McClay Todd; Nash StuartHon TODD McCLAY (National—Rotorua): Madam Speaker thank you very much. The Minister started out by talking about the funding announced by the Government last year: the $400 million and particularly the Strategic Tourism Assets Protection Programme (STAPP) funding. He said and I think I can quote We picked the businesses that we wanted to get through those we needed still to be there." Minister if that was the case why is the Auditor-General looking into the decision-making process at the very beginning of the STAPP and particularly companies who were given money but didn't actually formally apply for it? They were given money before others could apply because the criteria hadn't been set and the fund hadn't been opened. What do you say to the companies that have had to go and get a lawyer because they believe they weren't treated fairly some of whom applied and didn't get money and others who had greater capacity to survive to pay things for themselves who did get funding—what do you say to those businesses and why is the Auditor-General looking into the Government's decision-making process?Hon STUART NASH (Minister of Tourism): Thank you Madam Chair. It is a good question. The thing is that we've said with regard to the whole COVID response that we've never been here before. There was no sort of game plan or road map for how to keep businesses alive keep tourism alive in the face of a global pandemic when we've had to close down our borders and we recognise that there were some really tough decisions made. But with regard to the Strategic Tourism Assets Protection Programme (STAPP) funds there was a recognition that in fact what we needed to do was just get money out the door.Now I fully acknowledge that the Auditor-General is taking a look at this. We'll wait and see what the report shows but one thing I will say is it was a no-regrets policy. We needed to get that money out the door to ensure that those businesses were able to make key decisions in a really quick moment of time because a number of businesses—and I can think of one really big corporate who just basically closed down all their businesses there and then and said "We're closing. We want to see what the situation looks like when the dust settles so to speak." Then what this entity has done is slowly open the businesses as tourism has come back and as they better assessed their situation.What we did do and what I did announce on Thursday is that the industry training organisations—these are the inbound tour operators. These are the men and women who have the critically important relationships with our international offshore tourist operators and travel agents. We recognised that these were critically important if we were to grow our tourism industry back as soon as we possibly could when the borders open. They had been given $26 million in STAPP loans. We converted that through to grants in recognition that in fact the job they were doing was critically important. But it was about getting money out the door and doing this with a no-regrets policy. And in anything you do you've got to draw the line somewhere. What happened my understanding—and I wasn't the Minister of Tourism at the time—is that firms were asked to apply for this and they did. There was a ranking criteria. If you're above that then you were considered. If you were below that you weren't.But as mentioned I probably shouldn't mention too much more about STAPPs even though I acknowledge that I did bring it up in my speech because the Auditor-General is looking at that programme."