Kuriger BarbaraBARBARA KURIGER (National—Taranaki - King Country): Thank you Mr Speaker. Well there's nothing like a Labour Minister standing there spending his five minutes of general debate talking all about the National Party. That means that the Labour Government has got absolutely zero to talk about. If you hadn't put so many working groups in place and had set your mind to the task you might have had more to say about your own Labour Government Mr Hipkins. Our polling is good but nothing—nothing—is going right with this Government and all we hear about is the overseas effects on the economy. We are a small country at the bottom of the world as Grant Robertson has been reminding us about our previous leader's quote. We are a small country at the bottom of the world and yes we are affected by overseas but actually those are the bits that we can't control; we only need to mitigate against them. There are so many things that are coming internally for our economy from this Government that have got nothing to do with the rest of the world and unfortunately this Government's not owning up to their own problems.So I'll start off with the oil and gas. We all know that that's going to have a huge effect on our economy—and by the way it's going to have a negative effect on climate change because I've been to the ports of Auckland and I see more coal coming into this country. It's not a myth; it's actually a fact and it's reality and it's going to get worse under this Government. I had an interesting experience last week when I happened to open my Facebook page. When this party was in Government Simon Bridges as Minister of Transport did a rural road safety programme worth $600 million and I had been with him on various roads that were opened as they were made safe on rural roads. Well last week it took the Prime Minister two Ministers and one backbench MP to go and put on hard hats and safety jackets and a cone on the road to stand and make a road safety announcement in my electorate on a road that I had been driving on for nearly two years which Simon Bridges had already done. So if this Government's going to be authentic please make your own announcements on your own roads that need fixing. By the way while we're talking about roads in the general debate I've heard the Prime Minister and the Minister of Transport both talk about doing Mt Messenger. Please make sure that happens because we are waiting. So another thing with this Government—and of course we have a three-part Government here. If we're talking about rural communities rural communities in large part drive our economy and the one billion trees programme is hassling our communities at the moment like you wouldn't believe. This is a massive number a big pork-barrel politics episode that's got no strategy with it at all. Now the National Party is on board with planting trees and we're on board with mitigating climate change but actually it's got to be the right tree for the right place. No one's thought about the rural roads when it comes to logging these and has anybody thought about what the timber prices might be when we actually go to do something with them? It's just a pork-barrel scattergun piece of politics with absolutely no strategy. We already know that rural schools are closing and it's going to have a very detrimental effect on our rural communities. The other thing that's a bit interesting at the moment is the vehicle taxes on electric vehicles. If any of the members of the Government ever visit rural New Zealand they will find that there are many utes out there and utes are a massive requirement for running our rural businesses. You cannot cart large round bales around on little Suzuki Swifts. It's very difficult—in fact it's close to impossible and how many electric utes do we see out there at the moment? This Government is having an effect on our economy not the global economy. We do have to trade. We do have an effect from the globe but actually if we're going to get methane taxes being pushed at us if we're going to get ute taxes being pushed at us if we're going to have trees destroying our rural communities and have the schools destroyed that our children are going to then actually it's going to be the actions of this Government and New Zealand cannot afford this Government. Thank you Mr Speaker.