General Debate

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

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. Well, what a summer of chaos there is ahead for New Zealanders—not only Aucklanders, but New Zealanders. We’ve heard today from the Prime Minister that in two weeks’ time, Cabinet is going to make a decision, and she told us today what the decision was—that we’re going to move to some sort of traffic light system because she’s, basically, abandoned the 90 percent double-vaccination target that has lasted all of, I think, three weeks under this Government. We’ve had four plans in two months from this Government, and every one of them has ended in failure.

Today, we had the Prime Minister unsure as to whether or not 12-year-olds could be stopped and asked for their photo ID when they wanted to cross with their families through into, say, the Waikato, from Auckland to the Waikato or back again. We’re going to have police—no, apparently it’s not the intention that police will be able to stop people in their holiday destination on the street to check whether or not they’ve been double-vaccinated or they have their negative COVID test. What sort of country is this, when a Government fails so utterly miserably, when it comes to getting a vaccination roll-out where only 20 percent of New Zealanders were double-vaccinated when the first week of this lockdown started? And now it’s New Zealanders’ fault. Actually, it’s Aucklanders’ fault, under this Government.

The Prime Minister has been in Auckland once in three months for one day—two visits; two staged, managed visits. She’s never been to see the hospitality sector that’s on its knees. She’s never gone to tell them why her Government has failed and to apologise.

And while she’s talking about business, let’s talk about managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ). What an utter disgrace that a million New Zealanders are no longer part of our team. It shouldn’t just be the team of 5 million; it should be the team of 6 million Kiwis, the people who are the forgotten Kiwis that this Government can’t be bothered with.

For Christmas this year, around just about every table, there’ll be an empty seat, and that empty seat will be the Kiwi family member who can’t get home. They’re not allowed to come home. They’re not allowed to come home because they’re double-vaccinated, they don’t have COVID, and yet we have double-vaccinated gang members—not double-vaccinated gang members; actually, COVID-positive gang members in the community who are supposed to be self-isolating.

Today, I want to deal with a very, very serious issue, and that is about what’s happening in South Auckland hospice—Totara Hospice. I say this for this reason: they can’t survive now, when a Government has locked everyone down. They have to visit families in their homes to visit dying people with cancer, and sometimes with COVID and cancer. They’re getting nothing from this Government for that. And in that, they’re saying to me, self-isolating people, with 18 people in a three-bedroom home in a garage—that’s what self-isolation in South Auckland means, under this Government, where people don’t have anywhere suitable to self-isolate; that’s what MIQ should be used for.

Instead, we’ve got people going into homes like that and dealing with that situation. This Government—you know what they’ve given to the South Auckland hospice? Twenty-one thousand dollars—that’s it. That’s their resurge payment; that’s what they get. They could close because this Government can’t organise anything. It calls an announcement a plan. Its announcements are nothing more than PR spin, and today we heard an appalling situation where the Prime Minister couldn’t answer the most basic questions about what her new rules actually mean.

So Aucklanders are going to be—we’ve been concerned, obviously. Many New Zealanders have been concerned about, you know, different classes of citizen. There’s going to be two, all right; it’ll be Aucklanders and everyone else, and the Aucklanders are going to be the people who have to carry their pass. I’m not quite sure how it is that we’re going to have people saying, “I’m not really an Aucklander; I’m really from”—I don’t know—“Wellington.” I know that that might suit the Prime Minister, but there’s an awful lot of us who still actually care about our electorates. I think it’s really important that we understand there’s no plan from these people. We’ve got the plan. And the only message I would say to every New Zealander to keep absolutely clear in their mind: we need a new Government, and the only way to change the Government is National. Thank you very much.

I quite enjoyed watching the death throes of the Leader of the Opposition. I look forward to seeing Simon Bridge’s contribution early next year, and I congratulate him in advance.

As I walked down from my office today, I was handed a newspaper article describing the Māori Party’s COVID plan. Now, let me just say that it’s full of contradictions, it’s full of double-speak, and it’s full of talking out both sides of their mouth. They say that they want to protect Māori and yet they do everything they can to undermine any initiative that’s put in place to encourage Māori to take up the vaccine. Everybody knows that there’s a global pandemic. Everybody knows that the right thing to do is to get vaccinated. We on this side of the House won’t give up on our people, but, obviously, the Māori Party have. Clearly, they lack the fortitude to be straight up with our people and say, “Get vaccinated.” It’s a lot easier for the Māori Party to say, “Don’t worry about getting vaccinated, because we’re here just to criticise and blame the Government on your behalf.”

So let me just look at some of the points that the Māori Party have raised in this article. First of all, they want to shut down New Zealand until Māori vaccination rates hit 95 percent. I say, fair enough—if that’s their goal, 95 percent, good on them, but then again, like I say, they’ve done all they can to undermine the initiatives that have been put in place to increase Māori vaccination uptake, such as the vaccine mandate. The vaccine mandate applies to about 40 percent of our workforce. If the Māori Party didn’t realise, actually Māori are part of our workforce and they also engage with Māori as they engage with the workers. But, of course, the Māori Party don’t want to adopt the vaccine mandate, except—and here’s one of the contradictions—for front-line hospitals and medical clinics.

