Clendon David: Debate on Prime Minister’s StatementText is subject to correctionClendon David: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement[Sitting date: 10 February 2016. Volume:711;Page:8871. Text is subject to correction.]DAVID CLENDON (Green): I must begin by thanking the previous speaker Alastair Scott for devoting such a lot of his time to talking about the Green Party. That rather jumbled misguided analysis of what the party is and does will do nothing but good for our standing with our supporters so thank you for that.It was interesting that the Prime Minister ad libbed a great deal in his speech as other people have noticed and I think it is because had he read the statement as it is written the fact that this Government is completely devoid of passion or imagination or indeed vision would have become very obvious and I think his ad libbing was in part to disguise that fact.I think there are one or two aspects of this statement that I would like to speak to that he did not mention dropping out of the Government’s much talked about Business Growth Agenda which has an admirable intention: to build New Zealand business and particularly to build regional growth—to build business capacity and capability and to restore the regional economies back to where they should be. That is an important programme to pursue because most of our wealth indeed is derived from the regions. Our food exports our fibre our timber—a lot of our manufactured goods come from the regions. This Government has talked a lot about the regions—there are any number of documents including one I will refer to at some length that was released just a few days ago—but we do not see much in the way of actual action or outcome. We do not see the real commitment or the investment that would actually allow the regions to fulfil their potential.A year ago the Government put out a Northland growth strategy because Northland is one of the five regions this Government apparently is focusing on. The growth strategy about a year ago was a useful snapshot of what Northland looks like today socially economically and in other ways. A year later almost to the day this wonderful document Tai Tokerau Northland Economic Action Plan was launched by Minister Joyce. He chose the Marsden Estate as the venue for the launch out in Kerikeri and I can honestly say that is my local. I recommend it. An unsolicited plug for Marsden Estate: an excellent place to have a 3-hour lunch at the weekend.For the first time I left Marsden Estate feeling unsatisfied after having heard Mr Joyce. Normally I would leave there very replete; on this occasion I was left wanting more. Mr Joyce’s action plan—58 points as we have heard earlier today but actually not much in the way of any commitment and not much in the way of any indication that this Government is going to do anything. One of the points made in the plan is that “Northland as a region has potential that is not yet … realised.” That is a song that has been sung for decades and it is time actually a Government got real about seeing that potential fulfilled.We are told that one of the key matters one of the key keys to unlocking the potential is around transport particularly better connectivity with Auckland and that is a fair comment. There is an odd sort of a statement in this document that Northland is a “place-based economy”. I have no idea what that means and I suspect the authors of the document do not know either but whatever it means it leads them on to say that “Roading in particular is critical for Northland”. That is not wrong; our roads are in an appalling state. It is costing us economically to say nothing of the environmental and health effects of some pretty shabby roading.One of the “work stream: enablers”—I do love the language in this document; it is the sort of language I used to discourage my students from using because often jargon disguises lack of substance. We are told that we need to address issues around shipping around roading and around air transport. Rail does not get a look-in. In this entire document the word “rail” does not appear. It talks about infrastructure as though it is something that appears when one expresses good intentions to make it appear. We are told that in 20-odd years’ time there will be a four-lane highway from Auckland to Whangarei. What we actually need is a reliable resilient roading network. We need the Mangamukas to be accessible 365 days a year so the far north can connect to the rest of the world. We need the south side of the Brynderwyns to be improved. We need Mangakāhia Road to actually be brought up to State highway standard which it patently is not at present. Despite the Government’s commitment almost a year ago to do something about that it is continuing to shuffle and to make promises and to pretend to be doing work that in fact is not being done. This is an unfortunate lapse of the—