McKelvie IanIAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei): Thank you Madam Speaker. That Government has held the Government benches for virtually 7 percent of my lifespan and they're still blaming the previous National Government for everything that's wrong in the country. It's time they were held accountable or took accountability for their own failings in my view.Now before I get on to the issue I want to talk about I just want to acknowledge a couple of people and particularly my former colleague Nick Smith who's spent 31 years serving New Zealand. I think that's a pretty formidable performance and he should be congratulated on that. And secondly I just wanted to welcome my neighbouring MP Harete Hipango back to Parliament. It's quite nice to have a neighbour in this place.The problem I want to talk about today is the issue that rural New Zealand has with the whole lot of changes that this Government's implementing. Now I'm not a person who is averse to change. In fact you might think I might be by looking at me but in fact I quite like change—I think it's quite exciting. The problem we've got is that change is being foisted on New Zealand at a pace that New Zealand can't keep up with. It's been foisted on New Zealand in the form of a whole lot of words and platitudes but no plan and no action behind the change that's proposed. And the problem with that is it creates huge uncertainty and uncertainty creates instability which then causes businesses not to be able to operate in a manner that's sustainable for the future of New Zealand.And there's a few examples of this: there's $760 million being spent on 3000 bikes a day going over the Auckland harbour. I'll guarantee 2000 of those are electric and they're all charged by an electricity network driven by coal. The vanity project has led to the New Zealand Transport Agency withdrawing millions of dollars from provincial councils in New Zealand from the roading budgets and cancelling much-needed new roads in Papakura and Bay of Plenty. The withdrawal of funds from our rural councils is going to put a whole lot more pressure on our productive sector as it tries to get product to market. It's also creating inefficiency and slowing the whole of our process and our work process down. So I just want to talk briefly about the three waters now and the uncertainty that's creating in rural New Zealand because there's no plan being put in place about it. There's no description of how it might work and it appears to me that we're going to be providing fluoridated treated drinking water to our cow and sheep populations in many parts of New Zealand because it has not been made at all clear how those rural water schemes will be encompassed into any future three waters programme. So that's the sort of uncertainty I'm talking about and it creates a great deal of concern for rural people particularly who have no access to a whole lot of services that urban people have access to and clearly one of those very big ones is transport.I want to get on to transport with the EV version of what I call Taxgate" where once again the physical workers of the country—and they include shearers loggers fishers farmers plumbers electricians painters builders rural and roading contractors truckers and many others—suffer despite the Prime Minister saying it won't affect their current vehicles she clearly doesn't realise most of those people have to replace their vehicles at least every two years because they do such high miles. In fact not only do they do high miles but on our rural roads they're going to start rattling to pieces pretty quickly too because they're in such poor condition.So this business of putting the incentives on EVs and taxing those vehicles that are less efficient is going to put a whole lot of pressure not on the people who can afford it because the people who can afford these things will have no problem. It's the people who can't afford to buy these vehicles and can't afford to upgrade their vehicles to this level who are going to be forced because of the cost structure that's been put on the motor vehicle industry to pay more for the old beaten up polluters they have to drive. So the whole process is hugely inefficient creating a whole lot of inequity giving huge advantage to those people who can afford things and creating a great deal of suffering for those people who can't—and a whole lot more cost.I want to add that there's some other issues related to cost of course in the lower income area that we've seen significant changes to because of Government policies. So we've got electricity prices going up at record levels. We've got food prices going up at a great rate. We've got problems with bringing products to New Zealand because of the transport networks around the world suffering—and that's something you can't really blame the Government for necessarily but none the less something that's going to cause considerable concern for our poorer people in New Zealand particularly as the cost of everything goes up dramatically.I want to spend a little bit of time talking about our superannuitants who have had no effective increase in income other than the very miserable income increase they get as part of the annual calculation whereas everyone else in New Zealand at that level of income has had a significant increase. So beneficiaries up to $50 a week and the minimum wage going up significantly and at the same time as that beneficiaries who don't have any other form of income—and there are well over 50 percent of our superannuitants who don't have any other form of income—are stuck in a system that's got huge costs increasing behind them and makes it very difficult for them to get on and live a reasonable life. And I think that our superannuitants should certainly have had some attention paid to them in the last Budget—would have been very useful.The uncertainty that's created in rural New Zealand by putting policy—and I'm talking about the depopulated parts of New Zealand so it's much easier for urban populations to deal with issues because they're close to each other they've got transport they've got services provided. They have everything provided for them. They might have to pay for it but they have it provided. Rural New Zealand doesn't have any of this provided for it. It's having a whole lot of uncertainty foisted on it with environmental change with climate change changes with the quite considerable planting of trees we've got in rural New Zealand as well which is starting to depopulate parts of rural New Zealand with no planning having taken place. It's of significant concern to rural New Zealand—these issues—and I think it's something the Government should take some time on it should plan better as it polices these policies and it should get on and make sure that those people in rural New Zealand can be assisted to get on with it."