General Debate

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

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s one week shy of three months since 18 August, and, like a number of other members of this House, I’m pleased to be released from the restrictions of Auckland this week to come to Wellington. It has been hard in Auckland and other parts of New Zealand that have had a prolonged lockdown, but especially in Auckland, which has had to suffer the consequences of that lockdown longer than other parts of the country. And we understand that it’s been hard for families, it’s been hard for business owners and their workers, particularly hard for those who live alone, for families that live in apartments, particularly in the early stages of the lockdown. But we’re nearly there—we’re nearly there. We’re a small number of weeks—just a few weeks-away from 90 percent double-vaccination in Auckland.

Our opponent in this battle—we must not forget our opponent is a highly transmissible, mutating, and deadly virus that we cannot reason with. We’re fighting a pandemic here, and we’ve been treading a careful line, managing the risk, as we’ve transitioned from protecting ourselves via the border to protecting ourselves via high rates of vaccination. And we’re grateful for the support of the public throughout New Zealand, but especially in Auckland, who have borne the heaviest consequences of the restrictions that we’ve had to live with as we have built those vaccination rates.

And it’s very pleasing, I think, and reflects very well on us as a country, that we can now reflect on the fact that we are already one of the most vaccinated populations in the world. We’ve got higher rates of vaccination than the United Kingdom, than Germany, than France, than the United States. Our nearby neighbours in Australia are neck and neck with us, and we’ve both done very well on that front.

I think it’s also worth reflecting on the fact that at the same period post the Delta outbreak in Australia, relative to the Delta outbreak now in New Zealand, their rates of infection are far, far higher than we have achieved in New Zealand—far, far higher. We are already making progress in returning to the freedoms that everyone in New Zealand wants.

We’ve already got a more open lifestyle in Auckland. I know I was one of those that took great delight in being able to even meet one extra bubble of people in an outdoor situation. In fact, I had a barbecue at midnight on the time that it was introduced, and it was a delightful thing to meet with my closest friends and share a sausage in a piece of bread with a bit of tomato sauce.

These things made a real difference to Aucklanders, and since then, of course, we’ve had retail reopen and we’ve heard from the Minister of Education today about more schools opening in the next week. We’ve also heard more information from the Minister of Health, the Hon Andrew Little, today, about how this extra time has also brought us closer to new medicines that enable us to better treat the disease, and that fewer people will catch it now because vaccinations work, and we know that vaccinations vastly reduce the risk of catching the virus, reduce the risk of passing it to someone else, and reduce the risk of hospitalisation and serious illness, not just to the benefit of the person who avoids that but to the benefit of other people that need to use our health system.

So I’m really grateful to the people of New Zealand, who have cooperated with the Government through these difficult times, and I’m so pleased that New Zealanders are now looking forward to a good summer holiday, that the borders are going to be released in Auckland, so that Aucklanders can leave. And, yes, we understand that that carries some unavoidable risks in other parts of the country. We have been very successful in other parts of the country—in stamping out the small outbreak that we had in Wellington and Christchurch, and some other smaller outbreaks, but we know that we’re transitioning to a different part of this pandemic where we carry our protection with us, where we rely upon a world-class health system to deal with the smaller numbers that will still end up in hospital.

So I end by saying “Thank you, New Zealanders”, and now I listen and wait for the second-guessing from the National Party.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Well, here we are in the land of the free after nearly three months in house arrest in Auckland over what has been an incredible period of lockdown in the Queen’s city. We return to this Parliament from Auckland, the National MPs, with aggressive intent to hold this Government to account for the shambles that it has been looking over in the past few weeks.

This is a Government that’s running amok. Like some old-school law and order party, “Lock ’em down, lock ’em up” is their only approach to our economy. Who would have thought? For the first six months of the year, they told us how wonderful we were, other countries deserved the vaccines more than us, we shouldn’t be too fast. And now, for nearly three months Auckland has been locked down. Businesses haven’t been able to trade. People haven’t been able to work. People haven’t been able to see their family. Kids haven’t been at school. It is a disaster what has been happening in our classrooms, or not happening in our classrooms, over the last little while.

And so we see the Government slowly retreating with no apparent logic. Suddenly, we learnt, to our shock and horror a couple of weeks ago, that, actually, it’s OK reopening retail, because the impact is not great; it’s a minimal impact. But why on earth have the shops been closed for so many weeks? It’s a minimal impact but we keep them closed. Today, we hear that the schools have a remarkably low impact. Well, why are they taking so long to reopen them?

We’ve heard, of course, about the shambles on the border, and we had Chris Hipkins saying, “Oh, well, you know, we might have to have an allocation system to get over it.” Just imagine the traffic jams at Warkworth and Pūhoi and the Bombay Hills—we’ll all line up and get tested somehow on the border, and then Mr Robertson, “Write-another-cheque Robbo”, he came in and said, “No, I don’t agree with that.”

💬 SPEAKER: Order!

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Mr Grant Robertson: “No, we’re not going to do that.” And then the Prime Minister said “Oh, well, actually we are; we’re still considering it.” Nobody has any idea how it’s going to operate over Christmas. That is the problem; the Government hasn’t thought it through. What we’ll see is that the pursed-lipped modellers will say no, but the Prime Minister will say yes, eventually, when she knows that Aucklanders are fed up and they want to get out and they want their lives back. That’s why we should have been focused on this vaccine roll-out much earlier, and at some point we need to take the opportunity to set Aucklanders free.

Meantime, I just have to mention that this is a Government that chose during this critical period of lockdown and trouble and strife to announce the craziest Auckland transport plan, with a $16 billion light rail down Dominion Road. I have not yet met anybody in Auckland who thinks that of all the transport priorities in the city—Willie Jackson wouldn’t agree with this—of all the transport priorities in Auckland, the number one priority for $16 billion is a slow tram down Dominion Road. There is not a soul in the city, with the possible exception of “Tiny Montgomery”—who’s the Minister, Michael Wood—with the possible exception of Michael Wood, who thinks that a light rail project down Dominion Road is the priority for Auckland transport.

