Doocey MattMATT DOOCEY (National—Waimakariri): Thank you very much Madam Chair. Well it's impressive isn't it? The Opposition on a bit of a roll. If it wasn't for the Opposition we wouldn't have got the $350 payment in the last Budget and now thanks to the Opposition we'll get a rural strategy. And I want to drill down on the Minister's comments because I think he gave a fascinating process into the internal working of the Labour Party caucus. Because what he told the House today was—well the bill just ended up in some sort of shape during the select committee. People weren't too worried about it. All of a sudden it popped out the end and the rural Labour members—first time they've seen it apparently: shock horror No rural-health strategy?" So they rushed up to the Minister and said "Sir we'd like one." And he said "No problem. I'm here to help."But when you wind that back a bit obviously every party takes the proposed bill back to their caucus for deliberations. What happened at the deliberation stage? Why didn't the rural Labour members stand up for Labour in their caucus? Well whether they do or not—maybe they don't. So it didn't come back through there. So then you start to say "Well even before that deliberation stage why didn't the Labour MPs stand up for a rural-health strategy during the select committee stage?" So I think it would be interesting to hear a bit more from the Minister especially when we go back to the departmental report Subpart 5. It talks about how many submissions sought the requirement of additional strategies on specific issues such as women's rural mental health and addiction the rainbow community rare disorders.And it makes a very clear statement in the departmental report: "Ministers have instructed us to put forward an amendment creating a women's health strategy." So in that stage in the select committee the departmental report clearly states the Ministers instructed us to put forward an amendment creating a women's health strategy. So that poses the question: why did the Minister not instruct a rural health strategy at that stage and why did the Labour rural MPs or why did any Labour MP—and I mean this is very interesting because they're sitting there very quietly but when you work through what the Minister said he basically threw every Labour MP who was on the Pae Ora Legislation Committee under the bus because he basically said it took a group of Labour MPs who weren't even on the select committee to raise this glaring issue that for some reason had been missed out.So what were the Labour MPs doing on the select committee? We sat for hours. I can tell you what: probably what happened is they did raise it—they did raise it—and they got told to sit back down. And in fact that's why in the departmental report the Minister only instructed a women's health strategy. And of course what we know is when the bill came out of select committee there was a lot of ruckus by rural health providers but the Minister will go and have a look. He was in the media and he was very clear this wasn't a priority group that was going to end up in a strategy. But all of a sudden the Minister decides he's going to listen to his backbenchers. Finally the backbenchers are speaking but I'll let you into something: you should have done that in the select committee stage; it would have saved a lot of heartache of rural people who had to get out because—I'll tell you what—rural people don't often speak up and that's probably their own worst enemy because they don't. They have to watch environmental groups and every other group smash them and here they thought "Oh the Minister wants to stand up and say 'Well we've got a lot of rural MPs.' " Well why didn't they stick up for rural people during the select committee stage? Because we know and we want to hear from the Minister what happened and why the rural strategy was not put in. What changed after the select committee stage?"