Lees-Galloway IainIAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North): I rise to speak in opposition to this Appropriation (2017/18 Estimates) Bill because it fails to invest in the infrastructure and the public services that this country needs. Instead what this National Government is proposing is to give tax cuts to the highest earners with $400 million going to the top 10 percent of earners in New Zealand—instead of using that money to invest in healthcare which urgently needs that investment or in housing which urgently needs that investment or in transport which urgently needs that investment.I want to speak very briefly to the transport issue that is affecting my region the Manawatū Gorge. Minister Bridges mentioned it very briefly. He made an oblique reference to some investment at some point in time in the future. It is absolutely clear that we need a replacement for the Manawatū Gorge road. It is unsafe it is insecure and it is hurting our regional economy to have it closed on such a regular basis. The shame of it is that back in 2011 when I came to this House and said that very same thing the National Government laughed at me. The National Government laughed off the idea of building a replacement to the Manawatū Gorge road. In fact my opponent at the time tried to use it against me in our local campaign. That was actually the campaign that I won by the largest majority I would like to point out.The National Government's failure to invest in that route—the National Government's failure to invest in that route—shows its lack of foresight and also its lack of interest in regional New Zealand. So I do not want to hear the Minister come and make some oblique reference to at some point in the future doing something about the Manawatū Gorge. The National Government should have actually gotten on with this job 6 years ago but instead my region the Manawatū-Whanganui region and Tararua and Wairarapa and the Rangitīkei and the Hawke's Bay have been left to languish by a Government that has no foresight and no interest in investing in the infrastructure that our regions actually need.I actually came here today to talk about this Government's failure to invest in the infrastructure we need to cope with the level of population growth that we are experiencing at the moment. We desperately need to take a breather in Auckland because this Government has relied so heavily on population growth through immigration to grow the economy that now what we are seeing is enormous strain on housing in Auckland enormous strain on public transport in Auckland enormous strain on our hospitals in Auckland and enormous strain on our schools in Auckland all because of this Government's failure to plan for the level of population growth that it has allowed. So we on this side say yes we do need to take a breather but also we need a sensible and nuanced approach to immigration.I hear that Bill English is planning to back down on the only immigration policy announcement that National made this year. Michael Woodhouse went to Queenstown and made a big fancy policy announcement about how there were going to be new thresholds for what was deemed to be a skilled occupation and what was not. Migrants who had been working in New Zealand for 3 years were going to have to face a stand-down period even if there was a skills shortage in the area that they were filling and partners and children of migrants working in the regions would not be able to get work. Well that was a silly knee-jerk response from a Government that had failed to engage in the immigration debate. It suddenly realised that it was on the wrong side of the debate so it came up with a poorly thought-through half-baked policy that has now been rejected by its base. It is scrambling to find a solution to its appallingly badly poorly thought-through immigration policy.What I have been getting is feedback from exactly the same people who have been giving the National Party grief about its policy that Labour has actually got it right on this one. Yes we need a breather in Auckland but we also need to regionalise our skills lists so that we can appropriately respond to the needs of the regions. Whilst we have got pressure on infrastructure in Auckland we have got employers in the regions who do struggle to find the skills that they need so we are going to tailor the immigration system so that we can get the skills into the places that we need them. Regional New Zealand urgently needs a supportive Government to actually be able to grow and take advantage of the opportunities that are available to it. What it does not need is a one-size-fits-all knee-jerk response of the sort that the National Government came up with. If regional New Zealand wants a nuanced sensible response to the immigration challenges that we are facing it ought to look to Labour and not to the silly stuff that we see from National.