Simpson Scott; Williams PotoHon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Thank you Madam Deputy Speaker. It's a pleasure to take my first call in the House this sitting year and might I wish you and your fellow presiding officers well for the work that you do on behalf of this Parliament. It's been a very good summer in the beautiful Coromandel electorate. We have been spared the extreme weather events that we witnessed and succumbed to back in January 2018 and we were not put to the test in the way that Nelson and Tasman have been put to in terms of fire. But our hearts and thoughts go out to those people. But in the Coromandel we've found that this Government is not being effective for the business people for the families for the individuals and for the people—the hard-working taxpayers—of Coromandel. They're feeling very let down by this Government. In a seat that was once held by a Green Party MP there is a sense of utter frustration amongst Green Party supporters in particular that their Government has not been able to deliver for them in a way that they felt it would. Actually those two last speeches from Green Party members epitomise entirely the problem with the Green Party in Parliament these days—that is notwithstanding that they spoke about important issues of defence and trade and in Chlöe Swarbrick's case the very serious issue of suicide there was nary a mention of the environment or of conservation. In fact I don't think conservation was mentioned once. Nary a mention of our marine environment and of the biodiversity threats that are so prevalent and that they are so weakly ignoring on behalf of all New Zealanders and future generations—nary a thought—and this is the problem. Now that they find themselves in Government they find themselves impotent—impotent—to do what they thought they could do because they're being outmanoeuvred entirely by the other junior party in the coalition the New Zealand First Party. What we have seen is that in terms of the environment almost nothing has occurred since this Government came to power nearly a year and a bit ago. So what have we seen? Well we've seen plastic bags banned in supermarkets. Now I'm not going to say that that's not an important issue because we have far too much plastic in our lives but I can assure you Madam Deputy Speaker and members across the House that plastic bags are the very least of our plastics issue. We've got far greater issues to come to terms with in terms of plastics than single-use plastic bags in supermarkets—particularly when actually under the last Government a voluntary agreement had been agreed to and set in place by the two big supermarket chains to be rid of the supermarket plastic bags already. So it's difficult for the Government in this space where so many people had such high hopes. But wait—help is on the way. This year the National Party will be releasing eight discussion documents—eight fully investigated and well-thought-out discussion documents—and in the nine years of the Labour Opposition how many were produced? Zero zip nada—none. So already in the space of a short 18 months or less the National Opposition has done more work in Opposition than the Labour Party did in their entire nine years in Opposition. I'm delighted to let the House know that in Raglan on 23 February the Bluegreens of the National Party will be holding their 21st annual get-together. We've had a blue-green party in this House for 21 years—21 years—and I'm very pleased to be part of it. But at that meeting in Raglan on 23 February we'll be releasing the very first of those eight discussion papers and it's on the environment—our environment—because we are the party of practical pragmatic sensible environmentalists. In that discussion paper we will be proposing a range of initiatives across climate change matters across the conservation portfolio across the environment portfolio and indeed into a couple of others as well that touch on the matters that are so important to all New Zealanders in terms of our environmental assets our environmental heritage and our environmental future. One of the things that I find most abhorrent about this current Government is that they actually have only three policy initiatives—only three—and they apply these three policy initiatives to every single thing they do. Those three policy initiatives are simply these: one tax it; two make it compulsory; or three make it free. Those are the only policy responses that this Government has to any single issue confronting New Zealand and New Zealanders. Now actually New Zealanders want a far more sophisticated and nuanced approach to the challenges and issues that confront us as a nation so that we can collectively in this place during our time here add value for not only today's citizens but those that will follow us tomorrow and in generations to come. So wearing my hat as spokesperson for the National Party on workplace relations and safety—what we used to refer to as industrial relations or labour relations in the old days—what strikes me as strange is that a Government that is so wedded to the trade union movement would want to take us back to a time in our history that actually most New Zealanders think we have long since left. I'm referring to the legislative initiatives the plans and the working groups that are all focused on taking us back to the 1970s. That was a time of aggression and adversarial angst between big trade unions and big business when there was no ability for small-business people individual businesses and individual enterprises to negotiate terms and conditions of employment with individual staff members and that seems to me to be something that is utterly wrong. When the rest of the world has been looking to New Zealand for guidance and saying Well how is it that a small country at the bottom of the South Pacific under an administration led by John Key and Bill English could be creating in their economy 10000 jobs a month"—how could it be that a new Government a socialist left-leaning Government would come into power and want to take us back to a time and a place that we all thought we'd left behind long ago? All that will happen by giving big unions the opportunity to assert their power and influence in the way that they have been is that we'll end up with more strikes—more strikes. Indeed the trade union movement is already promising us more strikes this year than last year and we know in 2018 we had more strikes more industrial action and more threats of strikes last year than we have had in any single year for the last 30 years. Now at that point the actual legislation that they pushed through the Parliament last year hadn't even taken effect. So it wasn't the legislative environment that had changed. The only thing that had changed was the Government—the only thing that had changed was the Government. This is a Government that has emboldened and empowered the trade union movement because now the trade union movement thinks that their mates are in the Beehive and they have almost tacit approval for industrial action and strikes. Earlier this week in Auckland we had the first of what we haven't seen for many a long year: a wildcat no-notice strike by bus drivers on the North Shore of Auckland. Now this is a very retrograde step in terms of the New Zealand economy in terms of our industrial relations landscape and in terms of opportunity for business and for business people. But in the National Party we understand that going backwards—back to the 1970s—isn't actually going to take us forward as a nation and it seems strange that the Government wants us to go there. In the National Party we have a view that people should be accountable for their own actions and inactions that they should have freedom to organise their lives and their businesses in ways to grow those businesses and to enrich their lives and that there is little place for big government big unions or big heavy-handed regulation or legislation in their lives. We like to think that New Zealanders are imaginative enough witty enough and nimble enough to get on with most things themselves and that actually having less government is probably a good thing. So Madam Assistant Speaker as I draw to an end in my first contribution in the House this year I just want to wish you and other members well because this has been a start to the year that the Government—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): I apologise to the member. I'm sorry your time has expired."