I say to the Māori Party, what about prison officers? Corrections officers are over 97 percent vaccinated. The front-line corrections officers are 97 percent vaccinated. That’s so that we don’t have Māori in prison dying from COVID—because we know that COVID comes in, and it’s most likely to come in on unvaccinated workers. And here was Rawiri Waititi earlier this year riding into Waikeria on his kunekune saying, “Oh, this is terrible. The people in Waikeria Prison are being mistreated because they can’t change their linen every couple of days.” He’ll stand on his soapbox and worry about prisoners being able to change their linen every couple of days but he won’t stand up and say that vaccine mandates are appropriate in prisons so that we don’t have Māori dying in prison. That is a contradiction from the Māori Party.

Then we talked about the schools and teachers. Now, if any teacher—and I’m speaking as a former teacher, a former principal, and as the Minister for Children—believes that their rights override their obligations and responsibilities to keep children well and alive, then I say, “Haere rā, teachers. I don’t want you in our schools if you put your rights above your obligations and responsibilities to children. Haere rā.” Children do not have the option of getting vaccinated at this stage. The most important part of a teacher’s role and responsibility is to look after the wellbeing of our children. Teachers have to mitigate risks if they take the kids swimming, if they go on a school trip, if they walk their kids down the road to a sports day. They have to mitigate risks. They have to fill out a risk analysis matrix, but the Māori Party don’t think that teachers should have to get vaccinated to protect the children. I think of all those tamariki in the kura kaupapa, close to 100 percent Māori—and they don’t think that those Māori teachers have a responsibility to our Māori children. That is a disgrace on behalf of the Māori Party. They say that the Government has failed Māori. Well, I ask them to look at their own leadership and former leadership in the Māori Party, invoking rangatiratanga and mana motuhake to justify not getting vaccinated. Let me say that a rangatira was somebody who looked after the best interests of the whole hapū, and if you’re going to have individuals in the former leadership of the Māori Party standing up and saying they’re invoking rangatiratanga, just to look after themselves, I say again: that person is not a rangatira.

The Māori Party legitimises and are apologists for the anti-vaxxers; the Google doctors; the Facebook experts; the conspiracy theorists; the right-wing crazies who marched along with their Trump flags right next to the flag of rangatiratanga, the Māori flag, the flag of He Whakaputanga.

It is very good to be back here, can I say. Three days in this House out of the last 14 weeks living the life in Auckland alongside every other Aucklander. Can I acknowledge everyone in this House that has held down the fort for those of us that haven’t been able to be here and undertake the duties that we usually would. On TV, just like the rest of New Zealand, we have watched our Ministers stand up and front the media and the public every day, and I meant to say how much I respect the job that they’ve done. I’m also acknowledging, even for those Ministers like myself who have been away, people like Jan Tinetti, who have covered, and covered so ably. Thank you to all of you and to all of our officials.

The one benefit of being in Auckland over the last 14 weeks and engaging with Parliament in question time is that when you’re at home you can put it on mute or you can turn it off. Listening to Judith Collins in the House today was one of those moments where I wished I was at home so I could put it on mute.

Another time where I felt that way this week was yesterday, when I was in the House listening to Chris Bishop “Wellisplain” the Aucklanders’ experience for the rest of us, criticising the Prime Minister, saying that she didn’t go and visit real Aucklanders when she was in Auckland—him referring to “real Aucklanders” as those that own businesses on Ponsonby Road and live in Takapuna. They are real people and real Aucklanders, but I don’t think that negates the fact that the West Aucklanders and the South Aucklanders, the health provider and the social services, the business in Avondale and the Employers and Manufacturers Association (EMA) and the Mayor of Auckland also are Aucklanders, or there are businesses involved in the EMA that are Auckland businesses. So the criticism from “Wellisplaining” Chris Bishop yesterday was a little bit hard to bear, and I really do wish that I could have put him on mute at that time.

The reality is that as an Aucklander, and as Aucklanders, we all had very different experiences of the last 14 weeks. As a Labour Party MP and Minister, I saw closely, with my ministerial hat, the implications and the impacts on social services, health services, arts organisations, artists, disabled people, and disability organisations. But every day, when I’d go out and about on my walk, or I might pop into the supermarket or the dairy, or I might even talk to friends, I’d get a taste and an insight into the other Aucklanders’ experiences. So it is important to note that, although we are Aucklanders, we all had different experiences of the lockdown. One thing I think we share is that it hasn’t been easy: 14 weeks without that freedom to move that we are so used to having is tough. The other thing that we share is that we all want to know that we, our families, and our communities are safe. And, at the same time, we are all thirsting for some semblance of normality that we have been denied over the last 14 weeks, not because of the Government but because of this pandemic that we have had to endure.

So I’m relieved—I’m sure alongside a number of Aucklanders—that recent announcements show that we are moving back toward some semblance of normality. I look forward to the fact that tomorrow my eight-year-old can go to school, because, quite frankly, 14 weeks at home with him has not been easy. I look forward to the fact that after 29 November, not long after, we will be moving towards that traffic-light system. That is a major step forward. And I look forward to the fact, like many other Aucklanders, that on 15 December, we will have the option of being able to reconnect with our whānau and friends that we have been cut off from for 14 weeks.

