Williams PotoHon POTO WILLIAMS (Minister for the Community and Voluntary Sector): Thank you Madam Chair. Firstly I want to say from my perspective my commiserations to you for having to listen to 11 hours of this debate. I know from when I was sitting in your Chair I would often wonder when this would be over so my commiserations to you. I'm going to try to make this as light as possible to alleviate you of any pain. I can't guarantee I'll be witty but I'll do my best. I really enjoy being a member of the Economic Development Science and Innovation Committee. It's a great committee. There are some real characters on it and we have some really lively debates. It's ably chaired by Jonathan Young and he brings a certain level of decorum to our discussions and so it's in that vein that I wish to make my contribution today. I want to kick off by just perhaps addressing a couple of the issues that have been raised by previous contributors: firstly in terms of the rate of unemployment. Melissa Lee made a comment about the lack of job growth and the like and I just want to remind the committee that in 18 months in Government we have achieved the lowest rate of unemployment in 11 years. Not only that but we have managed to lift wages by 4.4 percent. Those numbers don't lie so I just wanted to put that in perspective. The other thing I wanted to say too was that in terms of the previous contribution there is just our investment really in terms of looking at new and innovative ways of moving people goods and services around our nation. We are taking an approach that's about the 21st and 22nd centuries and not about the 1950s. Our future does not lie in roads; it actually lies in other ways of moving goods and services around not only this country of ours but into the world. I just want to assure the Opposition that we are taking a future-looking approach at this situation so they don't need to worry. We've got this in hand. So you know just leave it to us for the next—I don't know—nine 12 years or so and we'll be fine. I just want to talk about—Brett Hudson: You can't do much from Opposition Poto. Hon POTO WILLIAMS: What was that? Sorry Mr Hudson I didn't catch it. Brett Hudson: I said you won't be able to do much from Opposition. Hon POTO WILLIAMS: That's why we're doing it from Government and we will do so for several terms. Thank you for your vote of confidence Mr Hudson. Today it was interesting. We got a question at question time about the competition market study report into the drivers of the petrol prices. I think it's really interesting because when the Minister came to the Estimates discussion we did have quite a lively conversation about the value of market studies or as I think the Opposition wanted to describe them they didn't see any value in market studies at all. It's clear that we are actually now able to identify where we can target some changes because there's no doubt that today's market study has proved invaluable to us and that we are as a nation being overcharged in terms of our petrol prices. But in the greater scheme of things the other work that's being undertaken of course is the work that we are doing around ensuring that we transition from carbon-based energy into other forms. In April 2018 the announcement was made that we were going to stop issuing permits for offshore oil and gas extraction and a gasp was heard when that happened. But a year later when we returned to Taranaki to talk about what that would mean we found an industry that was actively engaged in the discussion of being future-focused. It was wanting to engage in this discussion and wanting to ensure that jobs were protected and created so that we move from what is essentially driving huge issues of climate change into a future where our energy is much more sustainable. So I am enormously proud of the work that we are doing on this particular select committee. I think we have some great discussions. We have a breadth of discussions from cryptocurrency right through to the Provincial Growth Fund. It's fascinating to be part of this discussion. Thank you very much Madam Chair.