Curran Clare: Estimates Debate — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeCurran Clare: Estimates Debate — In Committee[Sitting date: 21 July 2015. Volume:707;Page:5171. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South):If you have been listening to this estimates debate tonight you would think that there were parallel universes being described. If you believe this Government then everything is rosy. We have never had it so good—it is like nirvana. Well it is like Government members are living in cloud-cuckoo-land. It is like the emperor with no clothes King Canute and Pollyanna with Road Runner running through. They are living in this parallel universe in cloud-cuckoo-land. The real story needs to be told and the real story is no fairy tale. There are too many people in this country living on Struggle Street. There are too many who are doing it really tough.This is a Government that is pretending. It is pretending that there is no housing crisis while people cannot find affordable housing let alone afford to buy. It is trying to sell off State housing while children are getting sick and frail people are getting sick and some of them are even dying because their State houses are too cold and damp. It is pretending that there are no problems with our economy while dairy prices are plummeting while our regions are suffering and while small businesses are struggling and just keeping their heads above water. It is pretending. It is not being straight with the country. It is out of touch. There is mismanagement there is waste and there is looking after its mates. “Corporate welfare” has become an everyday phrase in this country where companies are being bailed out—Skycity Rio Tinto Chorus MediaWorks Saudi sheep farms Oravida—with handouts while the everyday Kiwis get overlooked and squeezed. It is a wasteful Government—wasteful and mismanaging. There is enormous waste in spending—$26 million is spent on a flag referendum while our kids are getting sick and sometimes even dying in our State houses.The real story in our regions is one of neglect. Regional development is built on strong regional infrastructure. We have heard tonight about the mismanagement and the squeeze and neglect that is happening in regional New Zealand in our roading network. In the Clutha District there are 260 bridges and bridge culverts that Clutha District Council is struggling to keep up in order to maintain its road networks. It does not have the money to spend on repairing those bridges and those bridge culverts because there is no money to fix them because there is no money that has been allocated in the Budget to do that. They were not built for 10-tonne milk trucks. The council is struggling to get even fire engines over many of those bridges. There is a real problem in regional New Zealand with a lot of our roading and with a lot of our bridges.But the real story is the story of rural broadband which needs to be told. Some of my colleagues in the Committee tonight have touched on this issue. This is a story of absolute negligence and it is a story that is unfolding. In 2010 $300 million was promised and a quarter of a million rural households were promised faster internet. Five years later the money has been spent but who has benefited? Well it is not the people in rural New Zealand. It is not the small businesses; it is hardly any households. Vodafone and Chorus have benefited but what about the people? In a study that was done last year in rural New Zealand 70 percent of small businesses and households surveyed said they felt extremely frustrated left behind and like second-class citizens. This is a grave misuse of Government funding—$60 million spent 8500 connections to show for it and millions of dollars being handed to Chorus to upgrade cabinets. There is no accountability on improvement in connections on the copper network or new connections on fibre. Millions of dollars have gone to Vodafone to upgrade—