Lots of people have done it hard over this time, much harder than me, they have lost loved ones, they have not been able to be at the bedside of loved ones who have been sick; there has been a lot that has happened for Aucklanders during this time. The message that I want to leave in this House today is that all of New Zealand should be grateful to Aucklanders for what they have done for the rest of New Zealand over the last 14 weeks, and I certainly am.

I wish to commence my comments today by noting and acknowledging this discovery today at the Pike River mine of video evidence of bodies in the mine. I am sure that the thoughts and prayers of all members of this House go to the families who continue to deal with this tragedy 11 years after the explosion first occurred.

But today I primarily want to pay a tribute to the people and the communities of Auckland, who have displayed incredible resilience and have come together in an extraordinary way over the last 14 weeks to combat COVID-19, to keep fellow Aucklanders safe, and to try and move forward together in the most trying of circumstances. I think of the community event in my electorate of Mt Roskill three weeks ago, where our Pacific community, across faith leaders, school leaders, and community leaders, came together to vaccinate nearly 300 people at our local Wesley community centre—people who may have been hard to reach, people who may have been subject to misinformation, people who needed help and support and advice to get in there and to be safe from COVID-19. Our community came together and did that.

I think of our leaders from our Christ the King Catholic church on Richardson Road in my electorate who worked with local business leaders to encourage the community to come in for a vaccination event last week, who provided support, who provided incentives, and who reached out in the very best traditions of the Christian faith to keep communities safe, as opposed to some of the misinformation and self-aggrandisement that we see from extreme fringes of the fundamentalist movements within the church communities.

I think of the businesses across Auckland, like the large transport operator who contacted me two weeks ago to say, “Can you help link me up to our health services, because we’ve got workers here that we know we can get vaccinated if we get an on-site vaccination service.” Our health workers came together with that business to make that happen.

I want to pay tribute to those health workers who have worked around the clock every single day in Auckland, who have given and given and given to keep their fellow citizens of Tāmaki-makau-rau safe during this public health crisis. Those people are heroes.

Most of all, I want to thank the 1.7 million members of my city who have just displayed extraordinary fortitude. It has been tough mentally, it has been tough emotionally, and tough spiritually, but the people of Auckland haven’t let the knockers, haven’t let the purveyors of misinformation, get to them. They’ve got on with the job, they’ve rolled up their sleeves, and over 90 percent of Aucklanders have now got their first vaccination, and we are on our way to that 90 percent double-dose target. People in Auckland, the businesses of Auckland, are getting ready to transition to the new framework. The workers of Auckland are getting ready for it as well.

Despite some of the noise we hear from the other side of the House and the conspiracy theorists, people back this Government’s tough decisions to make sure that we keep people in our health system and our education system safe by requiring vaccine where it’s needed to keep our vulnerable communities safe from COVID-19. Being in Government and providing good leadership at a time of crisis is not about making the easy decisions that keep everyone happy all of the time. It is very often about making the tough decisions, about dealing with the difficult conflicts between individual and collective rights, about dealing with the needs of different sectors, about dealing with complex social and economic trade-offs. That is what this Government, under Jacinda Ardern, has been doing week in and week out for nearly two years now, and that has come to the fore at the time of COVID Delta.

The final comment I want to make is that alongside that extraordinary work from the people of Auckland, a very tiny but very vocal minority—with outsized coverage, might I add—have continued to spread misinformation and have continued to undermine the work of our team of 1.7 million and our team of 5 million. I think it was an extraordinary abrogation of leadership from the Leader of the Opposition two weeks ago to excuse and justify the illegal gatherings—the illegal gatherings—brought together by Brian Tāmaki, that false prophet, that were illegal and that were unsafe and that will likely result in people getting COVID-19. I thought it was extraordinary this week as well when, in the wake of that member’s former colleague Matt King continuing to spread disinformation about the vaccine, continuing to discourage social distancing and other public health measures, the comment of the Leader of the Opposition was that he is a “lovely guy”.

New Zealanders and the members of the city of Auckland can wake up every morning safe in the knowledge that we actually have a leader in Jacinda Ardern and a Government that will make the tough decisions to keep Kiwis safe, and that might be why the death rate from COVID-19 in New Zealand is less than 10 percent of that in Australia and amongst the lowest in the world.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I want to talk today about housing. Now, housing is an issue that I hear of no matter where ACT goes in New Zealand—I have to put an asterisk there and say “before this latest lockdown”, of course. But even today I have had people reach out to me on social media saying they cannot see a future for themselves in this country because house prices are increasing at such a large rate. And there is one person that comes to mind when I think of housing, and it was when I was down in the South Island. This is not somebody who is trying to get a million-dollar home in Auckland, this is somebody who lives in Ōāmaru, a 30-year-old man, a skilled tradesperson who says, “I cannot see a future for myself in this country and maybe I should go overseas.” That’s because house prices are rising so fast that people are having to put aside more money than they can even save each week.

