together we have come through it, and in Whanganui and Taranaki, we’ve come through better than most, with tourism numbers up and spending data showing increases too. Instead of a ghost town, we are well on our way to becoming a thriving, vibrant city again. Take our arts community, for example. In the last fortnight, we’ve had Whanganui Walls, where artists have come to Whanganui and painted beautiful murals on walls across our city. We’ve had artists open studios, where local artists across the region have opened their studio doors to the public for two weeks, and the changes that were announced last week are going to help more people to be able to afford to come and see that vibrancy and experience it for themselves. I recommend starting at the Whanganui Sarjeant art gallery, in its temporary location, of course, because the iconic Sarjeant art gallery is being restored thanks to investment from this Government, and, yes—credit where credit’s due—the previous Government, too.

But don’t just stop in Whanganui. If you’ve come for the arts scene, take your time, travel up through Taranaki to the amazing small galleries, and make sure you definitely stop at the Percy Thomson in Stratford, too.

There’s so much more to do. Check out the local attractions, travel up the awa on the historic Waimarie paddle steamer. Visit our shops. Check out our cafes. Take the kids to the two best playgrounds in New Zealand: Kowhai Park in Whanganui and King Edward Park in Hāwera. While you’re in Taranaki, check out the Taranaki Crossing, with its upgraded tracks and facilities, thanks to help from the Provincial Growth Fund from this Government. Drive up the Forgotten World Highway, which is, at long last, finally in the process of having the last 12 kilometres sealed, thanks, again, to investment from this Government, and that investment is creating local jobs, which is helping us to recover locally.

Do not underestimate the impact that an increase in income can make to our regional communities. If it allows a few more families to get out and explore our regions, then this is good news for our recovery.

Order! The time for this speech has expired.

Thank you, Madam Speaker, for giving me the opportunity to speak today in this debate. I often sit and think about all the reasons I came to this place, and what I want to achieve. There are many social issues in this country, and, yes, there is a lot more the Government could be doing in this area, but it is also up to us within our communities to do our bit. MPs hear from many people from all walks of life when we sit on select committees, and get some real insight into what is happening in our communities. What I hear most is the need for more mentorship and support within our communities. When I think about mentorship and support, it reminds me of my time volunteering with St John. Considering it is St John’s Heart of Gold Annual Appeal this week, I thought it would be appropriate to speak about the multiple programmes they provide within our communities.

St John as an organisation has a presence in some sort of way pretty much in every major city and small town in New Zealand, whether it be an ambulance that comes to your aid in your most vulnerable moments or when they are teaching kids life skills in our schools. When we think of St John, many people don’t realise that they are a charitable organisation. They receive some funding from Government, and the rest is made up from fund-raising. Government and many community organisations are now recognising and speaking to the fact that we need to put more effort into prevention and support for our most vulnerable. We should not be waiting until families are in crisis mode before they are able to seek help.

I was lucky enough to be invited to a presentation on a new initiative that St John has started to launch as part of their school programme. Whātuia te Waiora—Weaving Wellbeing—is a wellbeing and resilience programme for year 7 to 8 students. They recognise this is the age where a lot of our young ones are struggling the most. This programme gives children the opportunity to weave positivity into their daily lives. The one thing that stood out for me was their concept that a state of wellbeing is not simply the absence of the negative, but the presence of the positive. Students will learn what character strength is and how these are different from values and skills. Students will discover how to use their strengths and identify opportunities in which they can grow. Students will learn how to call on their strengths in times of challenge and build their resilience. Students will develop awareness around positive and negative emotions, and ways to boost those positive emotions. Students will discover kindness to themselves in learning how to be their own best friends. Students discover the idea of community wellbeing and explore where there is a call to action that they can be involved in. I am proud that I was part of that organisation for many years, and I am proud of the initiatives that they are coming up with.

St John has many community programmes, mostly staffed by volunteers. Health shuttles which enable patients to get to vital health appointments like chemotherapies that they might not otherwise be able to attend, Friends of the Emergency Department, community carers, ASB St John in Schools, youth groups and cadets, caring callers, and therapy pets—all relying on people within the community to go out and volunteer their time. In addition to that, they have a commercial service that provides first aid, mental health first aid, training courses, and medical alarms, which help build community resilience. So when you are out and about this week and you see the wonderful volunteers with their Heart of Gold badges standing outside the ASB and selling their sausages at the local Bunnings—which is where I would usually be at this time of the year—you can know that your generous donation is making a difference in a community near you.

The ACT Party recognises there are many organisations in this country that are helping to make New Zealand a better place, and we would like to express our gratitude to them all. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

The debate having concluded, the motion lapsed.