Barclay ToddTODD BARCLAY (National—Clutha-Southland): I am not sure what I am being asked to confess to apart from the fact that I am proud to be part of a strong John Key - led National Government and have been for the last 2½ years. One thing I want to say about the Prime Minister is that he is relentlessly optimistic and aspirational for New Zealand. He has been every day that he has been in this Parliament and he is absolutely an inspiration to us all. That is more than the Opposition members can say of their leader.We have heard a number of speeches this afternoon in the general debate. The general debate is meant to be about putting your case for talking about the positive aspirations that you have for New Zealand and for your electorate. But instead every single Opposition member has spent their 5 to 10 minutes talking about National and that says a lot about them and what they have to offer. This is why I have absolute confidence that the next leader of the National Party and the next deputy leader of the National Party will be the next Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister of New Zealand in 2017.We are proud of our achievements over on this side of the House. We have a lot to offer New Zealand moving forward. One of the things that the Prime Minister can walk away taking pride in is having built a successful cohesive passionate and compassionate team. That is one thing that we have on this side of the House that the other side simply does not have.I want to speak about an announcement that was made last week in Southland by Steven Joyce Nathan Guy Sarah Dowie and me in support of them and in support of the 550 Southlanders who showed up for the launch of the Southland Regional Development Strategy action plan. We had almost 1 percent of our population at that launch which is an incredible backing for a regional development plan that really has been led from the grassroots up.One of the remarks that Steven Joyce and Nathan Guy made in their respective speeches throughout the day was that the people of this region took the bull by the horns and started this plan themselves and then came to Government and said: Hey this is what we're doing. Do you want to be a part of it?". "Absolutely"—that is what the Government said. We have got behind this plan. Sarah and I as local MPs in Southland have been totally supportive right from the start. Sarah has talked about aquaculture and some of the primary production benefits of this plan. I want to echo those comments and I want to talk about some of the aspirational targets we have for the growth of our population.We know that if we want to maintain and grow our potential as a region across New Zealand towards our contribution towards our GDP we need to increase our population by 10000 people. Southland and Otago are lucky in that they have such low unemployment and such high participation in employment. We need more people to come to our beautiful part of the country in order that we can continue making the contribution that we are towards New Zealand. We are about diversification we are about resilience we are about self-determination and we are about ruthless passion. That was echoed by the 550 people represented in the stadium at Bill Richardson Transport World last Wednesday.One of the benefits we have for Southland going forward is harnessing the potential in tourism which already exists in the region but growing on that. We have Queenstown as part of my electorate just outside of the Southland region. There are 1.5 million visitors a year who visit Queenstown over 3.2 million guest nights. We have the potential to claw back some of those visitors who are going to Milford Sound and through Southland spreading the benefits more broadly across Southland. That is a project that I have been involved in from the outset. It was pleasing to see as part of the launch last Wednesday that the Milford Opportunities Project which was an organisation that I established about 2 years ago to greater coordinate about a dozen projects that are in place in the Milford Sound attracted $250000 for a coordinator in order to shepherd those projects through.We have a great opportunity to expand and to grow and to exponentially enrich our tourism proposition in Southland to support the growing and the well-performing primary production sectors that we have. Agriculture is the backbone of our country and it is the backbone of my electorate. In support of the opportunities we have with tourism it has been a privilege to be a part of the Southland Regional Development Strategy launch."