Hudson BrettBRETT HUDSON (National): It is a pleasure to stand and speak on this the finance and government administration Sector of this appropriations debate. First I would like to acknowledge the chair of the Government Administration Committee who so kindly noted that I am a former member of that committee. I have in fact switched across to the other committee in this sector or theme which is the Finance and Expenditure Committee.I would like to just begin by referencing a contribution by Mr Tabuteau a few minutes ago. I would note that he had a lot to say and as with the economic development and infrastructure sector yesterday I would just like to offer a suggestion: that he might like to actually try to sit on the committees whose reports he pontificates upon so that he might be able to give a little more detail and factual basis to his comments. For instance one thing he raised was a decline in the number of sign-ups to KiwiSaver from children. Before the change came into place it had been shown that this is a group that would sign up to receive some free Government money and then not make any more contributions or deposits for many years. New Zealand First thinks that their no longer signing up to get some free money from the rest of the taxpayers and making no personal contributions for years is somehow a bad thing. In the spirit of good sensible fiscal management I would just encourage the constituents of Ōhāriu to pay very close attention to the ideas of New Zealand First and how they would squander taxpayer money and to think very deeply about what it would mean for this country if New Zealand First were to form part of a Government after 23 September.As to the rest of this contribution on this theme I would like to draw upon elements of the report from the Government Administration Committee on the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet (DPMC). We had a lot to ask the head of that department and others about the things that had been learnt from the Christchurch earthquake what had worked well and what had perhaps not worked as well as people would have liked with the Kaikōura earthquake last year—which not only deeply affected that part of the country but also had some effects here in Wellington. One thing that was certainly reinforced to us is that the model of the Ministry of Civil Defence and Emergency Management (MCDEM) at the moment—which is that you have coordination at the centre going out and devolving responsibility and action to the local areas—is the most effective way of dealing with those sorts of events emergencies and needs because the people on the ground in those areas are in the best place to assess immediate need.DPMC and MCDEM did acknowledge that there were still some areas that need further refinement. One of them that was noted was some inconsistency around tsunami alerts in the immediate aftermath of the Kaikōura quake. It is very pleasing to see that after the review—and it was highlighted in the review—the Government made it very clear that we will be investing in an early warning system and looking to take advantage of the broadcast capability across the cellular network to reach as many New Zealanders as possible to give them timely and appropriate information. That is a good example of actually taking something that did not work as well as we would have liked in the moment but that we could in very short order improve upon.I would just like to talk about the effects in Wellington and in particular the note that the State Services Commissioner in that report had to make to us. While Wellington was quite adversely affected by this quake one of the things the State sector responded to a lot more effectively was rehousing employees and also getting systems operational again particularly its IT systems. That is valuable not only for their internal activities but also for the ability for citizens to interact with those agencies with the Government particularly as more and more services are being delivered over online platforms. In fact this Government announced today an even greater target for even more services to be delivered over online platforms into the future. So I am very very pleased to be able to present and talk on those reports. Thank you very much.