And then we have the three waters. “Who cares what the rest of the country thinks? Who cares what the council thinks? We’re going to ram it through because there is no alternative.” Well, that’s not how you operate an effective Government. So we’re here and we’re determined to hold this Government to account.

You would have noticed today that National outlined its education plan, because we need to get our schools back and we need to get our students learning. Just imagine for a moment, if you will, an eight-year-old being at home, a crowded home, no laptop, noisy kids, the television’s on. It’s been 12 weeks now out of school. Can you imagine that there’s much learning going on? There hasn’t been any learning going on, and this Government has been very slow to reopen schools. I’m glad, finally, today, they’ve announced, “Eventually, we’ll get round to it next week. We might have some classroom—” They’ve left it all very vague. Schools will probably say, “Oh well, it might be only one day a week.”, so I don’t know what certainty has been provided. I think they should be back all the time.

I’m glad that they’ve postponed the curriculum review, which was a huge distraction, now. But what we didn’t see from the Minister today was any plan to catch up. That’s what we’ve been talking about. You’re not going to catch up if you’re not at school. And we know that this country has a truancy crisis. The Government’s done nothing about it in four years, made it worse, and we need to have a no-excuses culture when it comes to turning up to school. Willie Jackson knows that, but he didn’t go to school so much when he was there himself—but we can’t blame that on him.

Now, the other thing we need to do is measure progress. Our policy in terms of measuring progress in education in this city right now is: don’t ask, don’t tell. Throw out the national standards. We don’t know—

Order! Order! The member’s time has expired.

That was a shocking presentation from Pāora Goldsmith. Obviously, the National Party are getting very desperate now—they’ve back-ended Simon Bridges; he doesn’t where the heck he is these days, and Pāora Goldsmith leading off for them. I mean, it’s sad when we’ve had such great leadership from this Government in a pandemic, this once-in-a-century pandemic, and our Prime Minister having faced the biggest challenge perhaps since the Second World War. But here are the stats, just for the National Party, and for Chris Bishop particularly.

In America, we’re talking about one death in every 450 people; in New Zealand, it’s one death per every 175,000 people. So, despite all the criticism, all the rubbish, all the nonsense from the Opposition, our strategy has saved lives—saved lives. OK, it hasn’t been perfect; you know, we’ve sort of said that. There’s been a moving feast of problems but we will be judged by history, and when people remember us, they’ll realise the priorities that we put aside. They will realise that there’s been low hospitalisation rates, there’s been low death rates, that’s been connected to the strategy that we went down to start off with, which was to vaccinate the vulnerable, the old people, and the over-65s. That’s why we’ve had so few deaths. This is a successful COVID strategy. I know the Opposition don’t—

💬 David Seymour: Why are we still locked down?

—understand this, particularly the self-appointed “Leader of the Opposition”, David Seymour. If we want to look at the alternatives, we only have to look at the rubbish and nonsense that Mr Seymour rolled out. The self-appointed “Leader of the Opposition”—

💬 SPEAKER: Order! I am sorry to interrupt the member. Mr Mitchell, you might have a speech later in the afternoon, but you’ve still got to wear your mask. You can’t take it off ages before. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Yes, come on, Mark Mitchell, control yourself. Mark Mitchell should know that David Seymour’s strategy is that he wanted managed isolation and quarantine to be a bed and breakfast—he wanted it to be a bed and breakfast for rich people. The ACT argument was to allow the free market to decide the casualty rate. ACT wanted to reopen the country before we even closed the borders. That was the ACT strategy. At one point, ACT was suggesting a lottery for everyone, using the QR scan, until it was pointed out to them that incentivising people to go to places they don’t need to go to during a pandemic was a bloody stupid idea. That’s the ACT strategy for you.

Now, National went beyond stupid ideas. For the last year, Judith Collins has flirted with extremism and conspiracy. It’s been very sad. From Gerry Brownlee asking questions about conspiracies last year, to Judith Collins’ never-ending race-baiting and divisive rhetoric. It’s been a sad presentation from the National Party, and, as you can see, they’re all hanging their heads in depression, hoping that they’re going to get past 25 percent in the next poll.

National hasn’t added any real solutions to COVID beyond sowing the spite that erupted out into Parliament yesterday. Both National and ACT are responsible for that. They whipped up that foaming resentment and they’ve fostered it. They should hang their heads in shame. We simply save lives—that’s all we do. Every day, we’ve got a Prime Minister who trots out, and the country loves her still. If National and ACT were running the country during this pandemic, COVID would have already burnt unconstrained throughout every community, and Judith Collins would pat herself on the back for keeping businesses open while the hospitals and morgues filled right up.

It’s not just ACT and National, though, who have been stubborn and slightly disingenuous; it’s been the Māori Party too, and I don’t like to criticise the relations, but they’ve claimed our policy was modern genocide on a par with the Squid Game’s murder camp. They want to lock us down for the next 10 years at level 6, and to date we’ve had 10 Māori die, which is a tragedy for the whānau—don’t get me wrong—but it is as offensive in terms of claiming genocide as it is as puffed up as Rawiri Waititi’s hat.

So I say to everyone today, “Compliment this Government.” It’s been a wonderful presentation from our leadership. Our response to this terrible pandemic, while not being perfect—and some might have said it’s been a bit slow—has worked in terms of how we’ve worked with our bureaucracy. I’m saying, with almost 90 percent of people vaccinated, New Zealanders can attest that we are the Government rather than having endured the bleak misery that you would have got from a useless, rotten, ACT-National Government. Kia ora.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’m quite inspired by Willie Jackson, the last speaker, but also grateful that he ran out of time, because he was running out of political parties to criticise and I recognised that I was the next on the list.

