Smith StuartSTUART SMITH (National—Kaikōura): I would like to bring things back a little bit more locally. It has been my pleasure this week to host an exhibition in Bowen House by Kaikōura artists Jane Riley Wendy Smith Susie Baker and Karen James. It is called Kaikōura—Mountains to Sea. A lot of the artworks were actually inspired by the earthquake and my personal favourite is the one with the supermoon rising over the warships which was something to see. So I urge members to take some time out and go and have a look because you will be really impressed. I also want to talk a little bit about the small township of Waiau which will not be known to many people. There are only 300 people living in Waiau but there are 26 red-stickered homes in Waiau so it is a significant proportion of the housing stock in that area. It is really where the epicentre of what has become known as the Kaikōura earthquake was—that is actually where the epicentre was right under Waiau—and that has had a significant impact on that very small community. It is a great community and those people are really trying to pick themselves up. But it is going to be a long winter in Central Canterbury and inland from there and it will be quite tough for some. So I just remind people about that going on there. To move on to more positive things—or the reinstatement of State Highway 1—I would like to bring members up to date with what is happening there. There has been an awful lot of misinformation about what is going on. The New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) and the North Canterbury Transport Infrastructure Recovery Alliance people are doing a fantastic job on the road. I admit their comms have not been that fantastic but the job that is being done there is phenomenal. I have to say a couple of weeks ago I was there watching the sluicing on one of the major slips which is 300 metres or 1000 feet high. They had a series of helicopters sluicing up on that hill. The rocks coming down from there are phenomenal when you see them rolling down the hill and the engineer told me that they have calculated that a 400-millimetre rock would take out a fully protected digger from that height so it is incredibly dangerous. They have people sitting up on the top of the hill and they have people down on the beach—out the rocks as far out as they can get them—when they are working below these slips and if they see any movement on the side of the hill then all the work stops. It is that sort of precaution. It is not health and safety gone mad as some people would say; it is absolutely essential. If it was your family involved there you would expect nothing less and I think they have gone to extreme lengths. I have heard people say that they are not working long hours. Well I stayed in a Cheviot motel the other day and the first alliance ute leaving to work on the site left at 5 o'clock in the morning. The first helicopter goes up at half past 6 in the morning to survey the site to see what has changed overnight and things do change overnight. A little bit of rain makes a tremendous difference. Rocks are hooked up in some scrub that is dying—there is a huge risk factor there. Look this is a disaster on that road and we know that. We have got to look forward to what the opportunities are and there are opportunities. I wrote some time ago about establishing the Coastal Pacific Trail a cycle and walking trail going from Ship Cove all the way to Cathedral Square. That I think has really got a lot of potential for New Zealand. There is a group started in Marlborough that is working really hard on that and I am urging the NZTA when it reinstates parts of the road to include a provision for a trail. As anyone who has driven along that road will know it had a lot of really tight places where despite cyclists being very brave it was quite a dangerous situation—mixing cycles with trucks and cars. But that will be up and running by Christmas-time—in December—which will be a phenomenal achievement. I am trying to urge the television channels to document it a little bit better than they are. This is a phenomenal civil engineering project which is going to be completed by December and we should be documenting it as it goes on. It is changing every week. There is phenomenal progress being made. I really tip my hat to those people. All of the rail freight that was being transported by rail from Picton to Christchurch is now going by sea. Hon Ruth Dyson: No it's not. STUART SMITH: Yes it is. In fact the coastal shipping has picked up all of it. Truck counts at Waipara show quite clearly that the truck movements are only slightly up on what they were last year—a phenomenal effort by coastal shipping. I take this opportunity to say to Kaikōura kia kaha. Thank you.