McKelvie IanIAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei): Thank you Madam Speaker. I've already attended one financially distressing meeting tonight and I'm attending another one now and it's somewhat ironic I think.This is the second time or maybe the third time that I've followed James Shaw and I always quite enjoy him. He comes up with something else and in this speech it was the maths of finance which I find intriguing and his maths of finance particularly intriguing. He went on to say though—and I think that this is absolutely relevant to the Supplementary Estimates bill—that the National Party are calling for more expenditure and he called it profligate expenditure. I've got to say we're not calling for more expenditure. I've not heard us in any stage call for more expenditure. We're calling for better direction of expenditure. That's absolutely the key to where this whole discussion needs to go. I think the appropriateness of the expenditure that is contained in the Supplementary Estimates is absolutely the key to the issue we should be talking about.I just want to go on to an issue that the Hon Shane Jones raised as well. He said Kiwis want to see the money flowing; they want to see Governments bolstering the economy with cash. That's fine but the cash has got to be directed in the right direction. I just want to touch on one issue particularly and I know that's it been touched on tonight already and that's some of the expenditure around railway. The interesting thing when you put money into a railway line like the Wairoa to Napier railway line and then you encourage people to plant trees that will never be harvested it's very difficult to see what the use of the railway line is actually going to be because a lot of those trees that have been planted in that area may well never be harvested. So in fact they'll never need the railway line to go to the port. So things like that are other sorts of things that I think the National Party in Opposition are particularly critical of.I also have an interesting electorate and some of the challenges that we face when we look at biosecurity at border security and what they might mean for further expenditure that this Government will need to get to—when you see things like—and I pick on two particular areas the ski fields which had we been able to secure our borders had we been able to maintain our reputation around those borders those ski fields may well have been able to host overseas visitors during the ski season that's about to follow. My point is of course that if they don't in fact have that opportunity they are going to be much worse off and consequently the Government's highly likely to have to produce a supplementary Supplementary Order Paper to this bill and put more money into the business than they otherwise might have. I want to pick on one other issue as well that I think is particularly relevant and it's very relevant today because we've just put the racing bill through its second reading. I think the issue there is that of course we've got the national yearling sales coming up for both harness and thoroughbreds in January. And if in fact these border lapses don't enable foreign buyers to come to New Zealand to look at those horses those yearling sales will collapse. That's another massive blow to an industry that's already struggling significantly. So my point is that if we don't keep our borders secure if we don't get keep our biosecurity up to speed which is another very important issue and obviously an issue that's included in this Supplementary Order Paper tonight then we're going to suffer further challenges and the Government is going to suffer further challenges in where it allocates its money.The other issue I wanted to talk about with respect to this was in fact the debt levels. When you look through these Supplementary Estimates—and I'm not used to looking at the second round of noughts if you know what I mean. So you've got a $12 billion figure in there which you think's $12 million till you read it again. And you think it's $120 million. And you read it again and think Oh it's $12 billion." That's one of the things that we're just not used to in this country—the magnitude of the money that's included in these Estimates. The problem will be for those future generations that've got to repay them. It's all very well to say "Well you're going to have to repay the debt." Well my generation won't have to repay this debt. It's my generation that's been saved by some of the activities that have caused this debt but my generation won't be repaying it. I think that's one of the saddest things about where we've got to with this Budget and with these Estimates—that a lot of the money contained in here will be repaid by future generations not by the generations that we've spent the money to protect. I realise that's a difficult conundrum for a Government to deal with but none the less it's very real and I think it's absolutely critical to this discussion because somewhere along the line we are going to have to generate the activity that will repay that debt.I want to turn for a minute to the—Hon Shane Jones: Infrastructure—infrastructure. IAN McKELVIE: Well I've just turned to the primary sector for a minute Minister Jones because for a change in New Zealand—not a change because it happened in 2008-09 as well but for a change in New Zealand the primary sector is going to drive the recovery of New Zealand again and I think it's our vibrant rural economy that's coming to the rescue. If we in fact do away by inadvertent or poor investment in the regional economies that drive our primary sector then we're going to run the risk of in the future not having such a strong primary sector. If we don't have a strong primary sector we will never pay these debts off in the future. Whether we like it or not—and I've heard Governments in the past talking about a sunset industry. Well the sunset industry is now our sunrise and it in fact is driving where we want to get to with respect to repaying some of the debts that are included in this massive amount of expenditure. Sure I accept that in some ways that expenditure was required. I want to very briefly talk about the winter energy payment which was doubled this year and certainly in some parts of New Zealand—Brett Hudson: Did you get it?IAN McKELVIE: I missed out Hud I missed out. In some parts of—Hon Member: You gave it back didn't you.IAN McKELVIE: —New Zealand—ha ha! I made a bad blue actually. Hon Member: Too hot where he lives—doesn't need it.IAN McKELVIE: Don't need that in the Rangitīkei but in some parts of New Zealand it's extremely necessary.One of the challenges that we face of course with all these sorts of things is who does and should get it and who should and shouldn't get it. One of the strong arguments about the winter energy payment was that people should have had to apply for it not to default from it. I think that's still a very relevant argument to some of these things that we do to assist people. Obviously the wage subsidy was one of those places where you could apply for or default from but you had to apply to get it. I think it's logical that when Governments are handing out money of the magnitude that we're handing it out right now you should actually have to apply to get money and not just automatically get it and then have to default from it.One of the positives about the activities of this Government has been the speed with which they've acted. Now history will tell us whether that was a sensible decision or not and some of the figures in this our Supplementary Estimates bill tonight will in due course maybe come back to haunt us because of the way we've managed that. But that's an issue that the Government will have to face at the time. I think this discussion is all about who's got the best priority and I think James Shaw missed the beat completely when he accused the National Party of splashing cash all over the place. We haven't said we'll splash cash anywhere other than in the places that it's logical to splash it and I think that our policy would be much more relevant and much more stable than the current Government's policy is which really some of the subsidy and some of the expenditure in this bill has not been well thought through.Hon Shane Jones: Provincial Growth Fund—Provincial Growth Fund.IAN McKELVIE: So that's probably—Hon Shane Jones: Politics of envy.IAN McKELVIE: —enough for me otherwise I shall have to answer the member on the other side of the House which I don't want to have to do because I could have spent a lot of time accusing him of ruining the country with trees and you can't eat them of course. That's the other thing. He hasn't realised you can't eat trees.Hon Member: Except for fruit trees.IAN McKELVIE: Oh the old—ha ha—Hon Member: You can't eat trees.IAN McKELVIE: You cannot eat trees and that's a challenge we're going to face in the future. That's one of the challenges that we face as we recover from these issues that I've mentioned in this bill. We have got to generate income to pay the bill. Whether it's expenditure on infrastructure whether it's expenditure on whatever we have to generate income to pay the bill. So that would be me for the night. I've done enough thank you.DEPUTY SPEAKER: This is a split call. I call Willow-Jean Prime."