Lee MelissaMELISSA LEE (National): It is a great pleasure to rise to take a third reading call in the Estimates debate for 2016. I was going to mention to Phil Twyford the member who just sat down that normally people say You had me" at something but I would say you lost me in terms of the Auckland housing crisis. I thought he was actually going to blame me the person with a Chinese-sounding surname for being singularly responsible for the rise in Auckland house prices but he did not quite go there. He did sort of talk about the issues. I think that one of the great things this Government has done is help the average Kiwi improve their situation by improving their salaries. The median wage will actually go up to $63000 a year in 2020. That is actually what we are going to be doing. I mean that is a $16000 increase on when we came into Government in 2008. I think that when you look at what Mr Twyford was talking about in terms of house affordability and the housing issue it is when we have a low interest rate that people can actually get a cheap mortgage. It is an opportunity for average Kiwis to own their own homes. I remember some years ago when the mortgage interest rate was well into double figures and even then we were dreaming about buying our own homes—that quarter-acre section—or owning our own villas or townhouses. I remember a long time ago when somebody actually gave me big advice—that I should buy a home in Queenstown. The price was $30000. This was some years ago obviously. I thought: "Queenstown $30000—I could probably afford that." There were huge interest rates back then and the cost of flights to Queenstown was absolutely astronomical. I thought: "Who would actually go and live in Queenstown?". A few years ago that $30000 home sold for $3 million. So it is not just Auckland that has increasing house prices; it is what is called advancement. Todd Barclay: Even Gore's up. $208000—the average there. MELISSA LEE: Thank you Todd for contributing there. The issue is about the modernisation of cities. Global cities around the world are have housing issues. There is also the issue of people wanting to come back to this country. We used to have a problem with New Zealanders who did not want to live in New Zealand. They wanted to go across the Ditch or overseas because life was so difficult in New Zealand. Now we have people wanting to move back because New Zealand is such a great country. We should be celebrating that success—people thinking that New Zealand is doing great. We need to build more houses—we do actually admit that and we are doing that. The fact that this Government is building more houses than the previous Labour Government is a testament to that. During the previous debate on the Estimates—and I have to say that I have enjoyed the speeches of the Ministers and my colleagues from this side of this House particularly—I did not have time to raise the great work that Minister Joyce has been doing to support rural economic growth across New Zealand. His work as part of the Business Growth Agenda has been helping to revitalise job growth and better infrastructure around our regions. The regional programmes that the Minister and the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment have been working on are great. Just a few days ago at the start of this month my colleague from Kaikōura Stuart Smith and I met with a group of rural Korean students who are studying in different New Zealand regions as part of joint initiative between Education New Zealand and the South Korean Government's educational enterprises. It stems from the free-trade agreement (FTA) that was struck between Korea and New Zealand. There are about 150 students here and they are given the opportunity to experience New Zealand's rural lifestyle. In Korea the rural lifestyle is actually very different. The fact that we are giving them an opportunity to learn from New Zealand—and they will take their experience back to Korea—is something we are providing as part of the FTA. It is not just about trade. It is not just about the dollar signs or selling our products. We are also having people-to-people contact. The fact is that those students are living in Kiwi homes in homestays and they are also providing Korean culture and Korean etiquette. These are the things that they bring with them to the Kiwi families they encounter. When talking about those kinds of encounters I think I have to talk about the success of the tourism industry. The tourism industry is thriving in this country. I know that my colleague Jonathan Young talked about the people whom he had met and how wonderful it was that they have high regard for New Zealand. I have to also espouse the same experience when I recently took my son back to Korea. When they heard about the fact that we were from New Zealand they had these dreamy eyes. Apparently New Zealand is the dream location for their holiday plans especially with the issues of threats of terrorism in Europe and also recently in Asia—terrible things. People are frightened and they look to New Zealand as a safe place for them to travel to. It is such a wonderful environment where they can experience nature. They talk about the great rides the great walks and also the ability to ride their bicycles. There are more hotel rooms being booked. There are over 88000 more visitors from China alone visiting our country. There is more funding being made available for medium-sized tourism ventures such as the world-class cycle trails all over our country. There is $25 million in additional funding over the next 4 years to help those cycle trails deliver a world-class experience and other similar projects supported by this Government are helping to support local businesses local economies and grow New Zealand's economy as a whole. The Government has also invested an extra $37 million in upgrading the infrastructure that is underpinning and supporting growth in the tourism sector. Part of this funding is to help regional mid-sized facilities through a new fund that will help them to be able to enhance visitor opportunities to enjoy our nation and to grow the number of tourists both local and international visiting all parts of our great country. Supporting our tourism industry supports community well-being. It helps communities to grow in a healthy way where jobs create more houses create more local industries and also offer new opportunities to the people who live in those regions. A strong plan supporting the tourism industry in rural communities is a great initiative by this Government and one I am happy to support. Just on Saturday I was able to travel up to Whangarei to meet with my Korean community. I was accompanied by the wonderful MP for Whangarei Dr Shane Reti. One of the comments that the Korean community made was the wish to have more visitors coming up to Whangarei so those people can grow their businesses. I think tourism is something that we should encourage in all fields and we should encourage more infrastructure to be built in those regional cities also. I totally support that. One of the things that I talked about with the Korean community up in Whangarei was those people's ideas and views about how this Government is actually working and what they would like to see. One of the things they talked about was the new initiative in terms of provisional tax. Provisional tax has been a large burden on small businesses and they thought that this Government was doing a great job of introducing a way to reduce the burden for small businesses. They congratulated me on a job well done so I shall pass that on to the Minister who is introducing that measure. The Government's fiscal priorities have been to maintain rising surpluses and reduce net debt in this country. I think this National Government has actually delivered on that. The hope is that we can reduce debt to 20 percent of GDP by 2020 and work to reduce taxes and overall help Kiwi families and businesses to get ahead. I think we are in good heart. I commend these bills to the House."