Jones ShaneHon SHANE JONES (Minister of Forestry): Thank you Madam Chair. It falls to me to make a few remarks judiciously phrased and in keeping with my style riddled with modesty.Hon Chris Hipkins: What nonsense!Hon SHANE JONES: I want to isolate two areas—no don't call for a point of order Leader of the House. I want to deal with two areas because after all constitutionally we're focused on historical conduct and whether or not the funding that was appropriated—as we review it what kinds of outcomes did it achieve? I want to direct our attention firstly to tourism. Despite the fact that Deloitte and McKinsey produced two robust documents the reality is that up and down New Zealand as a consequence of an inverse relationship between the rhetoric from that side of the House and actually what was delivered our agenda and our menu are full of projects that were not delivered upon and not funded in the face of tourism.Now tourism is a great earner of foreign direct investment but it has the ability to alienate and anger local communities—in particular those communities who may have a very sparsely distributed ratepayer base. They're expected to step up to the plate and meet the costs associated with an infusion of tourists. Now we had all the provincial MPs from that side of the House currently in Opposition promising great developments but very few I can assure you as the current provincial champion were funded. Not only is that a situation that we have found when we've looked into the details of what was delivered upon in areas as diverse as the Mackenzie country right up to the Tai Tokerau but we still have an ideology and rhetoric spouted by that side of the House that increasing at growing rates the number of tourists from Australia Asia and the Americas is somehow going to deliver a new form of financial elixir to the regions. Unless we invest in the degraded groaning infrastructure this will not happen.I don't want to talk too much about the future other than to say that that which the provinces asked for which was not delivered under the last regime is most certainly being delivered upon today. Not only will their projects be adequately funded subject to meeting criteria but we will be calling for them to restate to us all of their entreaties that were never ever requited. Well we will deal to that. Not only are we going to do it through an upgraded approach to regional roads—let me round this out by talking about the awful state of the roads that were promised and the bridges in the area that I hail from. I don't need to mention the 10 bridges because that has become hackneyed and it is the albatross around the current Opposition leader's neck. Not only are those roads neglected the bridges never actually built but worse than that—worse than that—we've had this cargo cult - like mentality fed under the last regime that projects that may or may not come to pass in 10 or 15 years were somehow going to unleash economic productivity in the regions—i.e. putting in expressways and four-laning everything. Not only were the civic leaders diddled in my particular area but there was egregious failure up and down our local roads our regional roads—indeed probably in the number of the cops keeping an eye on driver conduct on those roads.So I'm confident that as we go forward there'll be a massive improvement between what we will deliver and what unfortunately whilst may have been promised was never ever delivered. That's before I get to KiwiRail but I can't go there because I'm sure it's going to be dealt with in that portion of the broader debate that's focused on State-owned enterprises. Now the point also on dealing with transport and tourism is—that's before I get to more efficient ways of moving freight around the provinces and the regions—that although they are great deliverers of foreign earnings they achieved a pretty paltry status under the last regime. Lots of promise; precious little pūtea. Wait! Help is on the way. Thank you.