Carter DavidRt Hon DAVID CARTER (National): It's a pleasure for me to follow that contribution from Tamati Coffey the one-term Labour MP. He was seldom right as the weather man and he was entirely wrong with his contribution then. I have also read the Prime Minister's statement—I've read it twice this afternoon. I was here when she delivered it in Parliament and it says nothing. It's beautifully written it's full of rhetoric but there is absolutely no substance at all to the Prime Minister's statement and that's what New Zealanders are noticing. That's what New Zealanders are saying to me time and time again: the Prime Minister can speak well but you'll listen to it and you'll listen to it again and again and again and try to decipher what she has actually said and it'd be a whole lot of empty words.I say to the Prime Minister—I've got a question for her. Will she be proud when she goes down as a one-term Labour Prime Minister? Because that is what is about to happen. She will be a one-term Labour Prime Minister come 17 September 2020. What we're observing from this side of the House is an absolute shambles over there and it was never going to be any better than that when you consider the coalition that was cobbled together after the election. Labour New Zealand First and the Greens—how could it ever possibly work? If you look at the Green Party known for their simplicity their naivety and when you look at a leader like James Shaw frankly—there are some principles; I accept that. But they've been rolled on just about everything they stood for at the last election. And the reason they've been rolled is because the real master in this Government isn't the Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern; it's the Rt Hon Winston Peters. He's the effective Prime Minister. He's running the show and that's why Labour New Zealand First and the Greens will go down at the next election.What does New Zealand First stand for? It stands for the sake of power. That's all it's there for. I remember as Speaker taking a delegation offshore and introducing the various members of the delegation. I was able to explain what National members stood for—it was to the centre-right of politics. I was able to explain what Labour stood for—the centre-left of New Zealand politics. I was absolutely stumped in trying to explain what New Zealand First stood for. So I asked the New Zealand First member on the delegation to explain it herself and she said It's all in the name. It's New Zealand First." That was the principle. And I say that's just absolute bollocks. What it is is it's "Winston First". He's the guy never there for the baubles of power who couldn't grab them quickly enough and what we're seeing now is an absolute repeat of what I observed in this House from 2005 to 2008. Again New Zealand First and its leader is back before the Serious Fraud Office. On that occasion there were denials about donations from one man Owen Glenn and they were found to be incorrect denials—up before the Privileges Committee and made to come back into this House and apologise for misleading Parliament. And that is about to repeat itself because what you've got is Mr Peters the New Zealand First Party the New Zealand First Foundation back before the Serious Fraud Office.Labour knows it's in trouble because why did the Hon Meka Whaitiri come out in the Gisborne Herald after talking to her people telling her people last night there will be an early election? I would have said the Government will make it till 17 September but Meka Whaitiri and she probably knows more than we do doesn't think they'll last till 17 September. She's predicting an early election. And why? Because Winston Peters has always come into this House and gone around New Zealand saying he survives on donations small-time donations—raffles and cake stalls—and yet we've seen repeated reports in the media lately about tens of thousands of dollars coming from the racing industry tens of thousands of dollars coming from Graeme Hart and his associated companies—Graeme Hart being the richest man in New Zealand. That money isn't about cake stalls and raffles; that's from some of the wealthiest people in New Zealand and that's why—Mark Patterson: And not one cent from China!Rt Hon DAVID CARTER: And the man says "Not one cent from China". Whoop-de-doo! Whoop-de-doo! But declare the ones you've got—don't hide them in a foundation Mr Mark Patterson. Don't have the Serious Fraud Office now investigating you.I say that I've got a message for the Serious Fraud Office: this investigation needs to be tidied up and completed before the general election because New Zealand voters need to know the honesty and integrity—the honesty and integrity—of Mr Mark Patterson's party. That's how important this is. So I want the Serious Fraud Office to do its job and complete its investigation so that New Zealanders have that information before we go to the polls. My prediction is that the Serious Fraud Office will complete that work and then because Meka Whaitiri's in the know she knows that that is going to bring an end a very messy end to this Government—a very messy end—and it's what I saw in 2008 as we led into the 2008 election. The good news from that was that Mr Peters and his party never got back into Parliament so if we can get that delivery again at the next election I'll certainly be happy with that. I want to spend the balance of my time talking about the economy and coronavirus because no one knows—no one knows—the impact on the economy with any surety at all. We have an international world health pandemic and it's difficult to predict the effects but I will say to the House today that the impact on the economy will be significant. We don't know how significant but it will be significant. Now Grant Robertson continues to argue that New Zealand's economy is resilient and I think he is wrong. It was resilient when he became Minister of Finance when he inherited growth rates close to 4 percent but now we've got growth rates at 1.6 percent before the impact of coronavirus. We've got a Budget deficit forecast in the next Budget to come into this House in May. Grant Robertson and the Labour-led Government have destroyed the resilience of the New Zealand economy and I suggest that that will be another reason why when voters go to the polls they'll look very very seriously at the credibility of a National-led Government and the credibility of a Labour-led Government. If they judge that on the economic performance and the economic capability of National versus Labour that will have a major impact at the next election. It's well-known that I'm not standing. I'm not coming back into this place but I will watch that election result with very great interest. At this stage I think there's every possibility that if this Government can limp through to 17 September—because that's what it will be: a shuffle and a limp on a couple of crutches and Zimmer frames for Mr Peters. If they can get there—if they can get there—then we'll see how it goes. I want to just finally make a couple of comments about the drought because I know how the farmers in Northland Waikato and now the East Coast of the North Island and Hawke's Bay and Wairarapa Marlborough and Canterbury and now Otago are suffering. That's not something the Government can do apart from being there and being supportive—and I'll make no criticism of the Hon Damien O'Connor as he's moved around—but that again will be an economic impact that at this stage Grant Robertson has failed to realise. There's the economic impact on the farmers themselves and there's the economic impact on the economy as a whole but there's the emotional toll on those farmers as they get up day in day out they look out their front garden on to their paddocks which are brown and shrivelled. What that means is that any future Government needs to take water storage seriously—very very seriously. This country is gifted with water. It has absolutely no shortage of water but it just doesn't happen to rain in the right place at the right time. The solution is easy: build infrastructure store water—Hon Aupito William Sio: Oh ho! Rt Hon DAVID CARTER: Well William Sio laughs. He doesn't realise how important water is to the farmers of New Zealand. It's actually important even to that member's constituency but you wouldn't expect him to understand."