O'Connor GregGREG O'CONNOR (Labour—Ōhāriu): Anyone can run a surplus if you don't pay the bills and don't do the maintenance. Now a really stark example of that is you might listen to Mr Bishop's speech and he's a very articulate young man and he can put together a good argument because he's a good debater but it doesn't mean he's right. Your ability to put an argument bears no relationship to the truth of the argument. Actually there are two things about that list of projects that he went through. One was that most of them were election promises and were never funded and it was something that you waived. Not long after the 2017 election as you drove around the country there were a lot of billboards there that had been put up by the National Party and those billboards all said Oh we were going to build a road here we were going to build a road there." No they weren't. None of those projects were far off from being a press release. There were many projects but they certainly hadn't been funded which brings us to the matter of how those roads of national significance and those other projects had been funded. Hon David Bennett: Point of order Madam Speaker. Now I don't want to create a debating point with the member but he said that none had been funded and that's incorrect. Actually the Cambridge highway was funded—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Yeah that is not a point of order. Hon David Bennett: But—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): That is not a point of order. The member will resume his seat. Before the debate recommences and I call Greg O'Connor can I just invite the House to return a little more closely to the Investment Statement. I have allowed a degree of latitude but I think the debate is now getting to the point where it is getting a little too wide and so I'm going to invite members speaking to return very much to the principles of the Investment Statement. GREG O'CONNOR: Thank you Madam Speaker. I was about as you spoke to move towards the pertinence of this because when I did come into Parliament—and many of us come here. We've been on all sorts of walks of life and some of us have been involved in running reasonably major businesses but wherever we've came from we got to know the industry we were in. So we arrive here and certainly in my case I was I suppose somewhat enthused and confident to find that we did have things like this Investment Statement that we did have a broad overview of where the country is going where we sit on our balance sheet and how much we owe and—more importantly—that we were taking a long-term view because that had been the problem. I've just come from a meeting where there was a very enthusiastic group who are looking to get a rail line built a historic passenger line into Tauranga. Now that's a great initiative and good on them—very enthusiastic. But when the discussion that we have is only about one part of what needs to be a joined-up piece of engineering a joined-up piece of infrastructure there we come to the problem and while it's important that we do have an Investment Statement really it's about ensuring that we are joined up. So if for example we build some flash new roads—which Chris Bishop the previous speaker talked about—that's all very well. You can have a multimillion-dollar opening for the Waterview Tunnel but the problem of course is where did that money come from? It came from the maintenance budget. Right now and this was one of the things we didn't hear as a Government when we arrived—this very much comes to the Investment Statement that we're talking about here today Madam Speaker—was that all of a sudden the maintenance hadn't been done. So you have these flash new roads going nowhere because if you drive on the safest highway in New Zealand and all of a sudden you're on potholes because nobody's had any money to do it—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! The member will not bring the Chair into the debate. GREG O'CONNOR: Sorry Madam Speaker? ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): The member will not bring the Speaker into the debate. GREG O'CONNOR: Oh sorry Madam Speaker. I hadn't been aware that I had but I'll certainly be very careful of that. So if we do allow ourselves to focus and even if I look at what's going to be happening this year in local body elections we're going to get a whole lot of potential mayors potential councillors and they'll all be up there promising flashy stuff—all the stuff that the wekas love and that the magpies love. No one will be getting up there and saying "We're going to build better infrastructure. We're going to build better sewers. We're going to build better water." because that's not the nature of the beast. It's in our nature—we're all looking for the sugar fix. So this is what brings us back to this Investment Statement where we can actually soberly sit and take cognisance to balance where we are going as a country to ensure we are going to be able to pay those bills in the future. Again I go back to the discussion I've just been having where we've got the ACT Party and we've got the National Party who stood up and did nothing but criticise for example the current rail service from Hamilton to Auckland—which would naturally extend into Tauranga—but without having any sort of an alternative. This is exactly what we're talking about. So if you pick up the 2022 Investment Statement it sits alongside our long-term fiscal statement the long-term insights briefing our wellbeing report and then there is the Investment Statement. Actually what is the Investment Statement because if you'd listened to this debate so far you actually might be quite confused as to what it is: every four years the Minister of Finance must present to the House of Representatives a statement prepared by the Treasury that describes the state and value of significant assets and liabilities. Well that goes back to what I spoke about before where at the end of the day whether it's our household budget or whether it's the business we run we've got to basically balance our books. If we don't we're trading while insolvent and there are all sorts of regulations and there are all sorts of laws to ensure that we don't do that. So it is absolutely appropriate absolutely necessary and actually now absolutely legal to ensure that we as a country—but we are only the guardians. We are here now; we get to own our little piece of history. There are not many here—many are older some are younger some are brand new. Mr Rosewarne I welcome you here. You no doubt are going to be here for many more years; I may not be here quite that long. But what we must ensure we do is that we own our piece of history while we're here and owning that piece of history ensures that we have the financial ability. There would be nothing worse to leave to those who come after us not only an excessive debt but a debt that actually is not going to be able to be serviced by anything we've built with it and that is where I'm very happy to have a look at the planning of this Government and at the things that we're doing now. One of the main things we do—and again it's touched on here and in fact it's more than touched on; it's actually highlighted in here—is making sure we invest in our people because if we were to do what we did in 2008 and stop investing in our people then with that infrastructure pipeline we could have that all that we liked but all we would end up with is nobody to work in our infrastructure now. If we closed down our polytechs if we closed down all our training institutions and if we sacked all our apprentices—actually those people are one of the biggest investments we can make for our future so what this Government did when we were faced with a similar situation to the one in 2008 was to ensure that we did invest. Again if you have a look at this document one thing that is highlighted is to ensure that we are investing in our people. Yes we're going to need to build more rail and we've got to ensure that we have coastal shipping but we've got to have people on it and what's the biggest problem we have around the world? I recently had COVID and it meant that I had to sit and watch a little bit of television—the BBC Fox CNN Al Jazeera—and it didn't matter what you watched you were actually watching the same thing in every country. Every country had exactly the same problem as we have now: shortages of people; supply lines. In fact it's interesting. A friend of mine was on holiday in Hawaii recently and he had a chat with someone from Texas and this person from Texas was telling him that they've got major problems in Texas and supply-line issues. They can't get the people to work and they've got massive oil prices and inflation so it doesn't matter where you are you have the same problem. So in that time when we're looking at that it's the countries that actually invest best now and invest best in their people that will be the ones that in the future will do well. It is interesting. During this conversation we've talked about those members opposite who talked about the folly of building any more rail. I said that well when Sir Julius Vogel was looking at putting our rail infrastructure in place in the 1890s wasn't it lucky we didn't have an ACT Party then and wasn't it lucky that we didn't actually have a National Party then because we were actually able to do it and are we not benefiting from that today? The rail corridors that were laid out then are those very things that we are benefiting from today. So when we balance and we look at the Investment Statement these are the things that we look at to make sure that we look beyond just today beyond the current electoral cycle to ensure that we are leaving a better place for those who come after us. The best way we own our history is to ensure that the financials for the future are in good shape. Thank you Madam Speaker. ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Members the time has come for me to leave the Chair for the dinner break and the House will resume at 7 p.m. this evening. Sitting suspended from 5.59 p.m. to 7 p.m."