Woodhouse MichaelHon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): In contrast to my parliamentary colleague Chlöe Swarbrick and my National Party colleague Alastair Scott this isn't my last contribution in urgency. I will be delivering some potboilers between now and midnight I have no doubt and then into the morning and we will be debating right the way through to the end of the session. So I'm going to save the tearful farewells till later on for you Madam Speaker.I've got to say in respect of this bill a bill we support and particularly in respect of the elements that support businesses to sustain themselves through a difficult period—there is a theme emerging from this Government and it's all about COVID. It's everything to do with COVID. I haven't yet heard a satisfactory explanation as to why because of a five-week lockdown the massive machinery of State-owned enterprises cannot deliver their annual reports within the statutory deadlines already prescribed in law. Because on the face of it it looks like this is an important thing to be doing but nobody's actually explained why it is that these multi-hundred-million-dollar companies don't have the wherewithal or the machinery to actually meet their statutory obligations. They kept going through the lockdown and we have been out of lockdown now for months. And so we're now saying that a financial year end of 30 of June for our council-controlled organisations for our councils for our State-owned enterprises—they are in such parlous shape from a financial reporting perspective that they can't meet their statutory deadlines. I would be very interested to hear from the Minister in his second reading speech actually why this is because we've heard an awful lot of the because of COVID" excuse from the Government for delay. I note that the Auditor-General in his report on the management of the Provincial Growth Fund (PGF) said that because of effectively a five-week lockdown a plan to analyse the benefits of PGF projects is going to be delayed by 15 months. Well I mean nobody's actually got under the bonnet of this and said "Why?" Why is it "because of COVID" when we're now free and clear and we're back into the rugby stadiums and we're back into our workplaces we're back into our bars and restaurants and it is effectively on a day-to-day basis business as usual? Do we actually need all of the technical amendments that we are providing? We're doing it under agency so we're not going to get the answers from officials necessarily but I do think it behoves us to not just say "because of COVID" which becomes an excuse for every single delay the Government wants to put in place. It may be appropriate. As an accountant I can't think of a reason why these very large organisations—with machinery that went through the financial reporting process and all of the other statutory obligations that they have in companies law and in the Public Finance Act—actually need the sorts of extensions that we're granting them. So my support for this and my party support for this has to be caveated with an approach that says: when we do this stuff we have to do it for a reason and haven't seen a good reason yet.DEPUTY SPEAKER: I call the Hon—oh I call Greg O'Connor."