But auē taukuri ē! I looked out of the windows just yesterday, and I had been noticing it around the country that there have been a large number of anti-vax protests and lockdown protests and people that are influenced in that particular direction. I have seen them show up with tino rangatiratanga flags, I have seen them show up with whakaputanga flags—

💬 SPEAKER: Yeah, sometimes upside down.

—and sometimes they’re upside down. Well, they were on your forecourt, so you would have recognised them being upside down. It’s a lot of emotions. It’s sad and it’s contemplative, but there’s also a saying, which is “kei te puku te rae”—which means that the brow is furrowed with anger, because it is through the lack of information and the lack of knowledge of our history that people are participating in those protests.

It was deeply ironic to see the tino rangatiratanga flag next to the Trump flag and next to the other kinds of flags as well, recognising that people do not understand that, actually, there is a really strong and proud history of those flags. When people talk about mana motuhake and when people talk about tino rangatiratanga, those are collective rights. They are not the individual rights, and of course individual rights are important in bodily autonomy and all those sorts of things, but we should not be confusing them with the right to self-determination and the collective rights of whānau, hapū, and iwi.

It also takes away from the struggles of people that are doing the hard yards on the ground, and I’m recognising the massive hīkois that have happened in the past as well. I thought it was deeply ironic that when one of those car hīkois showed up, up north, and they were accusing Hone Harawira of being a kūpapa and being out of touch, and then, of course, they were doing the same to people like Tame Iti and doing the same to other people who have for a very, very long time held up the kaupapa for honouring Te Tiriti o Waitangi, honouring tino rangatiratanga, and, of course, honouring mana motuhake.

But yesterday, what was happening outside wasn’t the only thing that was shocking to me as well. Yesterday, in response to the ongoing commitment to protect Pūtiki Bay from development since 9 March this year, the developers, Kennedy Point Boatharbour Ltd (KPBL), have issued an injunction trespassing 32 members of Ngāti Paoa and the Waiheke community, not only from their so-called construction area but 20 metres beyond it—32 members, including a 16-year-old. So, at one stage, we have a number of anti-vax protesters who seem to be running around, holding up our flags upside down, when you have protectors who are protecting the whenua and protecting the ocean and recognising those connections, walking in the footsteps of the occupations of the past, and I want to acknowledge Ihumātao, I want to acknowledge Pākaitore, I want to acknowledge Whāingaroa, and I want to acknowledge Takaparawhā—all of those lessons—and these protesters have been walking in those footsteps as well. To have an injunction put on them is deeply disconnected from the history of the struggle.

Regardless of this, the Pūtiki and the Waiheke community have continued to keep their presence at Pūtiki Bay, observing on land and on the water outside of the construction zone. To date, KPBL are eight months behind in the construction of the proposed marina thanks to the combined efforts of Ngāti Paoa, the Waiheke community, and allies nationally and internationally.

We also understand that the cops have a unit on standby for Pūtiki. They seem to be able to find the resources to monitor land and sea protectors, but not for the anti-vax protests.

The most recent injunction that has been done was done under the guise of urgency because the COVID restrictions are lifting, and that is also deeply ironic. A couple of months ago, protectors at the occupation at Pūtiki had organised their bubble as well, and the police had interrupted that bubble—over 20 police—when what they should have been doing was directing that resource to lock down protesters and anti-vaxxers.

So I would say that the Green Party will always walk with those that stand up for that connection between the people and the environment, with the community pushing back against power, because that is how I see it. I see that the police and the authorities are siding on to the side of power in the same way that the people outside that are misguided think they are siding with power, but in some ways they seem to be getting a hallway pass. So I would ask us to stop giving hallway passes to anti-vaxxers and start helping to support protectors—

Order! The member’s time has expired. I’m going to call Marja Lubeck, but I am going to sort of remind Mark Mitchell that we do have a speaking list and a speaking order agreed for the general debate. I know he is really anxious to talk, having spent some time away, but keeping his mask on rather than taking it off in anticipation, I think, four times is a probably a bit excessive.

Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare. New Zealand in 2019 was the first country to deliver a Wellbeing Budget, and it’s that emphasis on wellbeing that has put us in a really good position to counter the challenges that COVID has thrown our way head on, unlike many other countries. At the start of this month, the world had a devastating headline: 5 million people perished. That’s pretty much the whole population of New Zealand. And while many countries are going through their fourth and a fifth wave or even have had continuous waves, in New Zealand we’ve had one of the lowest, if not the lowest, rates of hospitalisation and death and, compared to many other countries, we’ve had relatively more freedoms for much longer times as well. So, by going hard and by going early, New Zealand has had the best opportunity to minimise the effects of the global pandemic and save people from effects on their livelihoods and, ultimately, save lives.

Now we have the very best tool available in our tool kit, which is, of course, the vaccine, and we’ve had some really fantastic vaccine rates. It’s great news that earlier this week, I think, actually, it was Monday, Counties Manukau joined the Auckland and Waitematā DHBs, and joined the 90 percenters club. It is really up to all of us to make the choice to be able to do more of the things that we love and see the people that we love and also protect those who can’t get vaccinated—our under-12s. It’s great to see that, to date, over 3.7 million New Zealanders have had that first vaccine dose, and many more are joining them every day. Now, we do know that some areas of the Auckland region need a little bit more work, and especially in the North when we’re looking at the Waitematā area, for example. But there’s plenty of opportunity for people in these areas to get a vaccination from Wellsford down to Kūmeu and several mobile vaccination vans are touring the country from Muriwai, Kaukapakapa, Parakai, South Head, Glorit, Port Albert, Pākiri, Leigh, Whangateau. Just walk in. No appointment needed.

