McKelvie IanIAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei): Thank you Madam Assistant Speaker. I support some of the comments the previous speaker Jo Hayes made about Whānau Ora. It is a great programme when it's applied correctly and does really well. The Budget was disappointing for me not because of what it said but because of what it didn't say. It did virtually nothing in my view to support the continued growth of our economy or GDP. Interestingly the Government spent a lot of time in the last nine years harping on about our lack of GDP progress. They've done nothing in this Budget in my view to stimulate that. I'm not saying it's necessary to do so either because by world standards we're actually in a pretty good space there. You see if we grow the economic pie everyone gets the benefit of this and to achieve this the Government needs to continue to ensure the correct settings are in place to allow businesses to flourish and grow. As for it being transformational or aspirational well I'll go to the pictures. This was a Budget with so much opportunity. There was more cash around than at any time in New Zealand's history for a Budget. What did they do? I think they blew it with the same old policies that Labour Governments are famous for: Government services and bureaucracy. I want to touch on the free tertiary education bit for a moment. I was the recipient of a free tertiary education and I can't dispute the value of that although in my case it did no good at all. But none the less it seems strange to me that we're providing for free tertiary education at a time when our universities and institutions are struggling to maintain their place in the world. I think it's essential that we also ensure that those institutions have that opportunity to sustain their place in the world. Interestingly the numbers are significantly down. The reason the numbers are down is pretty obvious: people can get jobs. Even in my day young people if they could get a job would go straight to the job because they'd earn money. It's exciting to get out of school and earn money. I think they'll come back to education one day if they need it. That's their option. That party had nine long years to plan this Budget and I think the result merely proves that with one or two exceptions they did nothing in that time. I can assure the House that the National Opposition will not be sitting on our hands during the next two years and come Budget 2021 the country will reap the benefit of that hard work. I want to spend a moment or so on fisheries where it would appear the Budget signals some change and what I might call a greening of the Budget. I don't have an issue with that but there's really little other change in the fishing area other than a slight increase in the amount of money available for administration. Certainly there seems to be a new line in the Budget headed Grants and Programmes" and that could well be beneficial to the fishing industry as well. Moving on to my other area—I was going to say "of expertise" but given my punting record it's not—of racing a small amount of tax relief has been introduced to try to encourage New Zealanders to invest in the breeding industry. If it works it will add some value. It will be interesting to see what happens when the good-looking colt however becomes a good-looking gelding. That's no doubt work that's going to have to be done by the IRD. It's at the same time disappointing I think to see the race fields legislation held up or parked and no Budget line to pick up the recommendations that come out of the Messara report which I also think is positive for the industry. It will be interesting to see where that gets to as well.I want to briefly touch on R & D tax credits. The sum of $1 billion is set aside in the Budget and I hope this is picked up by industry but of course one has to remember you've got to have the income or a great capital base to invest in R & D. Given that the Government are looking at stifling foreign investment in New Zealand using such tools as the Overseas Investment Amendment Bill which could well see a significant dent in the $3 billion of overseas investment that came into the country last year it may well be challenging for companies to pick up those tax credits. I hope they can. It will be good if they do. I've got my serious doubts they will.I wanted to touch for a minute on I think the elephant in the room for New Zealand and certainly for New Zealand farmers and the Government and that's Mycoplasma bovis. One's got to feel sorry for the farmers involved in this. Certainly one's got to feel sorry for the Ministry for Primary Industries staff involved in this because whilst we think there's stress on farmers there's certainly stress on those staff that have got to deal with this issue as well. It's a serious challenge for the country. It's a very unfortunate outbreak and I think that we've got to remember it's nothing like foot-and-mouth. Foot-and-mouth's a very clear—there are world policies on it. It's very clear what happens in the case of a foot-and-mouth outbreak. In the case of this there are a lot of unknowns and I think it's very difficult for all involved. I just hope that when the decision's made on Monday it's the right decision for all New Zealanders. I think it will be challenging but no doubt we'll get to the right space on it.So that's my brief contribution to this year's Budget debate and I will sit down now."