There are nurses, builders, skilled tradespeople, who are all saying, “Maybe there is a better future for me somewhere else.” It is unmotivating. Somebody budgeting every single week has to ask the question “Why bother if it just feels so out of reach?” Why would you even strive and ask for a promotion if you know that it’s just going to be a drop in the bucket? We need to get the rules right so that people have a future in New Zealand. National and Labour have failed on housing. It’s fair to say both parties have failed on housing. Neither of them have credibility on this issue at all. Now, surprisingly, they both say that they have a solution that they’ve worked on together. It’s called a bipartisan bill. It’s cynical, and it’s so that they can stop attacking each other across this Chamber rather than actually putting in place rules that would help New Zealand. It’s safe for them, but it’s not good for New Zealanders.

The first issue I have with this is the secrecy of the process that it went through. Nobody was consulted before it was radically announced, but people who work in this area—the councils, the planning experts, the builders and developers, none of them were consulted. And now we’re going to see it rushed through before Christmas, when they don’t even have enough time to look in great detail about what this will mean for the future. There is no reason to change our planning rules and chuck them out overnight because National and Labour both want to kick this for touch.

So what is this actual bill? The Resource Management (Enabling Housing Supply and Other Matters) Amendment Bill would allow for three-storey homes in any section in the largest five cities in New Zealand, with almost no exceptions. It creates a new zone called the medium density residential standard, or the MDRS. Now, the Government’s commissioned report said that because the Auckland Unitary Plan put in place a new zone and then we saw more houses being built, therefore, if they put in place this new radical zone, more homes will be built. It is more radical than what the Auckland Unitary Plan does, and ACT opposes that. We oppose the fact that there could be more homes built under an already existing zone: the mixed housing suburban zone. That’s something that’s already in place, everybody knows what it is, and it would allow for more houses. It would also stop the unnecessary divisiveness of this Government for what they want to achieve.

ACT is glad that the Government has acknowledged that this is a housing supply issue, but we’ve talked to councils and developers, and they say that it won’t work, it won’t deliver the more homes that this generation has been promised. And that’s a shame. There is a real lack of supply, but we’ve got to get the incentives right. The biggest barrier to growth is the cost of infrastructure. ACT has a solution to allow for more infrastructure. It’s our GST sharing scheme that would allow half of the GST to go to the local council that issues the consent for every new home that’s being built. That is the incentive. It is a positive solution for New Zealand, rather than dividing people and putting in place unnecessarily radical changes overnight in this country. The National and Labour Party working together won’t solve the housing shortage in New Zealand. We need to fund infrastructure.

Mr Speaker, thank you for the opportunity. I think it is an understatement of the year when we say that New Zealanders have been doing it tough. Yes, Auckland has been doing it tough, and I particularly want to acknowledge South Auckland, because that’s the battleground, the main border. But I also think it’s important for us to acknowledge that New Zealanders outside of Auckland have been doing it tough, especially those who have not yet experienced community transmission and have wondered why we are still in lockdown levels.

I think lockdown levels have served us really, really well. It’s taught us about social distancing, mask wearing, washing of hands. It’s taught us about COVID testing. We’ve even begun to use Zoom all over the place—TikTok dancing, the sharing of baking menus. We’ve seen all of this. Sadly, the other side of doing it tough: funerals, birthdays. Those celebrations are no longer the same. Even coming into this place is a bit weird after being away for several months. So the other side of it is mental health, stress, job insecurity, the uncertainty of the future, and certainly business closures. All of that means that we, as a team of 5 million, have been doing it tough. But I think we need to now draw a line and recognise that, when we compare our situation with the rest of the world, we’re pretty blessed. I’ve often wondered why we didn’t see more deaths in Auckland, but that was because our health system was able to cope, compared to if you look to Fiji, look to French Polynesia, or look to across the Ditch, in Australia—192,000 cumulative cases in Australia, 1,898 deaths. In Victoria alone, they had over 106,000 cases and 1,239 deaths. For us, we’re very blessed, we’re very lucky.

The announcement today—and I know everybody in Auckland, everybody, is wanting to get out of this lockdown, and I know, as I’ve been talking to our providers and our church leaders in our community, they’re looking forward to Christmas. So here’s the plan. For Christmas, it was always planned that we now need to lift our vaccination rates. I want to acknowledge the majority of New Zealanders. I’m really pleased. For Pacific peoples in the Hawke’s Bay, Bay of Plenty, and Nelson, they’ve achieved 90 percent - plus of fully vaccinated—a small population, and they’ve managed to also include the Recognised Seasonal Employer workers. I’m also pleased that for Pacific Peoples generally, while it’s been challenging, and particularly in smaller places outside of Auckland, we’re now at 88 percent first dose. So the momentum is going to carry us through.