The vaccination programme is, of course, a massive logistical exercise, but with 89 percent of New Zealand now having had their first dose, and 79 percent fully vaccinated as of today, we are going very well and it makes me confident that we’re on our way to getting more of the restrictions lifted and being close to living life a little bit more normal—a bit more normality. It shows that our strong health response has also been our strongest economic response, and that means that we can accelerate the recovery while we leave no one behind because, basically, what happens is the more people that are vaccinated, the safer that we are and, as we move into our new COVID-19 Protection Framework, the new tools in our tool kit will allow us to keep the spread of COVID-19 as low as possible, and it provides a pathway for still keeping New Zealanders safe.

It’s very hard to imagine that it’s a year ago now since election 2020. And, of course, in the meantime, much of our focus needed to be on how we managed COVID as a country. But also we have managed to achieve a hell of a lot: from increasing the minimum wage, to getting unemployment down to 3.4 percent, increasing benefit levels for the lowest-income households, and, of course, we had a massive boost to apprenticeships. The Government’s actions to support the economy during the pandemic have resulted in higher wages and more people at work. We’ve invested in programmes like Mana in Mahi and Flexi-wage. We’ve rolled out free apprenticeships along with free trades training in critical areas so that we could grow our trades workforce. The Ministry of Social Development are seeing record amounts of people moving into work, so that means that not only is the unemployment the lowest that we’ve seen in 14 years with 3.4 percent but GDP is up. Our debt is amongst the lowest levels that we see in the OECD, and we’ve experienced record growth while we’re at it. So, basically, that’s a combination of this Government’s balanced approach and the steady hand of our finance Minister, the Hon Grant Robertson. And it has put us in a really strong position as we move into that COVID-19 Protection Framework, and that’s that silver lining that the Minister has mentioned several times for us to build back better.

Now, I’m based in the Auckland region and, of course, having been at home for 83 days before coming back to Parliament this week, I’m well aware of how Aucklanders have been toughing it out. Many of them have been in touch—personal and business—and we know it’s been very hard. But we do hope that with the easing down of the restrictions it will relieve a little bit more pressure off everyone. And, of course, that enhanced business support package is taken up by a lot of people. Today, retail has opened up in Tāmaki-makau-rau so I’m hoping that everyone—

Order! The member’s time has expired.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Well, you know the Government’s in big trouble when they roll their big guns out and you have the Hon David Parker come down to the House and deliver a high-energy, inspirational speech to the country, highlighting the fact that in Auckland we can have a barbecue on the deck. And, actually, maybe it wasn’t a bad idea keeping us locked down because it gave Andrew Little time to have a look at some alternative drugs—you know, a confused and muddled response.

Simon Bridges and Simeon Brown—for how long have they been putting pressure on the Government around the proliferation of gang members and weapons in this country, but what did the Government do? We’ve been saying, “Lock them up, get them out of the community.” What did they do? They locked the rest of us up, and they allow the gangs to have a free run in the community.

It actually would be funny if it wasn’t for the fact that we’re in a very serious situation in this country, and the reality of it, and the reason why this Government is resisting the royal commission, is because I feel very strongly that a royal commission would highlight the fact that we were way, way behind in rolling out a vaccine programme. And the reason why I say that is that I attended a function in Auckland, and it was the Indian Newslink Lecture and black tie dinner. It was on 16 August and it was attended by Dr Ashley Bloomfield and the Hon Priyanca Radhakrishnan. Both of them stood and spoke to the audience—there were 500-plus people there. There were some very, very good questions from highly respected local GPs around the timing and the vaccine roll-out. At that time, 18 percent of the country were double-vaxxed. Just think about that—only 18 percent of the country.

On that night, both Dr Bloomfield and the Minister highlighted and celebrated the fact that we’d had one of the best responses so that we could come together as a group like that of over 400 or 500 people. There was no sense of urgency, there were no clear answers to the reason around the slowness of the vaccine roll-out. The very next day, we were put into a level 4 lockdown. And we’ve been stuck in that lockdown for 83 days. That is a serious indictment on this Government and their failure to roll out that vaccine far earlier, which would have prevented Aucklanders still being stuck in a lockdown, would have prevented the massive wrecking ball that has gone through this country, not just in human cost but in economic cost as well. And believe me, we will still feel the human cost of this in the years to come—the families that have been separated, the children that have been unable to get to a dying parent’s bedside, the businesses that are going under and continue to go under.

So this is an extremely serious matter, and this has been an abject failure on the Government’s part on a simple matter of rolling the vaccine out. The country has got behind them and responded to their call every single time. There’s only one thing that we’ve expected them to do, and that is to be responsible, that is to be proactive, that is to show that they’ve got the strategic ability to be able to roll out something as simple as a vaccine roll-out when we all knew and we all saw what Delta was doing around the world. But there was a deep complacency that had crept into this Government. They were too busy patting themselves on the back and congratulating themselves on an outstanding response to the country—that was the response of the 5 million.

And let me just give you one local example from me in my own electorate: two weeks ago, I had two people that were diagnosed with Delta, three days into a diagnosis with Delta—highly contagious. They were put in home isolation. They broke their home isolation; they came into Ōrewa. One of them was intending on using public transport. A good Samaritan came forward to assist them, because they’d been in some sort of domestic dispute. The person failed to highlight the fact they had Delta. He took them down to the police station—two officers dealt with them, she failed to tell them that she had Delta. All three of them ended up in isolation, both of them away from their families, and we had someone with Delta in the middle of Ōrewa prepared to use public transport.

