Lubeck Marja; Rurawhe AdrianMARJA LUBECK (Labour): Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare. Thank you Mr Speaker. Listening to the speeches from the Opposition a couple of words come to mind and my colleague Mark Patterson mentioned it before. It was grim" and "negative" and I would like to add to that "out of touch". It's really the only way I can describe the Opposition. To start off with a couple of examples—I'll touch on the speeches as well—last week there was a headline in the newspapers and it read "The New Zealand unemployment rate is the lowest in over a decade". Of course that is because we have seen the unemployment as well as underutilisation rates fall to levels not seen since the Helen Clark Government. But at the same time since we have had this record low unemployment Mr Bridges is in the news and he's talking to us about "This Government has given up on getting people into work." So we have record low unemployment and he is just making a contrary statement. We have the highest wage growth in over a decade. We have record infrastructure investment record health and education and reduced child poverty. So at a time when this Government is busy tackling those long-term challenges and playing catch up in all of those areas that have been severely neglected for many years by consecutive National Governments all we're hearing from the National Party is that it's all so very bad. At the same time we don't hear any concrete action from them. There are no policies that we've been offered. None of their speeches talk about anything that you could actually put criticism to because they haven't got anything to offer. There's no evidence to any of their claims. They're hoping of course that nobody will notice it—that through all of that hot air and all of that noise coming from the other side there's nothing of substance. One brave soul—I think it was Matt Doocey—at some stage said "How good is Simon Bridges?" but everybody else is very quiet about it. The only rhetoric we hear is the same line continuously as when they're saying "Oh it's so easy to make promises but what about the delivery?" and Gerry Brownlee said "Let's talk about it and not actually do it." Well forgive me for thinking they were talking about themselves. Ten bridges never delivered so many roading promises no funding put to it and if I can actually mention a specific one that's the Penlink project up north. Now our Government is actually the very first Government to put funding to Penlink. This is as part of the largest infrastructure investment that we are seeing in a generation in New Zealand. It's fully funded and $411 million is set aside to put this project out there. Lots of criticism but I have no doubt that Mr Mark Mitchell will actually be there to help us cut the ribbon because as we've heard before—and it's the same with the Provincial Growth Fund—National Party MPs are falling over themselves to be there standing next to the Minister putting the first shovel in and cutting those ribbons. This is cynical politics and I'll give a good example of it. Yesterday in my local paper there was a viewpoint column by Mr Mitchell and it said "Penlink assured under National". This is hilarious isn't it? Penlink has been promised three elections in a row by the National Government saying "We will deliver Penlink"—never put any funding to it. They wait till the moment that this Government as part of the largest infrastructure investment in a generation puts $411 million on the budget line and then Mark Mitchell comes out in his column and he actually says "I have always been very careful not to set false hopes or expectations until I was able and sure to say I could deliver." What is that? We put the money out and he's going to deliver? What the National Government actually did is that they took Penlink off the National Road Register they did nothing for nine years and then in 2017 at a candidate meeting I was at Mark Mitchell stood up and said "We will deliver Penlink." completely forgetting that the National Government in 2006 had said "We will build Penlink within 10 years of being in Government." Of course we know that never actually happened. So with that negative narrative the Opposition MPs don't want this country to hear about all of the good stuff that we are doing and there's plenty much of it. So really come the end of this year the voters will have a choice between positive factual and transparent in our brilliant Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern or they can choose relentlessly negative in Simon Bridges. We are obviously playing catch up on a lot of these areas. It's going to take a lot more than just one term to fix all of those years of neglect but we've made good progress already and as our Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern always says there is plenty more mahi to do. Thank you Mr Speaker. ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): I call Ian McKelvie—oh just a minute is this a split call? Ian McKelvie: It is. ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Sorry split call—five minutes."