Kuriger BarbaraBARBARA KURIGER (National—Taranaki - King Country): I am wondering how that member Nanaia Mahuta and her party are going to pay for all the things that they have been talking about this afternoon like helping Victor pay for his house and all the other wonderful things that she has mentioned like health and education. The only way Labour is going to do it is by taxing farmers and sending them broke. Tax farmers—tax the people who are making 70 percent of the trade out of this country! While they are actually busy out there at the moment calving their cows and about to lamb their lambs let us give them a blank invoice as Minister Guy said. Let them write out a blank cheque!One of the reasons I came into this House was that I was pretty keen to close up the rural-urban divide. Absolutely today with this announcement the Labour Party is turning the rural-urban divide into a chasm. We are all in this water debate together. There is no consistency in Labour's policy. There is not even any detail in Labour's policy. We absolutely do not know what it means.Two or 3 years ago when the dairy price was going down down down guess who was sitting on the other side of this House going Crisis! Crisis!"? Now dairy farmers are actually getting back into a better space where they can make some money and can pay some tax and all of a sudden that party wants to take it all off them. Well that party does not even know it is trying to create a crisis. Its members sit over there and talk about regional New Zealand and they talk about provincial New Zealand. I will tell you what—provincial New Zealand is starting to do pretty nicely. It is getting broadband it is getting roads it is getting policing and it is getting all of the things that it needs to develop—provincial New Zealand. And hello guess what? Labour is going to make it a ghost town because there will be nobody living out there. So we have got to keep going with the programmes that we are on about.The other thing I would really like to know from that side of the House is—its members talk about taking young people who are on benefits out to fence waterways and to plant trees. I do not think that is such a bad idea except that I am wondering: do they know where Āria is? Do they know where Te Anga is? Do they know where Marokopa and Tokirima are? How are they actually going to get there? It is all very commendable but you know you are going to have to have a hell of a lot of transport to do that. Labour has not thought it through.By the way farmers in Taranaki have already in Taranaki alone planted 4.3 million trees. That is in Taranaki alone. That is waterways fenced off. That is trees planted. That is actually almost a tree for every person who lives in New Zealand and that is in Taranaki alone. Farmers are actually out working on these things and in my experience all that farmers want to know is: "Where am I now? Where do you need to go? Help me; provide the tools. Give me the tools. Help me with the productivity." There is a whole lot of new smart technology coming on that is going to help those waterways. That is why we are putting broadband in. That is why we are making it happen. Farmers are quite capable and are doing these things on their own.What is really interesting is that households and councils would be exempt and that the money would be used to assist cleaning up the polluted waterways. OK so farmers are already planting trees and fencing and cleaning up their waterways and now we are going to tax them according to the Labour Party so that we can take some more money off them so that they can pay again to do what they are already doing? We are all in this together. We have got a map of what is happening with waterways out in the country and it is not just the farmers who are responsible for what is happening in the waterways. They have done their share.When we talk about irrigation—I have got a lovely little map here and it talks about natural river flow being maintained. It talks about nutrient management plans but also coastal biodiversity. Guess what? With irrigation you can actually help coastal biodiversity. Flow is restored to lowland spring-fed streams. All communities and marae have access to high-quality drinking water—thriving and prosperous communities. It does not actually take that much to work out. It is not rocket science that everybody in our community benefits from water storage.And hello people we do not have a shortage of water. Look outside on most days. On any given day of 2017 it has been raining. All we need to do is store it and use it wisely. So New Zealand let us not do this. Thank you."