I got on to the Ministry of Health. I wanted clear answers for the community, because it was very clear to me the police felt that they continued to be a risk, and the community felt that they continued to be a risk, and they should be in managed isolation and quarantine. After a week of trying to get clear answers from the Ministry of Health, this is what I got back in a redacted version: “A thorough investigation has been undertaken, and we are able to confirm that no breaches in terms of allowable activity have occurred in this instance.” That captures the confused response from this Government perfectly, and the Ministry of Health—

Order! The member’s time has expired.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Today, I rise in this House to contribute to this debate as a proud Aucklander. The beautiful city known as “the city of 100 lovers” has really borne much of the work in keeping our pandemic enclosed in its city, alongside our whānau in Northland and in Waikato. We’ve really done a lot of the work in terms of buying us all, collectively as a nation, time—time to make sure that our hospitals aren’t overwhelmed and time to make sure that we roll out the vaccines. And woo hoo! We just hit 90 percent on first-dose vaccines in all three of Tāmaki-makau-rau’s DHBs. That is something we should be really, really proud of.

On the topic of vaccines, can I just, please, pay tribute to my community, the Chinese New Zealanders here, living especially in Tāmaki-makau-rau, who have done an exceptional job and contributed brilliantly to the Super Saturday vaccination campaign. Can I just really pay homage to all of our community leaders. I saw many of the community leaders who actually went down their membership lists, ticking off families and making sure they removed barriers for those who couldn’t get their vaccine, whether it be language, whether it be transport, whether it just be someone who needed to have a conversation with them. Hopefully, with the work that our Minister for Diversity, Inclusion and Ethnic Communities, through the Ministry for Ethnic Communities, has given in terms of our comms fund and in terms of our vaccine uptake fund, we can support you better in making sure that our ethnic communities, some of our most vulnerable communities, are being looked after and that that message gets to them as well.

Can I also pay tribute to the Chinese businesses who gave absolutely generously to the Super Saturday campaign. I still remember one afternoon when I got a phone call from my team saying one of the businesses wanted to donate 14,000 bottles of hand sanitiser to this campaign. I think my whole entire neighbourhood heard me shout back into the phone, “14,000, are you serious?” We made sure that all the vaccination sites had free hand sanitiser given away when they finished their vaccinations in East Auckland on Super Saturday, and I’m incredibly proud of all the generosity. We were giving away bags of rice by the end of it.

So, through the Government subsidies that the Hon Grant Robertson has announced in terms of our new advice for all businesses, especially in Auckland, through our mental health support of businesses in Auckland, we hope to reciprocate that and to support you better as you navigate your way out of the lockdown into recovery. Hopefully, by stepping down today, this morning, you will feel something different in Auckland. You will feel an ease of restrictions, but also that hope coming through that more and more business activity will well recover.

Could I just personally thank also just the whole entire campaign team: Susan, Zhou, Harvey, Dr EG, also Jessie, Ming—I hope I haven’t missed anyone—who’ve worked so hard on making sure that this message gets put into our communities. All of our family doctors and Dr Jo who gave free and frank advice no matter on media or anywhere, in our Zoom sessions, to make sure that any concerns felt by the community were addressed by a medical professional. Thank you guys so much for all the time and effort you guys have put in.

Can I thank all the media in the Chinese language space where you guys have given free slots to make sure that we were able to give out right and Government-sanctioned advice so that misinformation wouldn’t be spread in our communities. We even had our very own Chinese vaxathon as well that morning.

So I’m super proud of the effort that the community came collectively together to make sure our most vulnerable are being looked after. However, the job is not done. We know that, despite really high numbers—actually almost 10 percent higher than national numbers in the Asian and Chinese community—our elderly are still a bit vaccine hesitant. And we know they’re the most vulnerable. So could I just put out a message to everyone out there who are listening: xiexie nimen. Thank you for the effort that we’ve all put in, but our job doesn’t end here. As more restrictions ease, we need to make sure that every possible person that gets a vaccine hears our message, that they can protect themselves from COVID, and that we protect the most vulnerable in our communities—those who can’t get the vaccine—and to make sure that everyone who needs a bit of reassurance has a friend, has a whānau talking to them, and to make sure that we use science as our best tool to convince them.

Could I just, finally, thank everyone who is still in Auckland at the moment. I know it’s tough. I know there’s many challenges, whether it’s domestically, whether it’s financially, or whether it’s mental health - wise, but hang in there. We’re all here in support of you. We’re all here for you. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Eighty-five days of lockdown in Auckland—85 days of misery, of which there is no apparent hope. I say that because the Government trumpets the higher vaccination rates, which you would think would lead towards more freedom and openness, but, in fact, is bringing about more rules, more regulations, and more excuses. I want to put on record here today that the likes of freedoms and rights, values and principles are important, and they become even more important in times of crisis.

It also has to be said to this Government and to media, our rights exist because we exist as individuals. These rights are not given to us by the State. But our right to—and importantly for those who protest, they need to understand that their individual rights also exist within a community, and we all have a right to live safely.

But I want to focus today, on behalf of my constituents in Auckland, on the divisions which are being created amongst the supposed team of 5 million. I want to focus on the divisions that this Government is creating. One of the reasons that Governments and groups cause division is to create scapegoats. It’s one way that division is manifest. Groups are being scapegoated, and they’re being scapegoated because it allows the Government to deflect the blame from itself—the late vaccination roll-out, the booster programme not even starting yet. I have doctors, nurses, elderly, and airline pilots coming to me saying, “It’s been over six months, Simon. We want the boosters.” The scapegoating deflects Government failures in managed isolation and quarantine, where literally hundreds of thousands of New Zealand citizens are being denied their right to return to this country.

Creating division, of course, also takes people’s focus away from the bigger issues, and turns, often, the focus to those closest to them, as I say, rather than focusing on the bigger issues: families that are unable to grieve and celebrate—weddings that are postponed, funerals that cannot be attended. Businesses that have no certainty. In August alone, almost 10,000 New Zealand businesses closed—that’s in August. How many have closed over the last 30 days? Shocking to even think those numbers.

