Leary IngridINGRID LEARY (Labour—Taieri): Thank you Madam Speaker. I'm delighted to tell you about the Hillside railway workshops and how they are transforming South Dunedin but perhaps more importantly what economic benefits they open up for the region. In doing so I'd just like to acknowledge the late Jim Kelly from the Rail and Maritime Transport Union—which I am a member of—who worked so tirelessly for the revitalisation of the workshops and I also acknowledge my predecessor the Hon Claire Curran.In 2012 the previous National Government said that they were going to effectively close down Hillside and 90 jobs were lost. That was quite a different feeling from the days of 1935 when there were 800 workers working in the workshops to help build train carriages. Many of my constituents are descendants of those workers so there was a real sense of pessimism and depression in the area. But thanks to investment by our Government of $105 million over several Budgets the wagon assembly will be revitalised and now we can see the visible difference on the skyscape in South Dunedin. We can see buildings going up.I was walking through there recently with the Minister of Finance the Hon Grant Robertson and then again with the Prime Minister and there is just a great sense of excitement. There are men and women construction workers. There are about 200 construction jobs happening to make the workshops come to fruition and the lead contractor I'm very proud to say is Calder Stewart based in my electorate in Milton who have got a fantastic track record for doing this type of work. When Hillside is up and running the locomotive mechanical workshop will be able to work on 21 locomotives at one time and it will be able to assemble 1500 wagons over three years. There will be 45 new jobs 10 percent of which will be through apprenticeships or trainees and when the office block is finished there'll be 170 staff on site. So the future is looking bright and parts of Hillside will be operational next year.But what I think is so exciting is that this speaks to the revitalisation of rail generally. I am hoping it means that we will eventually see a strategy around port and rail that will see the South Island able to act autonomously so if we get border closures such as through events like COVID we will be able to have alternative ports and rail for New Zealand to be able to continue those supply chains. My dream for my electorate is to have an inland port such as what we've seen in Hamilton with the work that my colleague Jamie Strange did there to help get that investment happening. That is a real game-changer. It means we can get trucks off the road. At the moment we've got trucks coming into Dunedin at the rate of about one every eight minutes I'm told by one of the unions. The port is creaking with the logs that are there and we are seeing excavation happening in the port as the big ships come in to try and move those logs off. In order for this to happen I do think there will be need to be a streamlining of consenting because there is a willingness across the electorate to have some kind of inland port but there's a number of consents that have to be gone through and when people have a vested interest—such as Dunedin City Council or the Invercargill City Council—in having a port they may not necessarily support an inland port which is a great proposition. So I think perhaps in the future we could look at economic development and at streamlining that so that electorates like mine can take advantage of it. The other element to all of this is just rail and the part that Hillside in particular has played in the history of South Dunedin. We have a fantastic industrial heritage story and I'm really proud that KiwiRail has committed to keeping one of the buildings. It's using what's called I think the 1920 building"—but it was actually built in the 1870s—as a storage site. That's fantastic. There is another managers' building that's being used by the unions which has got a little bit of a question mark over it and negotiations are ongoing with a local group about whether that building or parts of it can be saved. I'm really keen that the story of that building is kept alive and well and I'm really grateful to KiwiRail for the engagement that they've had with the local community. It's just all a great-news story. Hillside Workshops are transforming South Dunedin."