Penk ChrisCHRIS PENK (National—Helensville): Thank you Mr Speaker for the chance to speak on this the appropriation bill. A few people on my side of the House have said that the Government has been spending like drunken sailors on shore leave. I am here to defend them—I mean of course the reputation of drunken sailors on shore leave. Speaking of drunken sailors I'd just like to point out to the House that I have no vested interest in this—I am no longer one of those things. To spend money like a drunken sailors on shore leave would imply a lot less than $100 billion. That would be one hell of a run ashore as they say. The price of a rum and Coke in Sydney in the early 2000s was pretty steep but it wasn't that steep and the cocktails in Singapore were eye-watering in cost as well as just eye-watering but $100 billion such as we're seeing now being appropriated—the top-up that this bill represents—is pretty considerable indeed. But the problem of course isn't about the fact of spending; it's the quality of the spending. It's not the spending like drunken sailors that is the issue in relation to investments being made. Indeed if the dollars that were being spent by the Government on behalf of all taxpayers current and future were being spent in the wisest possible way then we would have no objection. But it's the bad decision-making that's inherent in here. It's the detail that's in this bill but it's also the things that are not represented here in terms of a plan to get ourselves out of the hole that the country now finds itself in that the Opposition is honour-bound to bring to the attention of the country in this debate. I want to talk about shovel-ready projects. That's not a particular phrase that appears in the bill of course but more of a colloquial way of describing infrastructure that's at least supposedly ready to be rolled out. But that's really the point—that's the problem. So much that should be ready to go simply is not. So the appropriateness of the phrase shovel-ready projects" I'm afraid is that we've ended up in a big hole of debt and we're trying to dig our way out of it which anyone will be able to tell you is not the way to get out of a hole—we're going the wrong way. The "ready" bit of "shovel-ready" is also a problem. We've heard now about lots of different things that the Government's planned and lots of things that they've announced but not so much that they've delivered. If I look at my own area that I represent in north-west Auckland there's been talk of a light rail project there for at least three years now but only talk and we've gone backwards in the sense that not only is that project not going ahead now but the hard-working local MP who's been advocating for better public transport for the area has been told every time within the last three years that he goes to the authorities to seek a bit of investment in public transport infrastructure—which to be fair is a long-running longstanding problem—"Don't worry because light rail is on the way and any other project will not stack up in comparison with that. Hang on help is on its way any decade now." So the question as I say is not about spending per se; it's the quality of spending. Then my final theme on a related note would be about the question of the dollars and cents in this bill—I say "cents" but of course it's all rounded not only to the nearest $1000 and fair enough too. But there are some pretty big numbers—$10 billion here and $10 billion there soon adds up when you're talking about real money as the saying goes. So it's about the quality. It's about getting ourselves into a virtuous cycle whereby we'll be able to be placed more strongly in the years ahead and not in a weaker position for our children our grandchildren and future generations because that I fear is the overall impact of the bill whereby we're going to end up in a hole of debt without an obvious way of getting out certainly on the evidence of the bill that we see before us today."