Retailers who are in tears, their businesses destroyed; their livelihood, their independence, their mortgages maxed out—no more options. These are real stories from my constituents. And yet, at the moment, trumpeting retail being open—that’s a good step forward, but the bars, the bistros, and the restaurants of Tāmaki cannot open. The barbers, the beauticians, the physios, the osteopaths, and the pools—they’re not open. It’s well past time that we embrace a safe operating model and not these blanket rules. And 85 days of kids who can’t go back to school.

All of this is because of something I call fundamentalism—and you’ve heard it today in the speeches from the other side. It’s become an absolute fascination with only one particular health aspect of COVID. It’s fundamentalism because it only focuses on one aspect of truth, and not the wider picture. We need a proportional response, and one that realises that beyond just COVID as a health issue, there are many, many other considerations. The stress and anxiety of those in business. Every day in my electorate, I have business owners at their wits’ end—as I say, their businesses destroyed, their loss of independence. Delayed healthcare interventions—again, every day, constituents who cannot get their treatments. I think, particularly, of the women who are trying to get mammograms. People are dying earlier and will die earlier than necessary because of what this Government is doing. Children who can’t visit elderly parents with dementia. The only time they’re going to be able to get to them is when their minds have gone.

The mental health issues that are rising in our young people. How does a parent tell, as I found at the Mission Bay swings, their child they can’t go on, they can’t play? This has an effect. The families who need contacts with their loved ones. Grandparents who haven’t seen their grandchildren. Husbands and wives who are separated. Children stuck between countries. I have an older constituent, married 60 years; his wife’s now in a care facility next door to him and he can’t go and see her. These are the real stories and the consequences of how things are not being managed.

Students who cannot go to school. I’ve only got a few seconds left, but to acknowledge the people at the Sommerville Special School—enormous stress. And the Government is doing nothing, let alone to talk of our economy—it’s tanking. They sit here and trumpet, “Oh well, we’re not as bad as others.”, but that’s hardly an argument. The Government and others can stand by and say they’re fighting COVID, and that’s all well and good, but only after some of the examples I’ve given today from my electorate alone, we can only ask the question—

Order! The member’s time has expired.

I’m proud to rise to talk in this debate today as somebody who has been locked down in Auckland for many weeks. I want to speak, actually, very much in opposition to Simon Watts’ speech, because I want to focus on the unity.

💬 SPEAKER: I think that’s Mr O’Connor.

Sorry; Simon O’Connor’s speech.

💬 Hon Member: Same thing.

Same thing.

💬 SPEAKER: Hard to tell with the mask, you know?

I apologise—because I want to focus on the unity that I’ve seen in that experience that I’ve had. What I would acknowledge is that this has been an extremely difficult experience, and many of the things that were just listed are actually tragedies that would have occurred in a pandemic, and what we would have had, in addition to that, if it wasn’t handled in the way it has, is many, many, many more tragedies—many more serious tragedies. We would have had many more deaths.

What we have had is a Government that recognises how important it is that we value people, even the vulnerable ones. That is how we’ve ended up with a system that is, basically, caring. And one of the things that is most interesting about that experience that I’ve had is that I’ve been on something called a rough sleeping steering committee. And this group called the rough sleeping steering committee is actually an honour to be on, because what it is is it’s a group that meets—it involves things like the Ministry of Social Development and the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development but it also involves a lot of the NGOs that are doing the work with some of the people who are so utterly alienated in the last decade or more in this country, so that they have experiences of precarious living and homelessness.

So those groups at the moment are wrapping around those groups that have been, you know, really in precarious housing, and making sure that they are vaccinated and supported during this time. That involves some really gnarly problems. They’re not easy to fix, but the groups are working together, and those networks that have met together and meet, actually, every Wednesday at 8 a.m., and sometimes twice a week—those groups all know each other now, and they all actually have formed a trust. But they also know the people they need to help, and that’s an incredibly important thing that they’re doing in Auckland. It isn’t one thing alone; it is many things that are going on like that, and I want to talk about some of those others.

I was involved in a vaccination event that happened on Super Saturday, and it happened with SkyCity, who came forward because I had done a Zoom with SkyCity and Westpac, which had already worked really, really hard to get the populations of their own workers vaccinated by inducements, by petrol vouchers, by time off work—by a whole range of things. They had managed to get a very high vaccination rate. Then they extended it out to the groups that they were involved with and the networks they had on their databases. So, on Super Saturday, we ran an event at SkyCity where you could drive through, and a whole lot of businesses supported that with gifts so that everybody who came in got a double pass up the Sky Tower. We had people who would have never otherwise turned up.

There were some really, really lovely scenes that day, and I was there with—actually, Michael Wood came down and he just directed traffic for several hours and he worked pretty hard, and the mayor came down and the councillors came down, and that event was a huge success. But what I remember most is seeing a woman who was absolutely terrified of that vaccine. She was shaking in her car and she got through, and the amount of wraparound nurturing that went on with her in that situation—she actually, that day, got vaccinated when I doubt she would have otherwise. But she also learnt a lesson about the Auckland community—that we’ll stand up and look after you, and I think that’s one of the real wonderful things that has happened. So, rather than a litany of negatives, I would suggest that it is time for the Opposition to actually start to think about the mistakes that were made and the repairs that need to be made and the healing. I think we are well under way in Auckland doing that.

Now, I think it would be remiss of me not to thank my staff who helped me enormously during this period, and I want to do that. I also want to stretch out to the hospitality community before I finish this speech, because they have had a really hard time. But I have been in constant contact with Marisa Bidois, who’s actually made real efforts to link in and make sure that I know what she needs so I can pass it on. Thank you, sir.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Well, the Prime Minister this week has finally decided to grace Auckland with her presence after 12 long weeks of long, hard lockdowns. And you’ll note that she threw us a little morsel just before she came down: “You can go and visit the shops” she said, to ease the way for her visit, which we know would have been pretty tumultuous otherwise. But I presume that, actually, it probably will be. I do note that Mr Seymour said, today, that she’s only visited two businesses, one of them which had not actually been closed down at all. I suppose we should be grateful, because, for a while there, the only Auckland businesses that she was actually going to be visiting were the duty-free shops on her way through to her trip to Europe. But I do notice that she reconsidered that at the last minute—probably quite wisely, I should say—and has decided, finally, to grace us with her presence.

