Kuriger BarbaraBARBARA KURIGER (National—Taranaki - King Country): Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker. It's a pleasure to take a call on this topic this afternoon around the Budget Policy Statement. Now we've just heard from the previous speaker Ginny Andersen about measuring it and measuring everything. It's all very well to talk about measuring it but when we ask What are you going to do? How you going to measure it? What are the details?" we're never getting told what they are. We don't actually know how you're going to measure it because you haven't actually said. This Government doesn't like targets.I also have a statement for the last speaker which is: a Budget is not what the Government has done. The last speaker kept referring to what the Government has done. What the Government has done has referred to it in a Budget Policy Statement.Kieran McAnulty: [Holds up Budget Policy Statement] This is what we're discussing not the Budget.BARBARA KURIGER: No but the Budget Policy Statement—the last speaker was talking about what this Government has done. The Government has put a Budget Policy Statement in place and it's full of opaqueness. I also heard a colleague of mine my colleague next to me here Denise Lee talking about the serious uncertainty. I can tell you that what you've got on the piece of paper that was just held up Kieran McAnulty is a statement but the public are not buying that statement because there is serious uncertainty and there is opaqueness in it.So that statement came out on 14 December—that was over two months ago. So yes we can have Christmas and we can have New Year and this Government is up to its 100 days. In fact it's 28 days almost—not quite but almost—past its 100 days. So do we have to wait for Easter before we get any—you know we've had Christmas New Year; do we have to wait for Easter? We want the "how". We don't know how we can measure stuff when this Government's not prepared to set targets.And we're already aware that Treasury's got 29 fiscal bombs waiting to happen—time bombs—within this statement Mr McAnulty. There's major policies—like the Provincial Growth Fund extra Department of Conservation funding justice policies primary healthcare policies new rail links and all this talk about employment relations and increasing the minimum wage and the population's out there going "How on earth is this Government going to be able to afford all the things that they've promised in this Budget Policy Statement?"This Government's convincing themselves. They haven't yet convinced Treasury and Treasury's got serious concerns about this. So it's ambitious. Why is it ambitious? Because this Government has no idea how it's going to achieve its wish list. There are a whole host of committees that have been put in place to try and discover how this Government is going to achieve its wish lists and now we're seeing reports of putting an inquiry and a committee in to make an inquiry into the committees that have been set up. It's like the song that never ends.So yes it does identify in this statement—as some of the members have rightly talked about—the tertiary education package. Well the tertiary education package is being put in place. Half the surplus that was around at that time has been allocated to this tertiary education package. We're hearing that it's having very little impact on the number of students so there's going to be a target and a measure. That's a target—that's a target that we've got on this side of the House because we're very happy to measure the targets so that we know at least the quantum of the amount of money that's being spent. We are going to be watching to see how many dollars per extra student is going to be achieved in year one from this money that's being put out for the students.So beyond that it's very squishy indeed. I mean there's been the Family Incomes Package and yes we want money to go to the families as well and we had a pretty impressive tax package that actually was giving tax cuts to hard-working New Zealanders.Denise Lee: Gone now—gone.BARBARA KURIGER: So I'm really concerned about these hard-working—yeah it's all gone. It's all been spent.There are also no numbers around this Regional Development (Provincial Growth) Fund. So we keep hearing lots of promises. We keep hearing about the quantum of the fund. We're still not sure how some of this is going to be applied and we're still not sure that some of what had already been committed to is not in this Provincial Growth Fund. So I have some serious questions because when the National Party was in Government we had a whole string of towns that had been promised ultra-fast broadband. We also had a rural broadband initiative in place and I've got a string of towns in my electorate as will other people where this rural broadband was going to go.The Hon Clare Curran was often in the House getting up going "How you going to do it? Too slow—too slow. It's not coming. It's not happening." Now we've actually got the Hon Clare Curran up there still waiting to appoint a group—you know there's groups and more groups and more inquiries. I've got questions. In fact I've written letters to that Minister from some of my communities asking when that rural broadband initiative is going to be put in place.We've also been told that there will be extra police numbers. We've been told that there will be rural constabularies established. Now as a rural MP I would be really happy if rural security was beefed up. But again in all of these things—no reference in this document to these commitments in terms of additional money. So we would really like to know how much—how it's going to happen. It's all very well to make these promises. As I said before the last speaker talked about what they've done; so far this Government has done nothing other than make a few promises. There's three things that they've committed to that they've actually physically done something about and one of them is going to result in no extra result.The other thing that I'm quite interested in is that the agriculture Minister has said that he's going to look at the splitting up of the Ministry for Primary Industries. I've seen some figures on what that might cost depending on options and ways and things to do that. I would suggest instead of looking at putting stickers on doors and that type of operation perhaps some of that money would be better spent on getting rid of the stink bug. We have got farmers down in Southland who are screaming out at our local member of Parliament for Clutha-Southland down there Hamish Walker every day. They have uncertainty about whether it's eradication or whether it's containment. They have uncertainty about whether they're going to get some compensation and for the amount of questions we ask we are certainly not getting any answers.And the other thing I'd like this Government to commit to is—I've heard a lot of things in this House this afternoon about swimmable water and whenever we talk about swimmable water we set those targets back on our rural communities. I'm going to say right here and now: that is not only a rural community issue. While Christmas and New Year might have gone by in this whole 100-day process and we're not getting many answers there were a lot of noticeable things around the cities—and particularly around the city of Auckland—over that Christmas period around water.I'm not pointing any fingers here and I'm not making any accusations in terms of any particular people. But we have an issue in this country of New Zealand that we have to tackle. I'm just wondering where in this Budget Policy Statement—when everyone on that side of the House is getting up and talking about swimmable water how are we going to measure that? How are we going to get swimmable water on our beaches in Auckland? How much is that going to cost?So let's not talk about what we've done and what this Government's done in this Budget Policy Statement because to date very little has been done. There are still 29 risks that we're waiting to see the Government overcome. I would suggest that some of those environmental issues that have been brought up today are going to be some of the most difficult ones to cover off. I would like to see some more targets measures and certainty as to how we do that as a whole country all together. With that I would like to say that it's my pleasure to speak on this statement. I'm very pleased to be opposing it today. Thank you."