Pugh MaureenMAUREEN PUGH (National): Thank you very much Madam Speaker. I'm going to turn my attention to the tourism sector in my general debate contribution today. I know that there is a lot of people that say that some places are doing really well and domestic tourism has filled the gap for a lot of tourism destinations around this country. But there are other places in New Zealand—the hard-to-reach places the places that have evolved and developed over time to cater for the international visitor. Now we've got to keep this in context and remember that tourism was New Zealand's biggest earner pre-COVID so this is a significant part of the New Zealand economy and boy are they suffering now.We have an example in Jackson Bay and probably a lot of you won't know where that is—south of Haast on the West Coast. Now there is a husband and wife team that run a jet boat operation down there. They would take three or four trips a day. Now they're lucky if it's one or two trips a week. And now they're supplementing their own income by having to go out and get other work which is lucky that they've been able to do that. But the other example is the Scenic Hotel Group. Now what a brave but selfless decision that they made to close four of their big hotels down there for at least a year to 18 months so that the capacity could be filled by the small operators the motel owners in those glacier towns and in Haast so that they can stay afloat and so they're hoping that that oversupply from their beds will flow over into these other businesses. But the Development West Coast agency on the coast has mentioned to the Minister of Tourism that we are going to suffer the loss of 400 jobs and that's over half of the population of the Glacier Country because of these businesses closing down and we can expect another 16 businesses to close their doors soon because the season is basically over and there is no hope on the horizon in terms of the tourism industry rebounding. But what people may not realise is that in these small towns that have developed for the international tourism market it has reached a capacity to maintain a school to maintain their volunteer organisations like St John like the fire brigade. And what we're seeing now is the depopulation of those towns which means that all of those other services support services are now suffering—where you can't have a fireman go out on his own to respond to a road accident. St John are under pressure because their volunteers are disappearing. Another impact on the coast of course is KiwiRail. It used to deliver 400 passengers a day into Greymouth. They reduced it back to four days a week; they're now in the process of making a decision to run that down to two over the winter. That is a huge impact on these small towns.But what I would like to move on to is the Minister of Tourism the Hon Stuart Nash. He turned up in Franz shamed into visiting there because he had been absent. In fact when I went down to visit the tourist operators in Franz with the Hon Todd McClay they told us it was the first time since National was last in Government that a tourism Minister had visited one of the most iconic tourist destinations in this country. So Minister Nash turned up down there and he repeated his mantra and I quote It is time to have that very difficult discussion with your bankers your employers your creditors and your community because we cannot save every business." Well he could give $5 million to the likes of AJ Hackett and good luck to him. So you know what the community said about Mr Nash's visit: the meeting was a complete waste of time—and it was.The solution is so easy: open up the travel bubble with Australia. We resume up to 70 percent of our international tourist numbers. It is supported by business. It's supported by Australia. It is supported by people like Professor Michael Baker a health expert. Please open up the bubble. They are gasping for breath on the West Coast in those small tourist destinations. Open up the border with Australia before they breathe their last breath."