But I do hope that while she is in Auckland that she bothers to go and visit a hospital. I hope that she does that, because she needs to see for herself the critical shortage of healthcare workers that we have in our DHBs and in our hospitals. She needs to do that so she can pass that information on to her health Minister and to her Minister of Immigration, who have done a hapless, useless job over the last four or five months of bolstering our critical healthcare workers in Auckland. And it’s worthy of note—just before I carry on, because I found out this little morsel today—that, up until now, we’ve had about 1,010 nurses enter New Zealand since the pandemic began. But get this: 1,156 sports people have arrived. That’s how much focus this Government has put on bringing nurses into our hospitals to bolster our resilience and our healthcare system to make sure that Kiwis are safe during this pandemic.

What we now know, after weeks of mining for information, is that the immigration Minister never bothered to find out what the speciality of nurses was who were coming into New Zealand. He never bothered to ask them if they had an ICU speciality, so we have no idea how many ICU nurses have actually come into New Zealand. He never had a conversation with the Minister of Health as to how we could use the immigration process and the visa process to bring in more nurses to bolster our ICU capacity. Never happened. Never had a conversation.

And now we find out that Minister Little, the Minister of Health, knew in June this year that healthcare workers were not able to get in through managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ). So we have nurses waiting to come to New Zealand, sitting offshore, who can’t get in through MIQ. He found out in June. He didn’t do anything, he didn’t start getting his officials doing any work until 13 October. Two weeks later, we have a policy put in place saying 300 nurses and doctors can come in through MIQ. If he’d done that exact same thing back in June, when he knew about it, two weeks, we could have had, on 1 July, 300 spaces set aside for healthcare workers—back in July. That’s 1,200 nurses and doctors and critical healthcare workers that we could have had in the country had he been on top of his job. But what was his excuse? What has he said in the media? “Oh, well, you know, hindsight is 20/20 and there was no playbook.” I tell you what: it wasn’t hindsight; it was foresight that he needed.

We’re in the middle of a global pandemic, and here are a few things that he would have found out if he’d bothered to ask any questions, because the one thing he said was, “Well, back in June, we only had one or two anecdotal cases” that he was made aware of. But if he’d scratched the surface and done his job and gone to the Auckland DHBs and said, “How many ICU beds have you got that are staffed?” He would have found out that only 14 of the 17 resourced beds could actually be staffed. He would have found out from the Aged Care Association that they had 350 nurses sitting offshore who couldn’t get in through MIQ—that was back in June. And there was nothing about hindsight because, actually, he was written a letter—which we got through the Official Information Act process—from the Aged Care Association on 10 August telling him that they couldn’t get their workers in. He would have found out that 60 percent of those nurses were being declined spaces when they went for an emergency spot. He would have found out that those nurses coming in through MIQ had slowed to a trickle. And he did nothing. He sat on his hands until October, when he finally said to his officials, “Oh maybe we should do something about it.”

He knew that Delta was on our doorsteps, he knew that we had a critical healthcare shortage, he knew—if he had bothered to do his homework—that they couldn’t get in through MIQ, and he did nothing. He’s our Minister of Health, it is his job to make sure that in a global pandemic, with Delta on our doorsteps about to enter our communities, that we had healthcare workers being able to get in through MIQ. Finally, he’s done something; too little, too late. Most of those workers have to go through a 10-week process of getting registered to even start work, which means they won’t be working until March. Absolute dismal job by our Minister of Health.

E te Māngai o te Whare, tēnā koe. Ki ngā kaiurungi o Tāmaki-makau-rau i tēnei wā ka mihi atu ki a koutou. Kia kaha ki a koutou kia haumaru.

[To the Speaker, greetings. To the leaders in Auckland at this time, I send my greetings. Be strong and stay safe.]

It’s great to be back in the House with my parliamentary colleagues. Can I just affirm and acknowledge that COVID grumpiness is a thing for Aucklanders at the moment, but it’s great to see everyone—including my colleagues in Opposition across the House. Can I just speak in support of our Prime Minister visiting Tāmaki-makau-rau today. It is not staged; she is there, and can I remind them of their election visits on Ponsonby Road—speaking of staging. But I’m very keen to be back in the House and getting on with the important issues for the people of the North Shore—not moaning on the sidelines—securing our recovery, getting on with it, and supporting people to protect our environment, to build more houses on the Shore, to support our local hospitals, our schools, and ensuring that we’re building infrastructure that our growing city desperately needs. We need to get on to it.

But I’ve got to say that it has been wet in Auckland over these past few months, and it’s been difficult for everyone; for all of our community. It’s been good for our water-storage dams, but it’s added to the challenges that we have faced in working, in schooling, and in living from home. But we are now on the countdown to 90 percent double-vaxxed in my community, and we have a very strong expectation that we will move to the traffic light system when Cabinet considers this in just under three weeks.

My electorate office, today, tells me that Auckland has beautiful blue skies, it’s sunny, and something else too: it’s a great day for shopping. Birkenhead Avenue is busy and our Highbury Centre, Glenfield Mall, and Northcote Town Centre have been looking forward to all of our shoppers coming back. Our local businesses are very much locally owned, and we will get in behind them and support local.

