Kuriger BarbaraBARBARA KURIGER (National—Taranaki - King Country): Thank you Madam Speaker. I'd like to start my part in the Budget debate by acknowledging our finance spokesperson Amy Adams who's just made an announcement today that she's going to be leaving Parliament at the next election. Amy Adams did a fantastic job of guiding us through this Budget process as she's done in the past in her roles back even right down to when she was an associate. She's a great person with the numbers and we're dearly going to miss her skills. She's made a fantastic contribution thus far to this place and she's not finished yet so I acknowledge her. I would disagree adamantly with the previous speaker. New Zealanders do care about the Budget and they're not impressed. We talk about a Wellbeing Budget. Stuart Smith asked before What is the meaning of wellbeing?" Well wellbeing when I just looked it up in the dictionary on my phone it said "the state of being comfortable healthy or happy". So if we say the words "KiwiBuild" and "cancer treatment" there better be a lot of "kinder" and "more caring" going on to make up for the other two parts of wellbeing that seem to be in some sort of disarray. Michael Wood said when he spoke up about this Budget being a means to an end. Well my constituents are hoping that this will mean an end to this Government.I was at Fieldays just after the Budget came out and it was where the Situation and Outlook for Primary Industries was released. If you go through that document it shows that things the expectations are good at the moment for dairy for sheep and beef for a range of other products. We all know that horticulture is going very well. But what I was finding at Fieldays and what myself and my fellow members of Parliament from this side of the House who joined us at Fieldays—there were a large number of us. We could not get over the uncertainty of the mood of the primary producers at the Fieldays and it was down to the uncertainty related to this Budget. If you actually look at some of the reasons why and there's money in here—we've got down here "Meeting the climate change challenge". Well we're all very concerned about putting all of this—there's $95 million in here related to the climate change challenge. Well the climate change challenge in their eyes is not having the right tools for the methane targets. It's also those small communities that are really really worried about you know the billion tree programme—$183.8 million operating going into the billion tree programme. There is no strategy to that billion tree programme. That's what they're worried about. Nobody's opposed to planting trees. We all believe that we need to do things for climate change. But it's a right tree right place right catchment right time strategy and they are really worried about planting all those trees—what's it going to do to the rural roads? We already have Ministers talking about slowing down rural roads because—that's a funding issue in terms of dollars. We all know what's happened to most people's roads. I'm still hoping that the Mount Messenger project which is up for appeal shortly is going to happen. I have heard the Prime Minister and the Minister of Transport say that it's going to happen—trying to also claim credit for it when it was actually appropriated in Budget 2016 but at least it looks like that road is still going to be happening.We see $197 million in here for the reform of vocational education. Well we've heard questions in the House today from our member Dr Shane Reti who's been looking at this reform of vocational education and all it seems like is everything else that I've read in this Budget document is pulling everything back into Government level because it appears that everything in these documents says this Government knows best and the people who are trained in farming education whatever field that they're in—their knowledge is not important: "Let's take it back in here and do something about it." I'll give you an example here: "Productive and Sustainable Land Use: Climate Change Commission and Government Response—$42.7 million operating" and then there's a little bit of capital on top of that. It "supports New Zealand's transition to more sustainable land use" and low emissions and it talks about "key institutions and regulations" and ensuring the "resources to deliver on its obligations". What about asking the community? They've been out there flat-stick trying to find some solutions. They don't want more key institutions and more regulations and more red tape. They want to be able to have some tools that they can use that can put the power in their hands that can make sure that they have some control over their own future. They don't want everything done to them. This Government is leaving people behind.The second one is "Productive and Sustainable Land Use: Enabling the Transition in Agriculture". So it's funding for "on-the-ground advice for farmers". You know we hear again "Oh look there's going to be some more advice because we know best." Well what happens to the Dairy NZs the Beef and Lambs the people that are actually already out there giving advice? Why don't we just collaborate a little bit? Why don't we sit around and talk to each other and find out solutions instead of all of these things coming down from the top coming down on communities coming down and telling people "Thou shalt do." and "Thou shalt be done." and "We're going to regulate you." and "We're going to find the answers for you." Ninety percent of the answers are already out there so they don't want more institutions; they just want more autonomy to be helped to find their own solutions. Also in this Budget there is more funding for Mycoplasma bovis. Now that's been a huge huge huge process that eradication process and we know what that eradication processes has meant in terms of cow numbers cows trying to stop that disease from spreading throughout the country. You know we're monitoring and we're still evaluating around the whole feasibility of it and I hope that is being monitored all the time. But it's actually not been a great process for the farmers involved. It's been a terrible terrible wellbeing situation for all of them. I have seen over more recent times how the care and the wellbeing for those people has picked up but I know that our rural support trusts have spent hours and hours and hours out there actually trying to deal with the people welfare of this issue. So it hasn't actually been a very kind process and while the decision was made to do that I think the way people were treated on the way could have been much better. Now on to the subject of Taranaki—on to the subject of oil and gas. We all know that in that process all of the advice was ignored and not just around the Budget dollars. So it's all very well for people to say "Oh we're going to do wellbeing." but wellbeing takes money and you actually need money to be able to sustain the wellbeing. You need it to sustain the health system. You need it to sustain the education system. There is nothing in this country that's going to run without money. So if you ignore the figures that were put in front of us around the oil and gas around you know making the decision that this Government has made—which by the way makes absolutely no benefit to climate change in all the advice that I've seen; in fact it only has detrimental results in that light.Look developing a new energy development centre in Taranaki is a little bit like—you know it's just a lolly scramble in comparison to coming along and taking away not only the bread and butter for that province but for the whole country before they've had a chance to develop the new technology. Everyone knows that when you go from A to B you need to know where am I today how am I going to get there how long it's going to take me and what's it going to cost. Now we all know where this wellbeing Government wants to be in 20 or 30 or 40 years in terms of what they want for this country but nobody out there is certain about what does it mean tomorrow next week next month or next year because the tools that we had are being taken away before new tools have been developed and taxes are being talked about before we have the tools to mitigate. So it's a disaster. Thank you Mr Speaker."