On 29 November, I think Aucklanders are looking forward to moving into the new framework, the COVID-19 Protection Framework, red zone. That’s going to give us a lot of confidence as we head into the big family gatherings. I want to be able to be with my siblings, my older children, nieces and nephews, and our dad, who is bored at home and has found YouTube to be something that keeps his sanity. And so that’s the plan. On 29 November, we will all shift into this new framework. It’s important that we stay on course and quicken our pace to achieve high vaccination for everybody, and so I’m really pleased. But the one thing, as you look to Singapore, the UK, other places, is vaccines will reduce the potential for people to get sick, the potential to get hospitalised, but we’ve also got to maintain mask wearing. That’s what the clinicians are telling us. Social distancing, the washing of hands, regular testing—all of these things combined will hopefully ensure that we have pleasant and wonderful Christmas gatherings where we can celebrate with all of our families and have the confidence that we’re going to be OK.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It is great to be back, having been locked up in Auckland for three months is no joy, I can actually tell you. But it seems coming back to Wellington is rather different, where the bureaucracy and the Ministers actually bicker over their double soy lattes at Lambton Quay and actually talk about getting their avocado on toast at lunchtime, while Auckland hospos—as in people who work in hospitality—and businesses are collapsing and they’re struggling and worrying how they’re going to pay their rent.

It seems the reason why we have these kinds of confusion is that even the Minister doesn’t know when we’re actually transitioning into the traffic light system. I absolutely love and adore Aupito William Sio, he is a great man, a kind man, and a gentle soul—and he’s a friend. But he is confused as well—or did he just contradict the Prime Minister by saying that we’re moving to the traffic light system on 29 November? As far as I know, the Prime Minister made the announcement today that they were going to make an announcement on the 29th about the announcement. So even the Ministers don’t know.

Another thing that the Ministers seem to be confused—not Aupito, but Hon Chris Hipkins, Hon Robertson, and the Prime Minister seem to disagree on whether or not we will actually transition out of Auckland. We’re going to get some slots—like a time-share holiday outside of Auckland, almost.

When the announcement is actually made—regarding when Aucklanders can actually open, in terms of hospitality businesses—they need more than a day. Because when Auckland—when the whole of New Zealand went into lockdown on 17 August, I was travelling through, doing a regional visit, and I was travelling back to Auckland. It was late in the afternoon when the announcement was made, but we went into lockdown that night. Not in a couple of days like we did last year when COVID first hit. It actually gave time, last year, for people to prepare for the actual lockdown.

But this time round, we didn’t get that kind of lead-in. There were many businesses, including an ethnic florist—a Chinese lady—who was devastated that she was stuck with $70,000 worth of flowers that were due to be shipped out the next morning. By the time the Government announcement was made, she could not make any kind of arrangements because all of the couriers that she could use were closed. She lost $70,000 worth of stock that she could not resell—flowers. Does the Government compensate her? No. It’s the damage that she’s going to have to wear, as a business person.

Same thing with hospitality business. They need lead-in time. So when the Government decided they’re going to make announcement on 29 November, it could potentially mean that we’re going to reopen on 1 December. Hospos need more time. They need to ring the suppliers, get the supplies in, they need to prep their menus or whatever, and they actually need at least a week—usually about two weeks—lead-in time for them to properly open, get their staff ready, and actually get going. It is that time that is required. Does the Government actually know that? When the Ministers actually talk about “Oh, Aucklanders should be grateful”, this is so how much they are out of touch with business people. They have never run a business so they have no idea how businesses actually suffer.

I’d like to also thank the communities in Auckland—the ethnic communities. You know, many of them, who actually have family overseas, they are duty-bound to attend their parents’ funerals. But because they can’t even get managed isolation and quarantine slots, they can’t come into New Zealand. Or reverse—when their parents actually pass away overseas, they can’t go or they could go but they don’t know when they’re going to return to New Zealand to their normal life. So they actually fail in their filial duties, and that is such a terrible state. I have talked to many constituents in the ethnic communities who are devastated, not only because of that, but because their businesses are collapsing around them. They have saved for their entire life to run a business.

I’d also like to thank the churches, the temples, the mosque, the ethnic communities that have supported their community throughout the lockdown, where they have actually supplied with food baskets, food parcels, and welfare checks. I’d like to thank all the communities who have actually stepped up when the Government did not.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Before I move to the main substance of my speech, I’d like to just say that I’m bemused that the most recent speaker was advocating for an even later date for hospitality to reopen. Perhaps she could front up with that with her businesses. I’d also like to comment that, to my knowledge, I’ve never seen anyone other than David Seymour or Brooke van Velden give a general debate speech from the ACT Party. Do they not trust the other members of their team?

However, having said that, I would like to talk about what it has been like in Auckland and the work that Aucklanders have done. People have asked me, “What is it like up there?” And to me, there’s been just one word for it: it has been dreary. Dreary has been a good word. It’s been hard going. Now, for many people it’s been incredibly tough because of the need to support their families and themselves. But ordinarily, even in tough times, it is possible to see friends, it is possible to go out easily, perhaps you might have a treat of a meal out, perhaps it’s even just going to the beach with someone you haven’t seen for a while. But we haven’t been able to do even that, and hence the dreariness.

