Pugh MaureenMAUREEN PUGH (National): Thank you very much Mr Speaker. I'm going to use my time in the general debate today to talk about the Provincial Growth Fund (PGF). It was meant to be about jobs jobs jobs and instead it's turned into announcements announcements announcements. This $3 billion Provincial Growth Fund was set up as a coalition deal to get New Zealand First into Cabinet with the Labour Party—$3 billion of taxes from hard-working Kiwis funnelled through one Minister allocating it as he sees fit. It gave huge licence to the Minister for giving away money to choose pet projects in his favourite regions—namely Northland where he hopes to buy his way back into power. But other surge regions identified by the former National Party have seen some attention too.Mark Patterson: The West Coast.MAUREEN PUGH: Places like the West Coast and Tasman have been led a merry dance on their road to achieving their dreams for their infrastructure investment.So let's have a look at Golden Bay—Port Tarakohe to be exact. They received approval for $22 million to upgrade the port for recreational and commercial users and to mainly accommodate a growing mussel industry up there. Now the former mayor Richard Kempthorne was quoted as saying Port Tarakohe is a highly valued recreational asset and provides critical community resilience in the event of disruptions to road access in and out of Golden Bay." Then what happens? Cyclone Gita. The barges brought in milk tankers so that the farmers could keep milking and thanks to Fonterra and Port Tarakohe no milk had to be dumped. Those road improvements and repairs are still being undertaken today over 18 months later. It enabled medication and other food to be delivered to the community. It is a critical asset to the Golden Bay community.But the funding after COVID was reprioritised or repurposed and that was clawed back because no contract was in place; nothing was committed to and the Tasman District Council was redirected to other funding sources. So that gave the "Minister for Giving Away Money" more opportunities and yet further major announcements for projects that were reprioritised with Cabinet deciding that those new projects were to be based around job creation. Well that was the confusing part because I thought the PGF was actually supposed to be all along about creating jobs and getting the nephs off the couch—and we were told there were 10000 of them. But what actually happened? Announcements to local communities of funding support for their local projects and all we're seeing is the churn of this money going around and around and being reprioritised and repurposed into different projects—a money-go-round with actually very little happening on the ground.Post-COVID West Coast councils were approached and they were asked to come up with their list of shovel-ready projects and given two weeks to deliver that list. On the surface that was great news right? But the reality is different. Here's the twist: according to the Minister's own response here in the House last night he cannot guarantee that contracts will be in place before the election for any of those projects. He also went on to say and we know this is the case that no Government can commit a future Government. So there we have it. There is nothing but one announcement after the other. There is no commitment locked in for any of those projects and it's becoming almost impossible to get a contract on paper. It's just like a wish list that you'd send off to Santa Claus. The likelihood of any of those projects becoming a reality is not great.Now they've had their hopes raised and as usual this Government has failed to deliver. But worse than that it has raised expectations in those communities and in communities across this whole country. So I challenge Minister Jones to ensure that contracts are signed before this election. Give the communities the surety that they need to move forward on the projects that have been approved and break your own cycle of announcements and actually deliver the contracts. The other thing that we'd like to see is actually the data around the full-time equivalents. It was asked again today. Back in December when Chris Bishop asked it was costing $484000 per job out of the PGF funding. Apparently it's now $300000 a job but we haven't got any money. Sign the contracts and commit the money.The debate having concluded the motion lapsed."