Falloon AndrewANDREW FALLOON (National—Rangitata): Thank you Madam Chair. I'm very pleased to take the opportunity to speak this afternoon on the confirmation of validation of the 2017-18 estimates for economic development and infrastructure.If anyone's watching at home those dates might confuse a few people—2017-18—because it's a strange quirk I guess of Parliament that we're 20 months into this new Government still talking about what was essentially the last Budget period of the last National Government. But isn't it a good thing that we are? Because we're talking about infrastructure this afternoon and if you look across at the other side that's a party that's absolutely failed when it comes to construction of new infrastructure. Not a single new road has been started under the current Government—not even Shane Jones' much fated roundabout near his house.But I'm not going to talk about a road just for a start; I'm going to talk about rail and I am going to talk about some of the expenditure that was appropriated in 2017-18 by the last National Government and in particular $50000 that was set aside for a feasibility study into bringing back the Christchurch to Dunedin rail line.Look I'm a big fan of rail actually. I've spent a lot of time on the Northern Explorer between Wellington and Auckland stopping from time to time at National Park. It's a fantastic journey. I really recommend it to anyone. I'd love nothing more than to see something like that started between Christchurch and Dunedin where particularly tourists can get off the road and get into a nice carriage enjoy a lovely glass of Marlborough sauvignon blanc or perhaps a Central Otago pinot as they look out the window and look at some pretty stunning scenery particularly in mid and South Canterbury.I've been pretty disappointed actually by what the current Government has done because we haven't heard anything more about that feasibility study since that Government have come into office. Phil Twyford has been asked about it and whenever he's up being asked about it all he's talked about is commuter rail in major centres—commuter rail in major centres. Well that does nothing actually for people in the area that I represent—people in Ashburton and people in Timaru. They won't benefit at all from commuter rail between places like Rolleston and Christchurch or you know that CBD rail loop or even rail from Auckland Airport to Auckland Central if it ever transpires. They won't benefit from that; they would benefit however from a passenger rail network between Christchurch and Dunedin and it's gone absolutely quiet under this Government.I do want to come back to roading though because it is I guess a passion of mine. Despite my love for rail I do feel like we do need to do more in terms of road and construction particularly in mid and South Canterbury.Greg O'Connor: Train spotter!ANDREW FALLOON: I'd like to explain to Mr O'Connor why. I mean I know he's a former cop and he understands the need for good and safe roads. So I do want to talk about particularly the road between Christchurch and Ashburton—Christchurch-Ashburton—where traffic volumes have doubled since 1998. There's a couple of reasons for that—in fact three major reasons for that.The first one is the increase in tourism in the South Island. As I mentioned before the South Island is an absolutely beautiful spot particularly mid and South Canterbury. A lot of tourists are now coming to our part of the world to enjoy it and so tourism numbers have increased substantially. The second reason is the economic growth in mid-Canterbury and South Canterbury particularly on the back of the strong primary sector over the last decade or so. It's been tremendous and we've now seen a lot of growth particularly with more trucks on the road servicing that primary sector. And the third reason is the success of PrimePort in Timaru. We have had a lot more ships now coming into PrimePort moving through to the inland port at Rolleston and that's led to more and more trucks on the road to the extent that unfortunately that road has now become far more dangerous.In my offices both in Timaru but particularly in Ashburton I get people coming into my office every single week talking about how they no longer feel safe travelling on that road between Ashburton and Christchurch. And it has become more dangerous. It's now the second most dangerous stretch of highway in the country for fatalities and serious crashes and unfortunately this Government's response to that has been to take $5 billion out of the State highway network and put it into Auckland rail—$5 billion out of our petrol taxes out of our road user charges ripped out of regional New Zealand and put into central Auckland. In my last few seconds I do just want to address the comments by Marja Lubeck. She talked about the fact that National was talking about creating 10000 jobs in the last four or five years that we were in Government—10000 jobs per month. And she said well that's not ambitious enough—that's not ambitious—10000 jobs is nowhere near ambitious enough. Well actually Marja Lubeck that Government is now creating far far less. In fact it's down to about 5000. The number of jobs that have been created every month has halved under that current Government and she has the temerity to say that we weren't ambitious enough.