Patterson MarkGENERAL DEBATEMARK PATTERSON (NZ First): I move That the House take note of miscellaneous business. On this side of the House we'd like to of course welcome back the Prime Minister from her stint of maternity leave and what a pleasure it is to have her back. We congratulate her on the birth of baby Neve. But of course in New Zealand First you can excuse us for having some mixed emotions because we really enjoyed having our leader the Rt Hon Winston Peters in our Acting Prime Minister role. What a fine job he did—40 years of public service and it certainly shows. You know on this side of the House that when you're being endorsed by Mike Hosking you're doing something pretty right! But of course it was absolutely fitting that it coincided with 25 years of him building and sustaining a political movement and it did go to emphasis the strength and depth of the leadership available to us on this side of the House.Of course now we've seen what the public think of Mr Bridges as he's had six months in the job and 70 public meetings up and down the country and he is going down. We on this side observe the slow inevitability of a slide towards a Judith Collins - led National Party in the 2020 election.And what about Mark Mitchell—what about Mark Mitchell? It's the worst-kept secret in Wellington isn't it—a cynical cynical ploy to split off a party. The voters will treat it with the contempt it would deserve. I think he needs to reflect and look across at the forlorn spectre of David Seymour because that would be his future. He too would be at short odds to be having to don the sequins do the paso doble and the twerk as he had to try to find some relevance and some profile.But all the while on this side of the House we are getting on with the job. We're grappling with addressing the big issues that have been denied in this country after nine years of drift. We are going to be a bold and transformative Government—importantly for all New Zealanders not just the top 10 percent. Look at our programme: $1 billion in R & D tax incentives as we look to add value and productivity; modern trade deals—the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership and pending deals with the EU and the UK; the $3 billion Provincial Growth Fund; and we've got the provincial champion Matua Shane" out there rebuilding and investing in our neglected regions. Economic development isn't just turning up and promising ten bridges in a by-election campaign. And of course there's the billion-trees strategy—a billion trees a nation-building project as we seek to meet our international commitments internally not outsourcing those by spending $1.4 billion of hard-earned taxpayers' money a year buying carbon credits.In other visionary stuff Ron Mark and his defence strategy paper—and wasn't it good to see a Government finally saying what it meant on defence delivering on the P-8s and restoring our military capability? Aren't the military pleased to see one of their own back in charge? While he will be judged maybe publicly on the P-8s I think the real measure of the man is the determination he has had to bring back those fallen soldiers whose families could not bring them back.There's housing that we're addressing in Auckland and Queenstown and all over New Zealand. We now have housing shortages in Balclutha and Invercargill. Nothing has highlighted this debate more than the overseas investment debate that we're having at the moment in the House because while we're putting 100000 houses in our KiwiBuild scheme to increase supply what about demand? We have more levers.Minister Parker is driving down demand by taking those foreign speculators out of the market and nothing shows the values on this side of the House and the contrast with that side of the House more than that debate. We have the National Party getting up and defending the rights of some of the wealthiest people in New Zealand based in Queenstown. We're on the side of the nurses the teachers and the policemen as we seek to make this country the property-owning democracy that that once-great National Party leader Sir Keith Holyoake talked about in the past.The National Party now are resorting to having to talk down the economy—and the news story from Dipton: "Tractor sales are at a 33-year high in Southland." Bill's not coming back but perhaps he's buying a tractor. But this is a real story; that's the real factor in our economy. This is a Government that's focused on building that and focusing on the big issues. Thank you."