Craig LizDr LIZ CRAIG (Labour): Just in response to the member opposite's conversation about targets I'd just like to point out some of the limitations of the previous Government's targets where month after month they monitored waiting times for emergency department presentations but what they failed to account for were the 40000 hospital admissions every year for children with poverty-related diseases and their not actually thinking about the consequences of the previous Government's policies on those children and their lives.What I want to talk about today is just reflecting on some of the Prime Minister's comments in her speech on Tuesday because what she was talking about was the fact that the Government had to make a choice about the way they governed. What she was saying was that they could make a choice about governing the way the previous Government did—taking no risks; just governing year after year; deferring the challenges which we call kicking the can down the road; and just doing governing—versus taking that strong leadership and tackling those big challenges that lie ahead not just for the next three years but for the next 30.Looking back on what we've done over the last 12 months I'm really proud that we've taken that choice that the Prime Minister made to lead because I look at all of the things that we've done in housing and for our children and our health system. But the other thing is I look at the challenges that lie ahead in terms of building those new houses so people can get warm dry homes and in terms of making sure people can access those hospital systems and I'm still pleased that we took the Prime Minister's approach because even though achieving change is difficult the consequences of delayed action are much much more dire.I think for me looking at what's happening where I live in Invercargill the best illustration of the consequences of a hands-off approach is what's happening to our New River Estuary. What's happened there is year after year we've just done the same business-as-usual. What's been happening is year after year we've had sediments and nutrient from upstream agriculture pouring into our estuary. We've had our sewage discharging untreated waste water into the estuary. We've had stormwater mixed up with raw sewage going into the estuary because of the state of our pipes. We've had rubbish. We've had leachate from the old rubbish dump. We've reached a point now in our estuary where it's completely tipped so basically what we're seeing now is just huge thick deep mud that's smothering everything.I just want to read you something from one of our recent reports. It says that in the most significant areas of oxygen depletion in the highly eutrophic areas of the Waihopai and Daffodil Bay the sediments were often characterised by strong odours of sulphur and when disturbed near water released black sulphide rich plumes." Looking at our beautiful estuary that used to have that beautiful white sand and rocks going down to the water where people use to swim now covered with black thick mud the problem is that year after year resource consents were issued and year after year we just continued business-as-usual. The reports kept coming but nobody stopped to think about the impact of what all that was doing to our environment. I think the problem is that we've got a lot of other areas around our country that are getting to the same point. They're like an estuary that's tipped—that's at a point now where doing nothing is just not an option.On the freshwater quality point I'm proud to be part of a Government that's going to take strong action and that's going to develop strong environmental standards and a national policy statement for fresh water. But thinking about the same situation we've got in housing where we've reached that tipping point and now all those kids are coming into hospitals with poverty-related diseases I'm proud of what we've done over the last 12 months. We've stopped that sale of State houses. We are starting to rebuild some new ones. In Invercargill we're having that conversation about how we can all work together to get those homes built as quickly as possible so that people can have warm dry homes.But also in our health system we've made some huge changes. We're making it much much more affordable for community services card holders to go and see the GP. We're increasing the wages for a lot of our health staff and we're looking at putting that huge investment back into those hospital buildings that have been let go for so long. We've just got so many other areas where we've got to move forward and where we've got to that point where we've reached the tipping point and we've got those huge issues we've got to grapple with. But as a Government instead of doing nothing we're taking that lead. We're making that decision to tackle those issues not just for the next three years but for the next 30. So I'm proud to be a Government that's been so active in the last 12 months and working hard for the years ahead. Thank you."