But in amongst that dreariness, Auckland has been doing the mahi, has been doing the work. People have been going out and getting vaccinated. I’m proud of the rates in my electorate of New Lynn: 94 percent first dose, 87 percent second dose. That’s a great effort from the area I come from. I’m proud of the work that I’ve been able to do with some of our other elected representatives, getting pop-up clinics into areas which are under-vaccinated. So about three weeks ago, four weeks ago, when I was crunching some of the data. We knew that vaccination rates were low in Waitakere village, low in Huia and in Pīhā, low in Glenavon. So with the help of Dr Anthony Jordan and Harshna Mistry from the district health boards (DHBs) and with fellow local representatives Greg Presland, Shane Henderson, Kay Thomas, Saffron Toms, and a local in Huia, Fleur Gray, we arranged to get pop-up clinics out so that we could try to get those vaccination rates up. It was a real example of working with people to get the vaccinations done. I’m very grateful to those people for their work.

The rates are actually still a bit low in Huia and Pīhā and Kerikeri, so I’ll be making a bit of a push there. But Glenavon, which has the lowest decile school in my electorate, 91 percent vaccinated. It’s been a great effort there; I’m really delighted to see it.

Across the three DHBs in Auckland: Counties Manukau, 91.2 percent vaccinated—first vax; Waitematā, 92.8 percent have received their first vaccination; Auckland DHB, 95.4 percent of people have received their first vaccination. It’s a huge effort, and my huge thanks to the teams that have made that happen—particularly up in my rauhī, the Waipareira Trust, which has done an amazing job.

I have been talking to people who don’t want to get vaccinated for all sorts of reasons, and often it is very hard to understand why. But all I can say to those people is to talk to their doctor—not to Dr Facebook, not to Dr TikTok, not to Dr YouTube, but to their medical doctor—to ask them to check their sources of information, to be really careful about where they’re getting their information from, and to look at the evidence. And the evidence is absolutely clear: it is far safer getting the vaccine—far, far safer—than getting COVID. COVID is disastrous.

For the rest of us who’ve been vaccinated already, I want people to get their booster shots when they come due and to get their vaccination certificates. For those of us who find it easy to navigate the digital world to help other people to get their vaccination certificates so that people are free to move this summer.

Auckland has been doing the mahi. The whole country has been doing the mahi, but now, as an Aucklander, I am asking the rest of the country to step up too and to get those vaccinations up. It’s happening well in the big cities, but we need more work going on in rural areas—and I know that our health people are working incredibly hard.

One other thing: I would like the other side to acknowledge that the solutions on this side of the House have been the right solutions. There have been very few deaths in this country, and the economy is thriving. We’re doing well.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Today marks the first day that large parts of the Waikato have returned to alert level 2, and the border freedoms, in particular, are a welcome relief. It’s also my first opportunity to speak back in this House after the weeks of lockdown, and it’s important that I do, to share the story of what’s happened in the Waikato, because the Prime Minister has not bothered to come and visit our region. Ministers have not bothered to come and visit our region to understand how difficult it has been. The alert level 3 restrictions have been incredibly difficult for businesses in our region, for families in our region, and for our communities.

It should not have been like this. It should not have been this hard. The Government had 18 months to prepare, to come up with solutions, and they squandered it, and, unfortunately, Waikato residents have been let down by this Government’s lack of planning for the vaccination roll-out or for preparing for any range of different scenarios that might have happened, dealing with different alert levels across different regions—all those things hadn’t been prepared for. Waikato residents have been let down by this Government’s lack of understanding for the impact and the breadth of scenarios that could be presented, the complexities of everyday life and businesses.

Waikato residents have been let down by this Government’s lack of compassion. Every day, I have been on the phone and responding to emails of heartbreaking cases of business owners and family members desperate for some support and for some leniency from arbitrary rules, and yet there has been none. It is just cruel.

How much must be sacrificed? Of course we accept some. Kiwis are prepared to make a sacrifice for the greater good, but in return they expect a Government that will stand up and deliver when it’s needed. This Government has not done that for New Zealanders, and, for Waikato in particular, we have felt that pain over these many weeks now of lockdowns. Instead, the Government relied on the financial equity of businesses. They mined that. They relied on the community resilience, and they have weakened that. They relied on strong family support, and they have restricted that, as well.

Sadly for many, this is irrecoverable. Businesses have failed. Community groups have gone under. The impact will be long-lasting. But I know the Waikato is tough. If anyone can recover from some of these challenges, it will be us, and I have absolute faith in the residents of the Waikato.

To those in the Waikato, I would say that I’m sorry I haven’t been able to influence this Government more. I have heard your challenging stories. It has been incredibly difficult for you, and I wish I could have done more. But I am sorry also that this Government has let you down. Your businesses and your families should not have had to suffer like this. A bit more leniency, a bit more understanding, a bit more compassion—those are things that could easily have been managed, and it would have made such a difference for people all across the Waikato region.

To the Government: well, the damage is done. Reflect on that. Think about that. But the least you can do now is to actually give a little bit more certainty. Help out those businesses that are left. Those families, those community groups that remain—give them some certainty.

We still continue to hear rule changes every day. The Government are flip-flopping from one set of rules to another. It is simply not good enough. How can businesses plan for their future? How can they try to recover, to salvage something from this mess, if they still don’t know where the goalposts will be from one day to the next?

