Kia ora John,

Happy 2022 to you and your whānau.

You might have seen that Parliament resumed for the year today, with the Prime Minister setting out the Labour Government’s agenda for 2022. I hope you were as proud and excited as I was seeing our plans for the year. It’s really compelling, and there’s a video here if you missed it earlier.

Everything in 2022 builds on our COVID response, of course, and New Zealand enters the year with one of the very best COVID responses in the world. We have a highly vaccinated population that has escaped the worst ravages of the disease. Our confirmed cases, hospitalisations and deaths have been the lowest in the OECD for each of the past two years.

The economy has retained a strong position and is seeing healthy growth, despite obvious challenges in some sectors, unemployment is at record lows, and soon we’ll start reopening our borders to the rest of the world. It really has been a remarkable two years. There’s a lot more hard mahi to do, especially as the Omicron wave arrives, but we enter 2022 in better shape than almost any other country.

What really resonated for me in the PM’s speech was her determination that the government will make progress on our priorities regardless of the circumstances. While responding to COVID is critically important, we can’t and won’t let it crowd out everything else New Zealanders want our government to do, such as:

• Labour has already delivered more than 22,000 additional student places through new or upgraded classrooms, and we aim to deliver another 10,000 this year.
• We’ll change the law to enable Fair Pay Agreements, so businesses compete on price, service and quality rather than through driving down vulnerable workers’ wages and conditions.
• Kāinga Ora and Community Housing Providers will deliver over 2,000 additional public housing places this year, and the Healthy Homes Initiative will be rolled out to nine additional regions.

There are so many great initiatives on the go this year, so have a look at the PM’s statement to see them all.

The PM and her team have done an outstanding job in government, and will continue that in 2022. But they can’t do it alone. They know they’re only there because of your support. The progress we make is all thanks to you. Our achievements are your achievements.

So, it’s a sincere thank you from me and the whole Labour team, and happy 2022.

Ngā mihi,
Rob Salmond

P.S. If you want to help us keep our momentum going this year, the very best thing you can do to ensure we keep going is to set up a monthly contribution. Even just $5 a month gives us the financial security we need to ensure we build a strong campaign for 2023.