Hon AUPITO WILLIAM SIO (Minister for Pacific Peoples): COVID-19 highlighted the amazing power of technology and how important that power is to enabling Pacific economic development by staying connected, by staying engaged, and by informing our people. We were able to reach out to people and to the regions right across New Zealand and were able to stay in touch with them without having to leave the safety of our living rooms or offices. At every online meeting I held with Pacific peoples—whether it was with residents of the main metropolitan centres of Auckland or Christchurch, or with people out in the regional economies of Palmerston North, Gisborne, Hastings, or Whanganui, or even online meetings with our community elders and church leaders nationwide, or with my political friends and colleagues from across the vast Pacific blue region—the response and feedback I consistently received from them, unsolicited, has always been, "Please give Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and all the Government Ministers our thanks and our appreciation."