But securing the return of our retail outlets is possible because of the hard work of local people in our communities that have been doing the hard mahi: getting on, getting our vaccination rates up beyond 90 percent first dose on the North Shore. They are our COVID heroes, and I want to put on record my very heartfelt thanks to them. I especially want to acknowledge the staff at the Birkenhead Vaccination Centre that has served Auckland’s North Shore. They’ve regularly been the second-busiest across the whole of Auckland; it is a tremendous effort and I congratulate them.

I also want to acknowledge Te Puna Hauora in Northcote, the fono, too, for their work in especially targeting our Māori and Pacific community on the North Shore in their vaccinations, and to Kāinga Ora too, who have worked solidly to get the vaccination rates of their residents up in Birkdale and Beach Haven in Northcote Central. They are a major landlord where some of the planned 1,700 beautiful new social and affordable houses are getting on and being built in new communities. And a big shout-out to our local Mormon church in Beach Haven who partnered with our Samoan community and our Tongan community at the Wairua event centre, and ran very, very successful mass-vaccination events on Super Saturday. It was an incredible event, and we are very, very blessed to have such a strong community-led response that brings kotahitanga to our community and higher rates of vaccination.

As much as lockdown has been necessary to keep our families safe from Delta, while we’ve lifted vaccination rates, it’s been hard and I want to acknowledge that in the House today. We have all felt it, and I want to say to my community: thank you very much for staying home, thank you for staying safe, and thank you for getting vaccinated.

I also want to thank some special people; people that have been delivering food packages, sanitary packs out to the most vulnerable in our North Shore community. The North Shore Māori wardens, the Birkdale Beach Haven Community Project, and the Glenfield Salvation Army. Incredible people that have been out there looking after our community, as well as our local businesses that we’ve brought on to be a part of this effort. The Birkenhead New World, Bakers Delight, Oceanz Seafood, and KiwiHarvest. Without them, we could not have done the tremendous efforts to support over 400 families in our local backyard in Northcote.

But we can continue to moan and groan. We can feel the ruts that COVID-19 and Delta have brought upon us. But today is the day where we take a step forward. Our shops are open and our community is excited. We get to rebuild and work on our recovery, moving forward as a country.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I would like to file a missing person report: a 41-year-old woman, last seen arriving at Auckland domestic airport with the Prime Minister’s press secretary, has vanished without a trace—not been seen anywhere. There are a few leads that police are working with. One is that she turned down “Knockturn Avenue” with the cloak of invisibility and cannot be seen by anybody except for two business owners—just two—one of whom never had to close, even under alert level 4, because they were supplying Fonterra. The other business that this woman visited is completely unknown.

I thought the Prime Minister’s long-awaited, stage-managed trip to Auckland would not be particularly open, but I never would have predicted that she would have gone to only two businesses and, when asked, said, “I didn’t have the time.” The journalists asked the Prime Minister, “Did you not go and walk around the streets and visit the people running the businesses and talk to people about their experiences after three months of lockdown? Did you not do it because you were worried about security?” She said no. And I hope she’s right, because if we’ve got to the stage where the Prime Minister—who Shanan Halbert, the MP for Northcote, said is much loved—can’t even walk around the streets of New Zealand, then we’re in much bigger trouble than I realised.

The truth is that if she’d gone out there, there would’ve been no violence, there would’ve been no threats. There would have been person after person, much as I saw myself when I did go out and walk around the streets of Broadway, Newmarket, and Mount Eden village, and Remuera village, places in the centre of the Auckland isthmus, where people are saying, “We’re putting on a brave face behind the mask.” They’re putting on a brave face, but, if you look into their eyes, you can see people who are desperate, people who are frustrated, people who were borrowing money from relatives to keep their businesses afloat, people who’ve spent decades building up what they have and they’ve just run down all their capital and may be left with nothing at all. One woman came up to me, she was hesitant to talk, and then she said, “You know, the truth is we could have people over for a picnic. We did when it was first allowed, but there’s nothing to talk about because nobody does anything.”

If the Prime Minister went out and visited more than just two businesses and had any idea of how Aucklanders are withdrawing into themselves, maybe her policies would be different. Maybe she could’ve visited a hairdresser. She could’ve gone to a Botox clinic, because you can do cosmetic Botox under this Government’s rules, and those hairdressers would’ve said, “We have the ability to safely lift the mood of this depressed city one cut and one colour at a time.” That’s what she would’ve heard, but hairdressers aren’t allowed to open, and the widespread story is that they are cutting hair underground. Can you believe it? This country has a bootleg haircutting industry where the desperately broke pedal illicit haircuts to the desperately shaggy. That’s what’s happening in Auckland under this Government’s policies. It is completely nuts.

Here’s what could be done if we actually had a Government that was truly committed to balancing wellbeing. You see, ironically, one of the Labour members talked about the world’s first Wellbeing Budget, of balancing the different human needs that people have. Do you think this Government’s done that through COVID? No, because they’ve had Ashley Bloomfield giving health advice at one-third of Cabinet meetings—access to Cabinet that no unelected official has had before. Do you think they’re hearing from the education secretary about kids’ welfare and the loss of kids’ learning? Of course they’re not. Do you think they’re hearing from the Treasury secretary about New Zealanders’ economic wellbeing? Of course they’re not. And having not properly visited Auckland, the Prime Minister’s not hearing from the people her policies most acutely affect either. If only they were prepared to say, “December 1 is freedom day. At that day, we’re not going to make people go through 14 days of managed isolation and quarantine. We’re not going to isolate whole cities, only individuals who are infected, vulnerable, or recently arrived, and we’re not going to divide people by vaccine status”, because even people who are strongly in favour of vaccination, like myself, can increasingly see that the division it’s bringing about is damaging and the enforcement of it is impractical. That’s what a freedom day would look like. That’s what an empathetic Prime Minister would be saying, but our Prime Minister of inclusion and kindness—well, unfortunately for her, we’ll have to file a missing person report because no one in Auckland’s seen her.

The debate having concluded, the motion lapsed.