Lee MelissaMELISSA LEE (National): Thank you Madam Chair. Thank you—it's a good choice. I'd like to start off by actually responding to the comments made by the honourable member from across the House Deborah Russell who actually began her contribution by saying that this Government cares about the people and how people feel is a better indicator of New Zealand's growth than the GDP. I have to say maybe let's see how the Labour Government actually feels about these numbers. When National left the Treasury benches at the last election National left a strong and growing labour force. There was an average of 10000 new jobs a month in our last two years of governance of this country and job growth has more than halved under this Labour-led Government. How does this Labour Government actually feel about those statistics? Wages grew twice as fast as cost of living under the National Government whereas this Government has resulted in more and more people sitting on the dole queues instead of getting a job. Job seeker numbers are up by 14000 in the last 12 months. I wonder how Labour actually feel about that. They say making people feel good about it is how this Government measure their performance. Well let me tell you that New Zealand certainly isn't feeling good about this Government.I'd like to acknowledge Tamati Coffey who actually got up and talked about some of the things that the Economic Development Science and Innovation Committee discussed during the Estimates hearing. One of the things that I have to actually say is that I was actually quite floored by the performance of one of the Ministers. It was actually Minister Shane Jones the Hon Shane Jones who came to the select committee. Often when Ministers turn up to select committee they come with huge numbers of support people from the ministries and he came you know for the estimates on infrastructure and regional economic development. I have to say that when the Minister was actually asked lots and lots of questions there were many questions that he could not answer and yet he would not let any of his officials answer them at select committee saying that he'd rather the Minister actually have a personal relationship with the select committee and actually answer the question. But the problem was he could not answer them. He actually asked us to write it down and send it to the officials so that the officials could respond. What an appalling performance by this Minister and very very arrogant. And how dare he say that the select committee should not be asking the officials to answer the questions. I was absolutely floored by that Minister I have to say and I'm sure that members opposite—the Government members—would have been absolutely floored as well but they just could not say that because they're in coalition with that Minister's party. One of the things that I have to actually say is that often when we talk about growth growth in unemployment—I have to say that during question time when the Hon Louise Upston asked the Minister in charge of social development the Hon Carmel Sepuloni one of the excuses that she uses for the number of those in unemployment people on the dole and everything that goes up she actually blames the population growth. Population growth in two years—how soon do new children who are born to new mothers end up on the dole queue? How does the Minister actually use population growth as an excuse? I am just really appalled by that kind of response from Ministers who absolutely have no clue about their portfolios. And the other one is immigration. Do we actually have an immigration blow-up in this country?CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): I have to interrupt the member. It's very interesting but we are actually on commerce and consumer affairs. MELISSA LEE: What I'm getting to is that—thank you Madam Chair. What I'm actually getting to is that this is actually about estimates of this select committee which is about economic development science and innovation.CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): Good to mention it.MELISSA LEE: Those are important to this country for the economic growth of New Zealand and some of the details that we actually discussed are very very important indeed and that's what I was actually getting to.