Jones ShaneHon SHANE JONES (Minister of Forestry): Ordinarily it's midnight when you hear howling. But the word howl" which is a verb a doing word is actually a protracted prolonged cry of distress. That is not a cry for what was; it's for what's lying ahead. And in the context of this Budget it is difficult for our colleagues on the other side of the House to understand it because it's got such a long-term vision they can never envision themselves being on this side of the House until the new leader of the National Party—leaving Air New Zealand—arrives. That's got to be at least 2029.I just want to remind the member Andrew Bayly who's sat down that this is the Imprest Supply (First for 2019/20) Bill. This is the imprest supply bill which actually enables us to enjoy interim spending authority until such time as the magnum opus has been passed. Now that I have explained that technicality to my colleagues on the other side of the House let me focus—Chris Penk: You voted against it in the last Government.Hon SHANE JONES: —let me focus. Ah I hear further noises from the back. Those are the noises actually inversely related to TV ONE on Friday where the sitting member of Northland gushed enthusiastically. There was a torrent of congratulatory remarks in the National Party as to how well I'm doing in the provinces—how well I'm doing in the provinces. He'd better go and tell the new guy Christopher Bishop that he's already agreed with a lot of what's covered in this particular bill in the sense of what the Budget represents—that he's already conceded—but of course Christopher Bishop will soon understand when he stands on his feet that I'm not a Māori like Wally Haumaha. I'm not a guy to be bullied. I'm not a guy to be lied about. However let me come back to transforming the economy for fear of your issuing yet another admonition in my direction.There's a lot of fear amongst the people who wanted to tarmac—tarmac—New Zealand's economy into the treacherous zone of climate change danger. Now we have taken a more balanced and fair approach which is why the interim authority that we seek is necessary because as a consequence of this morning we've already started in terms of projects employing people rolling out the strategy for KiwiRail. Of course the rail vision is not only in the regions. We are redressing the neglect in Auckland. And today Mr Twyford spoke about something that I do agree with actually in Auckland which is providing another track to cope with the congestion. But in relation to "Where is rail" in this Budget and going forward going to stand it gives New Zealand businesses investors—both domestic and foreign—a new opportunity to create both improved freight strategies but tourism as well.Now of course the other side of the House aren't interested in reducing emissions; they are creating them. But the pollution isn't to the climate; the pollution is to the body politic. Now of course there's a lot of cynicism expressed on the other side of the House about our extension services for agriculture. Now we know that the farmers we know that agribusiness leaders do have a lot of anxiety about the future and I have agreed to meet with the "Shady" group and I've said "Come to the office and talk to me about your problems pertaining to the conversion of farmland into trees." I have acknowledged that it's physically impossible for them to channel Nathan Guy because that would be a public health warning. So I look forward to them coming and working constructively on the projects currently covered in the Budget and in the interim authority we are seeking and passing as we wend our way through this process. Forestry has an incredibly important role to play not only in biodiversity not only in catchment consolidation not only in employment and exports but in providing an option to buy time while the heavy emitters—the heavy industry—seek ways to invest in science technology and improvements to their business in the context of our new climate change challenges.Now of course research and development is something that our party regards as a key enabler and we're looking forward as the farmers come forward and say "OK we know that we're being dragged along on a journey. We've mucked around. We tried to destroy Peter Hodgson in the days of Helen Clark. We knew we'd get a free pass from the John Key - Government."—I shouldn't mention the former Prime Minister's name; I might receive the ire of my own leader. I'll leave him and Mr Key to their unfinished business. But if we don't have focused research and technology investment in areas such as gene editing it's very difficult to see where the farming community where the agribusiness community is going to find the solution. So I look forward to working with them. There's considerable scope in that regard.Of course I should finish as would be required of me by talking about the Provincial Growth Fund. Now just to remind the tiny group of New Zealanders who may not have heard me speaking about the fund in the past the fund is dedicated over a three-year period to turn around the fortunes of the provinces by identifying deserving projects in terms of infrastructure. And of course recently we opened the Kerikeri Airport Māori language mishaps aside and then we have proceeded to invest in enablers within the agribusiness sector because we like water storage; water storage is very important for the rural economy and Hawke's Bay has enjoyed our attention in that regard. Then there are specific injections of equity. I tried unsuccessfully on behalf of the Government to do something with Westland dairy. I didn't know that Westland dairy was going through a process of being offloaded but I'm sure others will talk about that at another time. But the most important thing is that the Provincial Growth Fund is going into territory that the earlier Government was unwilling to invest money in. They were prepared to take the money that we have used and are recycling into deserving projects and they were going to give it away in tax cuts and those tax cuts were going to benefit a tiny minority of New Zealanders; whereas our focus quite frankly is boosting equity in the provinces.An area where that equity is now coming to pass is in digital connectivity. Now there's one thing I'll say for Steven Joyce despite what the Minister of Finance might say about him; there's one area that did work out well—he may not have come up with this—and that was the investment in digital connectivity. An area however that has been overlooked is those particular spots around rural New Zealand that have not been able to attract attention. Therefore the significant amount of money that we've dedicated—nigh on $80 million to $100 million—through the Provincial Growth Fund will provide an opportunity to create regional digital hubs continue to connect those areas with there are black spots where ordinary things that we take for granted in this House are denied our rural folk because we haven't been able to attend to those areas of neglect.And on the Māori side—obviously I'm very interested in this—is digitising the connections with marae to bring the young people back to the marae so that the marae represents a modern opportunity for them not only to celebrate identity but to remain connected all around the world. Now of course I accept that as more marae are connected there's going to be an increased awareness about how important security is because a lot of the marae are in neglected areas but that's a specific case where we're doing things at the big end of town with the agricultural sector we're doing things at the largest end of town with infrastructure and KiwiRail and we have not forgotten about the people in the kūmara garden down in the weeds and seeds. And when you have a Government that seeks to join all of those elements together then you have sustainable economic development. You don't have the self-induced feeding frenzy that we're seeing in our largest bank. You don't have that culture of entitlement which we're seeing in the ANZ our largest bank. I'm sure the Governor of the Reserve Bank will have more to say about that and hopefully he penalises the directors not unlike those who have paraded around believing their corporate virtue is beyond cavil. So watch this space. I'm sure there's bad news on the way for them. Thank you very much Madam Speaker."