Stanford EricaERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): Sorry.SPEAKER: Louder.ERICA STANFORD: Thank you Mr Speaker. Pleased to take a call in the third reading of the COVID-19 Recovery (Fast-track Consenting) Bill. While we do support this bill and I think that's been made abundantly clear we do want to make the point that this is a massive wasted opportunity. What a lack of vision this Government has for this country. And it doesn't bode well for their plans of economic recovery post - COVID-19. The 11 projects listed in this bill only deliver us directly 1700 jobs over 11 projects. The Minister had the ability to give us real economic value and what we got was cycleways chosen over things like Dunedin Hospital the Katikati bypass the Mount Victoria Tunnel duplication the Belfast to Pegasus motorway—all voted down today and not even considered. And there wasn't even anything in Canterbury those poor people down in Canterbury. The long-term economic value of a cycleway under the Harbour Bridge compared to a motorway bridges renewable energy projects—the Minister couldn't tell us today why these projects that have limited economic value were chosen over much bigger more visionary projects that are going to deliver this country the economic value that we need to get through COVID-19. The fact is that it was the National Party that tried to inject the vision into this bill through our Supplementary Order Papers (SOPs) that were unfortunately voted down today.But as the Minister said today and has said before he doesn't want to choke the system indicating he knows there are a lot of good projects that can go forward to help us get through the COVID recovery. But instead of building capacity to allow us to put these projects through all we get is 11 measly projects. What a complete waste.We heard from the Minister in committee stage that he didn't consider other projects that they didn't even ask questions around other projects or how the economic benefits might stack up—say a cycle path versus a motorway. The biggest economic challenge of our lives and it looks like this Government has done some pretty sloppy work and no economic analysis.Even though they only had 11 projects—even though they only had 11 small projects—they still managed to stuff it up. The single biggest water storage project that is most important to Northland and they couldn't even get themselves together to get that right. The issue up there was the Ngāwhā Dam. All they did was consent when the bill was brought to the House for a hole in the ground not to be filled with water for potable water for Kaikohe or for horticultural projects. Then finally the truth came out. Why was that the case? Why was it just a hole in the ground? Well the Minister made it very clear in committee stage. The problem was the Greens. Minister Sage earlier in her contributions said that the National Party doesn't understand MMP. We understand MMP very well. MMP gives us a hole in the ground a water storage project a hole in the ground with no water. That's what MMP gives us.Hon Member: Doesn't even make sense.ERICA STANFORD: Doesn't make sense at all. Here's how MMP has been working for the Greens. They swallow dead rats every day: Kermadecs Campbell Island cameras on fishing boats and now this bill.SPEAKER: Yeah and staying with this bill. Third reading.ERICA STANFORD: With this bill. The Greens vigorously opposed any Resource Management Act changes but they still have voted for this bill today or they will be voting for this bill today which goes against everything they believe. And when they did flex their little bit of muscle they said no water in the Ngāwhā Dam. But the Government went ahead and they managed to get that in anyway with our help. But I have to ask the Minister: why did he not come to us and ask us in the first place to help him get that across the line? Because you know what? There is no way that we would have left Kaikohe without any water; we would absolutely have backed him up in that case. But he didn't come to us instead of just playing politics. In the interests of time I'll skip forward a bit. But what I want to say is that the penny finally dropped for me in this debate that we've been having today. That was that acknowledgement of the fact that the Greens held up Ngāwhā; the penny dropped. That's why we ended up with 11 relatively small-scale projects that aren't going to deliver much economic value to this country. It's the Greens. That's the problem with this Government: they can't get themselves together they can't collaborate and talk and get better projects more projects in this bill. I actually feel a bit sorry for the Minister. He probably did actually look at some of the really good projects that we wanted in some of our SOPs but he couldn't get them across the line because the Greens held him up. It was made very evident in the Ngāwhā Dam example. It's exactly why they couldn't fill that dam full of water and we had to come to the rescue in that.That doesn't bode well when it comes to projects in the future that get referred that have anything to do with the coastal and marine area because the Minister for the Environment and the Minister of Conservation have to agree. Well we've seen quite clearly that that's not going to happen. So if there are any projects that are going to be referred in the coastal or marine area I doubt very much whether or not those are going to go ahead.This as I said is a massive missed opportunity. It has a huge lack of vision there are a lack of projects to drive our economy to get us through COVID-19 recovery because this Government can't get themselves together to get us through. And it doesn't bode well for the future economic recovery with these guys in charge.With all of that said I commend the bill to the House.