The Government must do better. Get rid of managed isolation and quarantine. Give residents in the Waikato the ability to control their future again. Give them the chance to salvage what they can, to try to recover as best they can, and to get on with life. How much more impact must there be from a Government that simply doesn’t understand and is not performing?

Mr Speaker, tēnā koe. There’s an important social convention as old as time that’s unrecognised often in terms of its importance as part of our social contract. It’s the little nod to strangers as we pass them. It’s also how we ask our neighbours how they’re doing. It’s the acknowledgment of a person. It says, very simply, I see you. And in the unusual times we’ve been in, especially in Auckland, these small acknowledgments and the ability to see the broader community around us has taken on a much bigger meaning.

Our COVID response plan has always been to put people first, to make sure we have a health response where everyone’s acknowledged and seen, but to do that we also needed people. We needed New Zealanders to put people first, and they did. And that’s why we’ll soon be able to move to the new framework system. That’s why, in December, we will be able to open up a wee bit more so people can see their extended families.

I want to talk specifically about the experience of Auckland, like many of my colleagues, and Upper Harbour specifically. I’m really proud of the vaccination rates in Upper Harbour. Hobsonville Point has already reached the 90 percent fully vaccinated rate, putting it in the top 2 percent of suburbs in New Zealand. Greenhithe is also sitting above 90 percent for a first vax and in the high 90s for the second. In the recent data, Bayview West was only 92 doses away from being 90 percent fully vaxxed; Bayview East, 43 doses away from reaching 93 percent fully vaxxed; Bayview South, 45 doses away from reaching 90 percent fully vaxxed, and West Harbour, Clearwater Cove—117 doses away from reaching 90 percent fully vaccinated. We’re getting close. We can see that line, that 90 percent, coming up so closely.

Part of the reason we have such high vaccination rates has to go to those DHBs, those volunteers, but also those community organisations who’ve been doing so much out there to get our people vaccinated. And I have to mention here the extraordinary work of The Fono in West Auckland. Last week, the Prime Minister, Minister Sepuloni, and I visited The Fono on Westgate Drive. Tevita Funaki, Tapuai Fa’amalua Tipi, and The Fono team have demonstrated care but also agility in how they’ve responded to the challenge of vaccination. They have been providing a wraparound service, and in the 178 days between 11 May and 5 November, The Fono team administered 72,098 doses of the vaccine. Incredible.

It’s also the work of community organisations like Rachael Pates and the team at Bayview Community Centre, who contacted me to ask how they could help, what they could do. They hosted a vax bus at the Bayview Community Centre, which meant that people and their families could simply walk down and get vaccinated.

There’s no doubt that this has been an incredibly tough time for our Aucklanders, for Auckland whānau, but whenever I’ve spoken to Aucklanders, they share two things with me. Firstly, they talk about the fact that it feels different when there are community cases in your community, the risk feels closer, and especially when the vaccination rates have been low. They talk about concern for older members of the community, for kids going back to school, and for the immuno-compromised. What they describe to me has felt like a description of the proximity of the risk for them in Auckland—feeling quite, quite different.

There’s an understanding in Auckland among so many that while it’s hard, it’s worth it. And more than anything else, what I’ve felt, when I’ve been speaking to Aucklanders over these last several months, is there’s a deep sense of pride that we’re doing it for each other. Those little nods behind the masks, as we take our socially distanced walks, have such a significant and different meaning for us Aucklanders. Kia kaha.

Kia orana, Mr Speaker. It’s me again. The struggle of power is the struggle of remembering against forgetting. And I was thinking about that phrase when, in the news again, the island of Banaba had appeared. The desalinisation machines that they have there to get their water sorted out had failed yet again, and I am hoping the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade will get in there and help them to get that up and running again. But it was also a reminder for me that climate change is the legacy of colonisation in the context of the Pacific. And I don’t mean that metaphorically and poetically, but you can be metaphorical and literal about it, I mean actually.

The great poet Teresia Teaiwa, who comes from the island of Banaba in Kiribati once said that “Agriculture is not in our blood but our blood is in agriculture.” From the perspective of indigenous peoples and, in particular, as I was remembering that piece of history and remembering the impacts of colonisation within the Pacific, like many indigenous peoples there are very close connections to the land. People reflect on that the blood and bones of their tūpuna are also embedded within the land as well.

Banaba was at one time a primary source for rock phosphate. Here’s a bit of a definition: rock phosphate is formed from bird droppings or animal droppings that have dried up and built up over a long period of time—talking millenniums here. And, of course, with the people there as well, the connections that they have with the environment informs their cultural practice. This, combined with sulphuric acid to make super-phosphate, was the main fertiliser used in New Zealand’s pastoral farms since the 1930s. From the early 1920s until the mid-1980s, phosphate was New Zealand’s main export from the Pacific.

It is connected with colonisation. And I’m reminded that it was the Pacific Phosphate Company which controlled the early phosphate trade in Nauru, Banaba, and also in the Makatea. And for me on a personal level, the issue is around the commodification of the environment. It is around how capitalism was the engine for colonisation, but it was also about the extraction of surplus labour of young Pacific Islanders who would go to mine that phosphate. And I know that on a personal level because my grandfather was sent to the Makatea Island—one of those islands—to mine phosphate at the age of 14. I’ve got a kid that’s 14 years old; that’s high school ages. So that’s just previously after World War One—the extraction of surplus labour from Pacific Islanders to mine phosphate to fuel the dairy boom here in Aotearoa New Zealand.

