McKelvie IanIAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei): Thank you Mr Speaker. Well I certainly won't be going into the territory the last speaker Jamie Strange went into. That's well beyond me.The last three months have been very interesting for a backbench MP from the heart of rural New Zealand as the consortium of three have taken over the Government benches—and I congratulate them on that. I'm very pleased with the two portfolios I've been allocated. One relates to seniors which I guess is appropriate for me. The other is veterans which could be said to be appropriate to me too but it's not in fact.In fact I was very interested in listening to the speech of the Minister of Defence as he pinned his medals to the mast so to speak or in my case pinned his medals to the aircraft wings". In fact I live very close to Ōhākea and I also have in the Rangitīkei electorate the Ōhākea Linton army and the Waiōuru bases—and Irirangi of course which most people don't know but it is a navy base smack in the middle of the Rangitīkei which is a bit amazing to imagine. But defence is very clearly close to the heart of all those in the Rangitīkei.It will be interesting to see how the legislative programme to be announced by the Government in the next few days does impact on I guess senior citizens in New Zealand—those holders of the gold card—and certainly how it will impact on veterans as well. I guess the other challenge for that sector of our community will come tonight in the early debate on the euthanasia bill and that clearly has a different impact on older people in my view than it does on perhaps where it could get to with respect to other parts of our community.I want to speak a little bit about the concerns that the people in the Rangitīkei have with the direction of the new Government. I think that concern is because of the unknown not necessarily because of what we know. I think that when you consider that a large part of the electorate relies heavily on water the environment the dairy industry and the agricultural sector it will be very interesting to see where the Ministry of Primary Industries (MPI) gets to—and I see the Minister sitting over there—with this reform or sort of partial reform I suppose of MPI and its bits and how they are placed. MPI clearly is very important to our sector and it's going to be very interesting to see where that gets to—very important for us as well.I think it will be interesting from an environmental perspective to see where the Government gets to with a lot of that stuff because it is a pretty challenging issue—for our hill country particularly; I think our dairy sectors have done very well in that area. The other area that's of particular concern to people in the Rangitīkei electorate will be around our trade and the opportunities that are impacted or could be impacted by potential policy there.I don't know what the outcome's going to be there and I hope it's all positive. I imagine it will be all positive. We've seen ironically the dollar drop a little which has helped exporters to some extent but of course it's increased significantly some import costs for the agricultural sector most noticeably fuel. We've also seen a bit of a drop in business confidence which whilst not reflected in any sales figures that I've seen to date I think is none the less cause for nervousness around the investment sector—certainly nervousness around investment decisions in agriculture.I think the other area that's going to be of particular interest to the agricultural sector will be where we get to with the conditions on foreign investment in agriculture and foreign investment in farmland. I think that's going to be a challenging issue for us because clearly land prices are fairly important to agriculture and we certainly need to maintain a level of stability in that area.It would be a great pity I think to see provincial New Zealand retreat once again as in the past couple of years we in the Rangitīkei—and I'm sure many other parts of New Zealand—have seen our small towns rebuilding our employment figures improving dramatically on the back of the construction sector to some extent. Our deferred maintenance—that's quite an interesting point because an awful lot of deferred maintenance has created a lot of work in provincial New Zealand. I think that's very encouraging for the country because it certainly means that there's a much brighter future for provincial rural New Zealand than perhaps we've seen in the past. The environmental factors of course are another area where I guess you could say deferred maintenance or deferred expenditure is making quite a difference.Tourism is going very well in the Ruapehu district to the north of my electorate which ironically is heavily reliant on work visas and immigrants. In a growing economy this is essential for our future.The other two issues I want to very quickly talk about are the Manawatū Gorge—critical to my region. There was an announcement made this morning that has delayed the decision. I think that's positive because I think they're probably considering some options that I think are preferable to perhaps some of the earlier options that were talked about. I think we'll get a good decision—well I hope we get a good decision—out of that. The other one is the Ōhākea air force base which of course there have been some negotiations with Singapore on and I think for our future in the Rangitīkei-Manawatū area I think it's most important that we get to a base with that. Thank you sir."