Woodhouse Michael: Debate on Prime Minister’s StatementText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWoodhouse Michael: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement[Sitting date: 30 January 2014. Volume:696;Page:15731. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (Minister of Immigration): Well you know that it is election year do you not? I think we could set our watches by the first speech from New Zealand First—the yellow peril is back. That was the most disgraceful intervention I have ever heard in this House and that member Denis O’Rourke should be ashamed of himself. Every New Zealand First member should tell Denis O’Rourke to pipe down. It would be bad enough if it were true and none of it was true. So let me disavow the member of some of that irrational rant. They are not taking our houses they are not taking our land and they are not taking our jobs. They are important contributors to our economy. They add $2.7 billion a year to our GDP and—[Interruption]Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! The barrage has gone on long enough. Let us hear the debate.Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: I want to touch on a couple of the things that Mr O’Rourke did say especially in respect of the parents of Chinese immigrants coming here. He claims that the home-alone provisions or the centre-of-gravity provisions are allowing far more elderly Chinese in here and that they are having some kind of haven retirement experience. Well that might have been the case under the previous Government which was supported in confidence and supply by New Zealand First but this Government has changed that. Our immigration policies are very clearly tailored towards need so nothing could be further from the truth.I want to also tell the member that of the 70000 international students with work rights who are making a huge contribution to this economy—export education is the second-largest service export earner behind tourism and it employs 26000 New Zealand citizens and residents.Hon Member: How many?Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: 26000. But only one in five of the students who are here on work rights actually work. The opportunity to work is an importantmarketing strategy. Many of them are attracted by it but only one in five of them take it up. So here we have it—a disgraceful yellow peril speech from a party that would sell its own mother to support the Government in confidence and supply if it meant there was a ministerial position for Winston Peters. Now we know what the rhetoric is going to be.I was actually going to give Mr Mallard a bit of a hard time about talking in his intervention about the things that matter. Here we are with the Prime Minister’s statement to Parliament and Mr Mallard thinks the issues of the day are who leaked theKitteridge report whether we should change our flag the year we disposed of “God Save the Queen” and a speeding ticket Maurice Williamson got in the 1980s. That Mr Deputy Speaker and members of the public who are listening around the country is what Labour thinks are the issues of the 2014 election. So I say to Mr Mallard that he should go back out to the Hutt Valley and campaign on those things. He should campaign on Maurice Williamson’s speeding ticket and bringing back “God Save the Queen” and see how far it gets him.Hon Simon Bridges: The more campaigning he does the less votes he gets them.Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: Well that is right—that is right. He will be back in that box that Mr Cunliffe has built for him.I want to focus on a particular section of the Prime Minister’s statement that has a resonance with the citizens of my home city of Dunedin—a very important debate that is going on around the opportunities for natural resources. At the end of February—Denis O’Rourke: What about Hillside?Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: I will come that. I will come to that Mr O’Rourke. At the end of February Anadarko is going to be sending its new exploration ship theNobleBob Douglas which I think is actually off the coast of Taranaki doing some exploration right now. Taranaki is the province with the highest GDP per capita of any province in this country.Dr Cam Calder: “Taradise”.Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: It mixes three very important industries in this country. It mixes tourism—and it is a beautiful province second only to Otago I suggest Dr Calder—it has lots of dairying as does South Otago and Central Otago and it has oil and gas exploration. It is for those three reasons but in particular the natural resource opportunities that Taranaki has that its GDP is somewhere around $90000 per person per year.Otago’s GDP is lower. It is a student city—I accept that—and it also has a high proportion of elderly people so its GDP per capita will always be lower but it is certainly significantly below the national average. It has fantastic tourism and it has excellent dairy; it could also have a significant field of gas. I say “gas” because there is a lobby in Dunedin and in Otago that refers only to oil. I think that needs to be disavowed. The likelihood of finding oil is about 1 percent. There is a 99 percent chance that if there is a viable field in the Canterbury Basin the south end off the coast of Dunedin it will be gas.Gas is a transitional fuel. I think we all understand and commit to a world where we will be largely free of fossil fuels but that time is not now and it will be some time away. Gas is a transitional fuel. Its carbon emissions its greenhouse gas emissions are about half of liquid fuels like oil and petrol and probably almost a quarter of the emissions of solid fuels like coal. So exploring for gas as a transitional fuel for the next couple of generations is a very very important contributor to greenhouse gas reductions and also a very important contributor toOtago’s and New Zealand’s GDP.But there are some people who are blind to the opportunities and who are so blinded by ideology and not prepared to listen to the arguments in favour of it that they will flydown in their fossil-fuelled aircraft drive out to Port Chalmers in their fossil-fuelled cars get on their petrochemical-prepared kayaks and their wetsuits and their lifejackets and protest against any possibility of gas exploration off the coast of Dunedin.Hon Members: Who would do that?Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: Well Gareth Hughes was there. I saw Gareth Hughes.Dr Cam Calder: Surely not.Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: Yes he was part of the flotilla that floated out on a terrible day in Dunedin actually and I almost felt sorry for them. But I have to say there is another group in Dunedin and it is very much the silent majority and what a majority it is. What I am very pleased to report is that they are gathering their voice and in response to that flotilla a simple Facebook page was set up. I note that it might not have been able to be set up had David Clark been a member of the Government but there you go. That is a brainy strategy is it not! The member of Parliament for Dunedin North—with 21000 university students in Dunedin—comes out and says he would not rule out the possibility of shutting Facebook down. Well thank you David. I think that was worth a few hundred votes just that one comment.Hon Member: Did he really say that?Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: Well he has backtracked. I must say he has backtracked. He is now not comparing Facebook to paedophile websites but that was it. So anyway we have a Facebook page set up. It is calledProGas Otago and it has over 3000 people already signed up. That does not include of course any of the people who do not use Facebook. That is just the people in Dunedin who say: “Look we have got to explore this opportunity and not look the gift-horse in the mouth. It could be a long time coming if indeed there is a viable field but we couldn’t turn down that opportunity.” I am very pleased to say that that voice is growing and it is growing larger every single day.I made a speech in this House 18 months ago where I committed myself to the safe and viable exploration of gas off the coast of Dunedin and I called on city leaders to do the same. At least we are having that discussion. There are sadly some people who are—I do not mind that people do not have the same view as me but I do worry that people have an unwillingness to listen to another side and have a reinvention of facts. As the former National member of Parliament for Dunedin North the late Richard Walls said: “I’ll give you the chance to have your own opinion—that’s fine—but you can’t have your own facts.” and I think that that is really where we are getting to. We are getting to a situation where both sides are talking past each other and not listening to the other.I am listening very carefully to the other side particularly in respect of the environmental risks and I note that the Government has significantly increased the risk management and the legal framework to be able to control the risks of exploration. They are far far stronger than they were under the previous Government. I call on every person in Dunedin to listen very carefully to both sides of the argument to come to their conclusions and to articulate their views to their city leaders. I am listening very carefully. I think it is an important discussion and I really very much hope that the city which I am confident is going to get very much behind gas exploration in the region will let its views be heard.As the Minister of Energy and Resources has said I think we have got about 18 possible viable fields for exploration and if any one or two or three of those get to the point where they can be safely mined a significant contribution to our GDP will be able to occur. I do not often agree with many of the things that Labour’s finance spokesperson says but I certainly agree with him that a long-term strategy to reduce ourbalance of payments deficit and our current account deficit is important. One of the ways we can do that is of course with import substitution and I am very glad to see that Labour has come out and supported that exploration plan.