Goldsmith Paul; Dean JacquiHon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): Thank you Madam Assistant Speaker Dean and congratulations on your high office this evening. It's my pleasure to speak in this debate and to be back here in the Parliament. I want to start with congratulations to the Labour Party. It was a great result for them. You have gained the support of the public in this election and you have to carry the burden of expectations that comes with that and this country faces real challenges right now. We've got through towards the end of what has been a very difficult year for many New Zealanders. They've put their faith in this Government and they will be hoping to see some real progress on the big challenges that we face particularly on the economy. It's all very well to have a false sense of security when we're borrowing a billion dollars a week and the printing presses are running very quickly over at the Reserve Bank. That may give a short-term sense of security but ultimately we have to have a strong economy that's really creating jobs and is genuinely internationally competitive. This Government has chosen to increase taxes and so it will be interesting to see how that works out. We're also going to be relying on private sector investment to grow the economy and create jobs. What we're seeing in so many places is additional costs being added on to those businesses making it more difficult for them to create those jobs and so we'll be watching that very closely. Then we'll be thinking about the infrastructure that needs to be built during these difficult times. We're just hoping that the new Minister of Transport—up in Auckland anyway we're hoping that the new Minister of Transport isn't quite so obsessed with the funny light rail scheme that his predecessor had as the number one priority for Auckland. Anybody living in Auckland is still scratching their heads as to why a slow tram down Dominion Road should be the priority for the biggest investment in infrastructure in our history. On housing what we're seeing of course is a real challenge for particularly young New Zealanders as they look and see the yard being lifted higher into housing affordability. We have an unseemly episode of the Governor of the Reserve Bank and the Minister of Finance pointing their fingers at each other for responsibility. There's no question that increasing the supply of houses is the best solution but you can't do that overnight. You can't do it in a year. It takes time so in the meantime our flooding the country with cash at very low interest rates is adding fuel to what is a raging fire already. So I'll be very interested to see how the Minister responds effectively to that issue—which they were so so critical of the previous National Government about; yet after three years have not made much progress on—and we want to work constructively to make some of that progress. At the same time the Reserve Bank is flooding all this extra cash in order to encourage investment when the Government is making it much more difficult for businesses to actually grow and to hire people. In the meantime I've been granted the wonderful privilege of working in the education sector and coming from a household of teachers I have a keen sense of it. My father was a maths teacher. He had three siblings. Of the four children in my father's family three were teachers and one was an anaesthetist and of course there was always a bit of a joke as to who put you to sleep faster of those four. But nevertheless I have huge respect for the teaching profession. It is a very difficult profession trying to inspire children young men and women girls and boys to love learning and to learn. I think of some of the inspirational teachers that I had. Bob Hunt at Auckland Grammar had a glass eye and you were never quite sure where he was looking. But he was the one who turned the light on in me and for the first time made me passionate about learning a particular subject—Japanese it was. So I'm looking forward to working constructively with the sector in what is such an important area for the future of the country: making sure that our young men and women when they leave school are able to contribute and succeed in the modern world with basic literacy and numeracy. One of the things that I'll be very focused on is the absolutely appalling attendance records at school at the moment. It's an astonishing fact that only around 57 percent of school kids are actually at school on a regular basis. We need to do much much better and so that will be an initial focus of mine. Thank you Madam Speaker. ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): I call the Hon Scott Simpson—for five minutes.