Bayly AndrewANDREW BAYLY (National—Hunua): Thank you Mr Chair. It's a pleasure to be talking on the formation of the Infrastructure Commission. As we've said previously the National Party is supporting this bill because it is very important in terms of helping New Zealand and New Zealanders to live in a better place and create the future we want.Of course the first part of this bill is about some of its establishment. I think the genesis of this obviously went back to the National Party because we were very keen on supporting it. But I'm very grateful that the Government's picked up this project and obviously with our support is bringing it through to a conclusion.I think the key bit is that this commission will be quite independent. I think that's a vital part or success component if this entity is actually to help with planning infrastructure in the future and how we go about delivering that. I think that as a stand-alone autonomous Crown entity it will have the powers and the skills—and already the board has been appointed to that—but also the independence to be able to go and do its job properly.As I said before infrastructure is absolutely vital to New Zealand so how we procure it how we deliver it how we fund and finance it—all those aspects are absolutely essential and I think that's why we should I hope once this bill passes through the House end up with a much better result. I think if people look at what's going on in infrastructure both at central government level and also at territorial or local authority or council level it is not clear about what is the pipeline of work coming forward. There's no real clarity around that and of course we have many different types of infrastructure that's been constructed. The Minister talked about defence. That's certainly one issue around infrastructure but it traverses a wide topic including schools education facilities hospitals right through to traditional road rail and also water and waste water just to name few. But it's also things like broadband fibre roll-out which is just infrastructure of a different sort. That pipeline means I think that people can actually see what's happening and actually contracting parties can get a much better view on when projects are going to occur so they can plan and that continuity is an absolutely essential part in terms of ensuring that they not only attract the right staff but train them and retain them. One of the issues and one of the problems we've got is that after the Christchurch bill because people didn't see a clear pipeline particularly in civil construction and those types of infrastructure demands a lot of our very good people have left Christchurch and actually moved to Australia where there's an infrastructure boom happening in Victoria New South Wales. So that pipeline is essential not only for funders and things like that but also in terms of protecting and maintaining those skill sets that are so vital if we're going to roll out good infrastructure over the years.I think there are a couple of things around this. One is a strategic and planning role that the commission is going to undertake and the Minister alluded to it. Initially the bill was focused purely on getting information from central government agencies. The committee took a view that it should be a wider jurisdiction and should also include local authorities given that local authorities are significant procurers. By the way central government normally procures about $43 billion a year so having visibility around both central and local government provided a much clearer pathway in terms of projects. There was some resistance from the territorial local authorities. They said they issue lots of plans—10-year plans and 30-year plans and they're all available—but we didn't think that that was sufficient. The councils we believe should be in a position where they provide the right sort of information to the Infrastructure Commission so they can do their job. Then of course the Infrastructure Commission's got a 30-year perspective in terms of highlighting projects over that lifespan and indeed that's a very very important focus for long-term infrastructure projects and they're going to publish a report every five years that updates it. So it's certainly going to be very helpful for the New Zealand context going forward.