That ended in—and I have a few quotes here, sort of linked to the colonisation aspect of it. And this is from the words of the British civil servant and phosphate commissioner Arthur Grimble, who made this explicit in 1928 when presenting a mining agreement to the people of Buakonikai in Banaba: “If you do not sign the agreement, do you think your lands will not go? Do not be blind. Your lands will be compulsorily acquired [by] the Empire.” And this is backed up by the industrial agriculture New Zealand phosphate commissioner Albert Ellis when he said—and he clarified the process—that “there can be no civilisation without population, no population without food, and no food without phosphate.”

The legacy that we find ourselves in at the moment of climate change is that it was environmentally devastating for the people of Banaba and environmentally devastating for that island, as well. But what we have also seen here is the addiction to synthetics, the addiction of the agriculture sector to synthetics—I’m talking about synthetic fertiliser and the way that it exacerbates the intensification of dairy farming and all the run-off impacts of that in terms of climate change and impacts on the environment, as well. But the practice hasn’t finished, because phosphate mining ended in the Pacific in the 1980s, but it continued on in Western Sahara. So the same process which happened which used the labour of Pacific Islanders in the Pacific, devastated the island, has continued in the case of Western Sahara, and, actually, the indigenous peoples there have asked New Zealand to stop importing what they call “blood phosphate”. And that phosphate comes at a cost—comes at the cost of war and tension and conflict, as well.

We can look at more regenerative ways of doing things. We can look at organic and regenerative agricultural methods, because that is how we take up the challenge of colonisation and climate change in the Pacific.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s an honour to rise to take a call in this general debate, and like many of my other Auckland-based colleagues I will be speaking about Auckland / Tāmaki-makau-rau. It has been such a difficult time for so many in our biggest city. Much of the hard work of protecting New Zealanders has fallen to Aucklanders, and while this may not be like battles we have faced in the past, be in no doubt: it was a battle, and still is. We have stayed at home. We have cancelled so many plans. We have worn our masks. We have walked the same routes in our local areas again and again. But, most importantly, we have gotten vaccinated: over 90 percent first doses, and coming close to 90 percent second doses. This has been due to the hard, hard work of so many health and community workers, and they have my thanks.

We’ve been in lockdown before, of course, most notably in March last year. However, this time was longer and harder, and the weather was so much worse. Also, we had to come to terms with the difference that Delta has made and the move away from elimination, all while fighting the virus at our front doors. I want to acknowledge how hard that has been and that I, along with the MPs and the Ministers who are based in Auckland, have walked this road with Aucklanders. I also want to acknowledge that for those people who had additional struggles, who were already struggling within our community, who had to close businesses for prolonged periods of time—I acknowledge the huge difficulty for those people, and I offer my thanks for the huge sacrifice that they made to protect all New Zealanders.

But there is light and there is life on the horizon. Today, many primary, intermediate, and secondary school students return to school for the first time since mid-August—three long months ago. My eldest daughter is among them, those many thousands of students returning today—pink rainbow mask on, staggered pick-up and drop-off times, classroom doors open, and teachers vaccinated. Yes, school will look different, but many things will be the same. The care that the teachers have shown for their students will be the same. The work, and, indeed, the learning, has gone on despite the fact they haven’t been there in person. I worked it out and I estimated that my eldest child alone has had approximately 221 Zoom classes throughout lockdown. What an effort by her teachers. I would like to offer our collective thanks to all of those teachers for staying the course, for teaching in a different way, sometimes with childcare responsibilities of their own at the same time, and to thank all of those teachers who got vaccinated, because our children cannot be vaccinated yet. I offer my genuine thanks to those people. I’m so pleased that the Government has announced a $15 million package to help students re-engage in school after a significant lockdown. A significant part of that money has gone to the 405 schools who are in the greatest need in the Auckland area.

There is a proverb well known in English and te reo Māori: Mā ngā hua ka mōhio ai te rākau. [By its fruit, the tree is known.] The success of this Government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic can be seen in the results for New Zealanders. Unemployment has fallen to its lowest level on record, and there are a great many more people in work. There has also been a drop in the Māori and Pacific unemployment rates. Our work to support Māori and Pacific communities is working, and the finance Minister has achieved all of this by recognising the needs of business and workers. But I want to note before I end that the most important metric, of course, when we look at the success of our COVID19 response, has been that New Zealand has one of the lowest death rates and the lowest hospitalisation rates in the world. Of course, this is the most important thing when we look at our response.

So I, like other Aucklanders, am looking forward to the easing of restrictions announced today as our vaccination rate—not the virus—soars. I know the hardships that many have faced, but business can have confidence that they will be reopening in an environment of economic growth and serving customers that have jobs and more money in their pockets. These are the fruits of the Government’s action, driven by absolute dedication to protect New Zealanders.

The debate having concluded, the motion lapsed.