Foster AndyANDY FOSTER (NZ First): Mr Speaker thank you. This is the first general debate I think since the election. It was a historic election where you had a single-party Government for the first time under MMP and it managed to lose half of its members—half of its members—in one fell swoop. It was swept from power. Now I guess you could say that in the wake of that the Leader of the Opposition said that they needed to take a good hard look at themselves in the mirror and say What went wrong?" Well they don't seem to have started that process at the moment so maybe we will help them out. Jamie Arbuckle: They need a very big mirror. ANDY FOSTER: They do need a very big mirror but maybe we will help them out just a little bit. New Zealanders quite clearly wanted change. They wanted change and we actually made a pretty big change this morning. They wanted change from overbearing controlling centralising Government. They didn't like that at all. They didn't like their assets being taken away from their local councils and taken away by central government. They didn't—Shanan Halbert: That was you when you were mayor Andy. ANDY FOSTER: Well we didn't like that either. They were suffering under a high cost of living and we're working very very hard to deal with that. High inflation high interest rates brought on—oh we know now that it's not really driven by international inflation rates. It's driven by domestic rates. It's driven by too much spending and what did that give us? Not a lot apart from a lot of debt and a lot of pain. Far too much money was spent by that Government. New Zealanders were also concerned about poor economic performance. All of those things go together to make poor economic performance and we need to lift that. They recognised our failures in education. They recognised that far too many of our young people weren't at school. Far too many of our young people weren't learning the things that they need to learn to make sure that they are equipped for life not only as New Zealanders but as international citizens. They recognised the failures in health—I mean crikey we had a pandemic. You'd think that was a real focus on health. What did we do? We actually sent medical professionals back home to wherever they came from because we couldn't find it within ourselves to keep them here in this country. We didn't try. We squandered opportunities there. We squandered a lot of opportunities in our health catastrophe to look at our health system. Our people recognised the division in our society. You could see the numbers. The polling said that we were more divided than ever before. Our people recognised that. Today we've removed the divisive three waters—divisive for many reasons. Divisive because the Labour Government beat up on councils; divisive because of the way in which people from different ethnicities were treated in different ways. We're also working very hard to put together—and we're consulting on this—an inquiry into COVID. Why are we doing that? Because a lot of people suffered from that as well. They felt divided they felt alienated and that's why we saw people out on the Parliament lawns. They felt alienated by their own Government which didn't listen to them. There's a big big mirror to be looked at and that's why we're engaging on a proper COVID inquiry; not a butt-covering exercise. The three coalition members have come together and we are delivering at speed on what we promised. Actually we heard from the Hon Deborah Russell just a few moments ago about there being far too many things in the first 100 days but remember it is the first 100 days. It's not three years it's not six years nine years or 12 years. It's the first 100 days that are negative—they say they are negative and that we are getting rid of things. But I always thought that a negative negative was positive and why are we doing that? Because we've got to get rid of those things before they confuse the people—it doesn't matter who it is—who have got to implement something that the previous Government has put in place that we don't want to carry on. You know why would you want them to do new planning rules why would you want them to do new water systems—why would you want any of those things? Why not get rid of them straight away clean the slate and be able to move ahead—and that's exactly what we're doing. That's why there's quite a few repeals and getting rid ofs and stops but then there'll be the starts and we're looking forward to doing that. I am privileged to be the chair of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee and what we really really need—Tangi Utikere: Oh good committee—good committee. ANDY FOSTER: And Tangi it's great to have you on there. It's very very clear that we have an infrastructure deficit. What is not clear is that it is not just about how much money we spent but how well we spend it how efficiently we spend it and how effective we are about what we choose to do. So the first thing is whether we are investing in the right things and we've got to make sure that we are investing in the right things. We've got to make sure that we have good business cases behind those things. We've got to make sure that we have the workforce to deliver those things. What we know is that our construction industry actually has not been improving in productivity and we have to be laser-focused on making sure that we are more efficient and more effective because we want to increase living standards. It's just not good enough to throw more and more people and more and more resources at something; we have to get more and more out of that. We need to have the right signals and make sure that we remove the inefficiencies from that area. So I am delighted to be part of this Government. We are going to make massive changes in our community for our community and I'll just finish off by saying that it's really not about us and it's really not about members opposite but it's about what we together can do to make our wonderful country a much much better place a much more productive place and a much more prosperous place for us all to live in."