Lee MelissaMELISSA LEE (National): Thank you Madam Speaker. Over the past several weeks I have been travelling right around New Zealand talking digital connectivity and hearing stories from people—whether it's businesses or local communities at the pubs and restaurants—about their digital exclusion. From Mosgiel to Westport to Ross to Hokitika even on the North Shore of Auckland there are stories time and time again of people not having the digital support and the connectivity issues that they face day to day. Considering the fact that it is 2022 when people are talking about gigabytes and terabytes some people are struggling with dial-up speeds. One in five New Zealanders faces digital exclusion—that's extremely high—for one reason or another. It can be geographical it can be accessibility issues it can also be socio-economic and it can be because of the changing world I guess. Particularly people in the disability sector people who have disabilities are some of the hardest-hit communities—also the elderly community. Elderly New Zealanders particularly in the rural communities are excluded as Government and services withdraw from their small towns in New Zealand. They cannot even activate their EFTPOS or credit cards or do their transactions due to the lack of connectivity or worse the tyranny of distance to their nearest bank.Rural New Zealanders face kilometre after kilometre of no mobile coverage on our State highways. On regional roads in short if they crash and have an accident if they're injured they could be walking or actually limping for hours before they could get to the next cell signal so that they can make a 111 phone call. This is absolutely disgraceful in 2022. The Government should do better. Our State highways stretch over 11000 kilometres and actually over 20 percent of this our national road network has no connectivity—20 percent of our roads have no connectivity. This has to be addressed. Only 36 percent of State Highway 94 for instance will have mobile coverage by next August; right now it's only about 15 percent. The road from Te Ānau to Gore for Southlanders is a death trap due to the lack of connectivity. State Highway 6 is 1162 kilometres long it stretches the breadth of the South Island and I travelled much of it recently actually during the recess from Westport to Ross. Over 40 percent of it has no connectivity. Even when the black spot coverage roll-out is complete next September there will be stretches culminating of 186 kilometres of roading that will remain without telecommunication services.Madam Speaker I'd just like to take this opportunity to thank you as the chairperson of the Petitions Committee for supporting me in having the topic of digital exclusion be debated in a special debate coming up on 28 July as determined by the Business Committee today. I'd like to thank the Citizens Advice Bureau of New Zealand for bringing this topic because it was heard in the Petitions Committee.Elderly communities face these issues every day whether it's actually cheques not being accepted or the fact that as I mentioned their bank cards and EFTPOS cards cannot even be activated because they cannot get to the bank to activate it because the banks have closed in their small towns and they have no internet connection to even do any banking from their rural homes—the tyranny of distance: the fact that they can't even connect to their digital cell sites; the fact that they don't even get a tsunami warning if they happen to be living in a place like Dunollie which I have actually mentioned in this House before.Digital connectivity in a world where the Minister of the digital economy is actually sitting in the House looking down—but he needs to fix these issues for New Zealand. National believes that the future is digital and everyone every single person in New Zealand must have the tools they need to be part of our digital world. No one should be left behind. It is a failure of this Government to not deliver better faster. Do better please.