News & Achievements

Jacinda Ardern's speech to the 2020 Labour Party Congress.

Kelvin Davis' speech to the 2020 Labour Party Congress.

This week we moved into the second half of 2020 - and our Government delivered another week of big changes and major progress for New Zealanders. Read below for a wrap of the key things moments from the week - from extending paid parental leave, to making major investments in infrastructure, to extending our free and healthy school lunches programme to the South Island.

We wrapped up the first half of 2020 with a busy month, taking additional steps to support New Zealanders as we continue with our economic recovery. We rolled out targeted packages to support key industries like tourism and construction, helped create jobs in the environmental and agriculture sectors, and set out our plan to support Kiwis to retrain and upskill with free trades and apprenticeships training. Check out the full list below! 

This week, we rolled out the next steps of our recovery plan, with new infrastructure investment, extra support for tourism operators, and a new programme to get Kiwis into agriculture careers.

The global economic consequences of COVID-19 will continue to be a challenge, but we have a detailed plan to get New Zealand through. Our plan keeps people working, gets our economy moving, and puts us on a path back to growth.

Our strong economic management prior to COVID-19 - with surpluses, low debt and near-record-low unemployment - put us in a good position to weather the impact of the virus and start to rebuild our economy much earlier than many other countries.

Now we're putting our plan to recover and rebuild into action: helping Kiwi businesses take on apprentices, fast-tracking infrastructure, and building new international trade relationships.

Our 2020 General Election Party List shows that the Labour Party is bolstering our experienced Caucus with diverse new talent as New Zealand rebuilds and recovers from COVID-19.

With no active COVID-19 cases in New Zealand, it's clear our plan to eliminate the virus is working. The opportunity now is to keep building on that success: getting people back into work, investing in businesses and industries, and setting New Zealand up to bounce back stronger, faster, and better than ever.  

We started the week by announcing free apprenticeships to support Kiwis into work and to help get New Zealand moving again - and we ended the week by extending the wage subsidy to 40,000 more businesses, helping to protect businesses and workers alike.