Coffey TamatiTAMATI COFFEY (Labour—Waiariki): Thank you Mr Speaker. Very pleased to be squeezing in my call before the dinner break actually so I thank the previous speaker Ian McKelvie for his timeliness and punctuality. Look the New Zealand Infrastructure Commission is a good thing and I want to start by thanking the Minister for Infrastructure the Hon Shane Jones for bringing it to the House. It could've been done in a long time period before—say nine years—but it wasn't. The fact is that it was done in our term under this Government and actually it has been therefore supported by the other side of the House as well. So kudos to the Hon Shane Jones for that. I was pleased to hear from colleagues actually that were at the Building Nations conference on 21 August where the board were named the chief executive was named as well and also the chair of the board was appointed too. As previous speakers have spoken it's a very very qualified board. Dr Alan Bollard being the chairperson has a PhD in economics and a Doctor of Laws from Auckland University as well as having had many senior positions within government. Jon Grayson the deputy secretary commercial and financial at Treasury is responsible for Treasury's debt management and has also held many senior exec roles within the public and the private sector as well. So there you have it: the chairperson the chief executive and just a quick mention to the other members of the board David Cochrane Raveen Jaduram Sarah Sinclair Stephen Selwood and Sue Tindal. This is a good piece of legislation because quality infrastructure is absolutely essential for the economic progress and the social wellbeing of all of New Zealand. The commission is going to be that independent body which is going to provide good expert advice to the Minister and to Government. There will be a strategic plan set down and for that reason that report will be finished in good time. Successive Governments have actually relied too heavily on short-term projects. The cynic in me may say that it's been according to electoral cycles that decisions have been made. So this hopes to set that trajectory a lot bigger a lot wider and a lot more into the future and that's why it's going to be such a good commission that's providing good information to us as a Government to be able to make good decisions with. Budget 2018 said that it would invest $42 billion in net capital spending over the five years up to 2022 but of course we need to do more when it comes to that. The sector actually got together and told us as a committee what exactly it was that they wanted. So this isn't just something that we've come up with. They came through in the various submissions to the Finance and Expenditure Committee. They identified four key areas. One was a lack of integrated investment decisions within and across central government and local government. They said that there was a lack of visibility a lack of pipeline and a lack of scale. They also said that their overriding focus was on building new assets rather than the outcomes that we're trying to achieve and the ability to be able to deliver on them and obviously the biggest criticism which is that central government and local government coordination was severely lacking. So we made a couple of changes in that process. The bill that we first were looking over—the first draft of the bill—isn't the same as the one that it is now. There's been a few amendments to that—namely the information-gathering powers. We're making sure that we protect individuals' privacy in the collection of data for infrastructure projects but also making sure that local government are along with the ride as well and we are being able to collect information from local government who are big local players in the infrastructure game. So these are all measures that came through in the submissions. The Minister has responded accordingly and as a result I commend the bill to the House. Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.