Prosser RichardRICHARD PROSSER (NZ First): I am not normally a religious man but tonight I find myself thanking God or the gods that this Budget debate the appropriations debate is almost over—that the pain and suffering that has been inflicted—Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: You should try sitting up here sonny.RICHARD PROSSER: —I do feel for you Mr Deputy Speaker—on our ears and sensibilities from the rampant sycophancy spewing forth from the Government benches is almost over. I thank the same gods however many there may be that this appalling diabolical Budget is Steven Joyce's first last and only Budget because come 23 September or the morning of the 24th we will be rejoicing in the fact that we will not be re-Joyce-ing".Hon Members: Aw!RICHARD PROSSER: Hey you have got to work with what you have got all right? You have got to work with what you have got. It is always a delight to follow on from the most affable amiable chair of the Primary Production Committee Ian McKelvie as I am sure you would agree Mr Deputy Speaker but I do have to pick up on something that Mr McKelvie said. He talked about the National Government creating 200000 jobs against the rhetoric where the Government also says that it does not create jobs industry does. Those 200000 jobs—how many extra people has this country managed to absorb in the time that those 200000 jobs have been created? Over 9 years—we have about 50000 school leavers every year so if we are not creating at least 50000 new jobs every year never mind immigration at 70000 a year we are going backwards. And of course if we look at the rates of young people not in education employment or training and we look at the numbers of people who are being shifted from one benefit to another or being classed as working when they are doing 1 hour a week moving statistics around we are going backwards.Getting back to the almighty because we do start every session in this House with a prayer—and that is a fine thing in my estimation—Labour will obviously be praying for redemption the Greens will be praying for a miracle and the Nats will obviously be praying for rain on election day because that might actually the only thing that they have going for them that might save them. Mr Bishop when he spoke talked about uncertain times and the fact that we live in uncertain times. Well yes we do and that is obviously pertinent to the members on the National benches. I imagine that any number of them are looking around in these uncertain times and contemplating prayer wondering which 15 of them are not coming back after the election.If you look at the polls and the polls are where they are because of what is actually happening in this country due to the Budget—not the spin not the rhetoric not the mix-and-match statistics not the pick and mix and highlight what you want but what is actually happening out there to real people out in real New Zealand who are suffering and who have been suffering since 1984 since the reforms brought in by the Rogernomics Government of Labour carried on by the "Ruthanasia" Government of National this neoliberal continuation of an experiment for which New Zealand was the great global guinea pig which has not created any kind of a trickle down apart from the one that has something to do with doing something down my back and telling me it is raining—those members over there I would imagine are concerned about Mr Joyce's Budget and the effect that it will have on their future career prospects.New Zealand First is praying also. We are praying that after the election we have sufficient time to repair New Zealand's biosecurity network before foot-and-mouth strikes because otherwise we going to get hit with the blame for it despite the fact that we have spent the past 6 years telling the National Government what is wrong with biosecurity and what needs to be done to repair it. We have argued about its great border levy that it talks about imposing on tourists. It is fine that tourists coming in should pay something towards the biosecurity costs of vetting them but it is not fine that that is simply a replacement revenue stream and not actually a new revenue stream or that in a country where three-quarters of our economy comes from the primary sector we spend a paltry $248 million out of about that same number of billion dollars on securing the border against the things that promote the greatest threats to that industry and that income on which we all depend.Minister Upston when she spoke talked about forestry and I want to touch on that too. It was with great pride that Minister Upston talked about the forestry sector employing 26000 people and earning $5 billion in export receipts. Going back to 1980 the forestry sector employed 25000 in the processing sector alone. There were more than 100000 involved in forestry in total. So in 37 years we have lost 75000 jobs from the forest and wood product sector. Try telling people in Tokoroa and Rotorua and Murupara people who used to work in mills in towns that used to be mill towns and that are now ghost towns because all that timber is going offshore in the form of logs as some kind of a sop to the free market because this Government cannot see the nonsense in exporting a primary product like timber with six-sevenths of its value still contained within it. The $5 billion in exports most of it from logs could be $25 billion if we were processing it here and it could be employing another 70000 or 80000 people in the very parts of middle New Zealand that need that employment most. But do we see anything in this Budget promoting that? No we do not.Go back to 1980 again. Go to Indonesia. In 1980 something like 80 percent of Indonesia's forest output went to Japan in the form of logs and the Japanese turned it into plywood. And then in 1984 the Indonesian Government imposed a 700 percent export tax on logs and the log trade died overnight. The Japanese plywood producers said: "Oh my God what we do? We can't get logs from anywhere else. Oh perhaps we'll have to buy plywood from Indonesia instead." Four years later those figures were completely reversed and Indonesia went from supplying 4 percent of the world's plywood to supplying 84 percent of the plywood coming out of Asia. That was done by one stroke of a pen. It was done by the Indonesians 35 years ago; it can be done in New Zealand now. There is no reason why not apart from this National Government's slavish adherence to a proven failed neoliberal ideology that puts the rest the world first and New Zealand last for the sake of something that really after 30-something years I cannot imagine why it is still holding on to.Why is it doing this? People out in the provinces people out in real New Zealand are telling us that this is what is happening. Drive through those mill towns those ghost towns. Look at those closed-down mills. There is a mill not far from where I used to live in North Canterbury. It is a Daiken Corporation particle board mill at Sefton just up the road from Ashley. It does make value-added products but it is owned by the Japanese. It seems that it is fine for this Government for us to have a processing industry as long somebody else owns it as long as all the profits go offshore. It cannot see the wood for the trees. It cannot see the wood for the trees.If we look at the other things that are going wrong in biosecurity we know about the Mycoplasma bovis. We do not know how it got here but we know that it did. We know about myrtle rust. We do not know how it got here but we know that it did. All these marvellous things that are said about the intelligence and about the technology that is going into the border that is going to make the border more secure—there is more intelligence there is more money being spent technologically—things are still getting through it. The latest one is lake snow. It is a relative of "rock snot" another import. The genetic basis of lake snow does not exist in the Southern Hemisphere apart from the southern lakes of New Zealand. It got in somehow through our amazing border systems. All the rhetoric in the world will not stop foot-and-mouth coming into this country. What will stop it is proper inspection.The green lane that lets people come into this country if they have certain passports without any kind of inspection did not meet the Ministry for Primary Industries' target of 98.5 percent compliance. It was the most compliant of all the channels by which people come into this country but it did not meet 98.5 percent and even if it had over the last 4 years with the volume of passengers going through that lane 135000 things will have come through the border that should not have. One simple X-ray machine for everyone's baggage with modern technology that can detect biological material and some sniffers would stop that. It does not take many more boots on the ground but it does take an acceptance and an acknowledgment that we cannot rely on fancy computer models or intelligence officers stationed overseas or anything but doing what actually needs to be done and that is putting proper resourcing into biosecurity which is the most important part of this country's economic defence and doing it the right way and inspecting everything that comes in. There is nothing in this dreadful diabolical Budget to address that apart from rhetoric and spin and false statistics. Come 24 September that regime will come to an end and New Zealand First will come to the rescue. We only hope it is soon enough. Thank you."