Simpson ScottADDRESS IN REPLYDebate resumed from 12 December.Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Thank you Mr Speaker. Mr Speaker can I commence my contribution in this Address in Reply debate by congratulating you and your fellow presiding officers who are going to adjudicate over the proceedings of this Parliament the 54th Parliament in I'm sure a very adequate and capable way. We know on this side of the House that you will bring dignity and grace to this office in a way that maybe some have thought was lacking in the past. The good people of Coromandel are looking forward to a wonderful Christmas and summer period and part of the reason that they're looking forward to a wonderful Christmas and summer period is because it will be the first summer Christmas period in four years when we hope to have an uninterrupted peak visitor period over the summer break. We had two summers interrupted by COVID and then of course last year after Cyclone Hale and then Gabrielle we incurred massive infrastructural damage to our region. But I was delighted to spend time with my colleague the Minister of Transport and also with the Prime Minister last week up at the site on State Highway 25 where the new bridge that will reopen this week to connect both sides of the Coromandel Peninsula together will allow for the summer that we have not been able to have for so many years.People may be wondering why it's so important to the Coromandel. Well it's simply this: that ours is an electorate that has a very summer orientated economy. Some of the local businesses on the east coast of the peninsula conduct something close to 80 percent of their annual revenue over that two- or three-month summer period and if they don't have access to the tens of thousands of visitors who will choose to holiday in the Coromandel then they simply don't have any capacity to make up that lost revenue during the course of the rest of the year. So Coromandel people will be very much looking forward to what we hope will be a good long hot dry summer.But the good people of the Coromandel electorate suffer in the same way that all New Zealanders do from the cost of living crisis from the impacts of high and continued inflation and they also represent very much what has come to be known as the squeezed middle. The good people of Coromandel are representative in so many ways of so much of what we see in other parts of the country: too much crime too many ram raids and gang thugs invading the streets of Coromandel town heaven forbid in a way—lawlessness of which we haven't seen in this country before in my lifetime and I hope that we won't continue seeing. Because I know that my colleague Mark Mitchell is going to do a terrifically good job as the Minister of Police and he will continue to bring a new focus on law and order and on the basic decency that is required of a neighbourhood a community or an area like the Coromandel. This new coalition Government has been in office only for a few weeks but already it is making very good advances on its 100-day plan. Already last week we passed a range of legislative initiatives that are aimed amongst other things to first stop the bleeding. That's really the primary function of the legislative actions that will be taking place this week in the Parliament because we know on this side of the House—our coalition partners and all National MPs—that the spending over the last six years has been profligate—no respect at all for taxpayers' money; a spend-tax-and-be-damned Government that has befuddled the New Zealand economy for six years and now it's going to take an awful lot of work—hard work—to turn the ship around.In fact ahead of us we have a massive turn-around job. But I'm very convinced and very supportive of the fact that under the prime ministership of Christopher Luxon we will get that turn-around job that we need as a country. And we'll get the country back on track. We'll get the Coromandel back on track. We'll get regional and provincial New Zealand back on track. We'll get our urban centres back on track because ours is a country that has so much potential so much opportunity so much unmet potential for the future not only of our generation but of the generations that will follow us. We have in this debating chamber an obligation to do the right thing for them.So when we passed legislation last week to refocus the work of the Reserve Bank on controlling inflation and working on their single objective that was a good thing. It means that the result of that will be that New Zealanders will benefit from a lowered inflation rate sooner than would otherwise have been the case. And when we think for a moment that the economy in New Zealand shrank in the last three of the four quarters that we've had we get a sense of the dilemma and the financial drama and risk that the country currently is in. I was personally very very pleased to see the bold decision made by Nicola Willis to curtail the Picton - Cook Strait ferry project that had just blown completely out of control and was representative of a State agency KiwiRail who just bowled along and expected the new Government to continue writing the blank cheques. Well that kind of profligate spending has to stop. So not only was that a good decision in terms of the New Zealand taxpayers but it was a good decision in terms of sending a very clear message to the governance body and the senior management at KiwiRail that actually they do have to be more accountable for the taxpayer funding that provides the money that they need to continue to do their job.But what's more important I think from that decision about the Cook Strait ferries is actually the message that it sends to other Government departments and other Government agencies: the buck stops and there needs to be a much greater respect for taxpayers' spending. Labour Ministers in the previous administration were committing literally billions and billions of dollars to projects that had massively insufficient due diligence and that were lacking in clear documentation or a sense of purpose about what they were doing. Well we want to change that. Not only do we want to change it we are going to change it because every single dollar that a Government or a Government department or a State agency spends is a dollar that has been earned by the hard work of New Zealanders and that money has to come from somewhere. Gone are the days when a Labour Government—a socialist Labour Government—can merely just borrow and print with gay abandon and never take any impact on what it means for hard-working New Zealanders. Socialists don't like it. They call themselves these days progressives but actually they're just good old-fashioned socialists. For the sake of my new colleagues who may not have heard me say this before socialists and socialist Governments really only have three policy initiatives that they apply to every single issue. They either want to ban it tax it or make it compulsory; often they want to make all three. Those are the only three policy initiatives that any socialist Government has: ban it tax it or make it compulsory.We have a much greater faith in the logic and the understanding and the passion and the initiative of New Zealanders to have a brighter vision for the future of the country than anyone on that side of the House sitting opposite could even begin to imagine. We aren't going to be constrained by narrow socialist thinking. We do have faith in New Zealanders' ability to be inventive to be entrepreneurial to have faith in the work that they create and the jobs that they create the businesses that they create. Ours will be a Government that encourages and doesn't vilify businesses. We want to make sure that businesses thrive and grow because thriving and growing businesses lead to a thriving and growing economy that leads to greater employment that leads to a greater prosperity. Because on the Opposition benches—where they are back some would say where they belong—we know that their ideals simply don't match the aspirational objectives of most New Zealanders. That's the result that occurred in the election in October.I am delighted now to be working with coalition partners who share our common objective and goal for the future of the country. It's a goal that is full of vision of hope and of aspiration unlike the six years of stifling borrowing and spending that we've had with no accountability for taxpayers' money. We will be a Government for all New Zealanders whether they happen to be in the beautiful Coromandel or the Taranaki - King Country or indeed any other part of New Zealand.So I want to conclude my contribution in this Address in Reply debate by extending a warm welcome and invitation for as many people who want to to come and visit the beautiful Coromandel. Come and spend some summertime—and more importantly some summer money—in the beautiful Coromandel. You'll receive a very warm welcome and we'll get the Cathedral Cove open sooner or later. Thank you Madam Speaker.