McClay Todd: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMcClay Todd: General Debate[Sitting date: 16 October 2013. Volume:694;Page:13934. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon TODDMcCLAY (Minister of Revenue): The economy is growing inflation is down interest rates are at record low levels and the regions are strong. The regions are strong and they are full of National-voting citizens. You see the Government has a plan it is working and we are sticking with it. The Government is in touch with New Zealanders up and down New Zealand. By comparison the Labour Opposition is out of touch with all parts of New Zealand and especially the provinces. You see one need think back to only the last election to reflect and one would realise that the National Government holds every single provincial seat in this country but two. It holds every single provincial seat in this country but two and I will come to those two in a moment.Every day National constituent MPs are out working hard helping their constituents listening to New Zealanders and dealing with the real issues that they face. By comparison the approach of the Labour Opposition members who are out of touch to engagement with the provincial part of New Zealand is the occasional bus tour up and down the country. There have been three fantastic tours in the 5 years we have been in Government. There was the Phil Goff motorbike tour of the country. There was the David Shearer guitar-playing surfing hippie tour of the country. And now we have the David Cunliffe “promises that I’m not going to keep” tour of New Zealand.You see to become Leader of the Opposition David Cunliffe made every promise to every person that he had to. He made promises all over the place. Anything someone else proposed he said he would do too—he promised. He promised everything to everyone all of the time—well except for Trevor Mallard of course. He did not promise everything to Trevor. I have got to say I think that the Leader of the Opposition has got it wrong because I saw the Hon Trevor Mallard on TV the other night with one of his constituents dealing with an immigration problem and I have got to tell you that I have actually changed my mind about Mr Mallard. He is the only person over there whom I have seen who has any evidence that he is actually in touch with local people and certainly the—Hon Trevor Mallard: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. Although I appreciate the member’s assistance this is destroying what is left of my reputation. I ask him to cease.Mr SPEAKER: Order! That is not a valid point of order.Hon TODDMcCLAY: I would apologise but he wrote a wonderful article about me in a newspaper once so it is only fitting that we do the same for each other. But mypoint there was that this is the only member of the Opposition whom I have actually seen evidence of being out there talking to constituents.Let us think about what the new Leader of the Opposition has said. He said that census data will depict a widespread exodus from the regions. And what have we seen? In every region in New Zealand but one the census data shows that the population has gone up. It is more than that. In fact we look at one of the two areas in the provinces on the West Coast where Labour holds a seat and the new Leader of the Opposition David Cunliffe did not even bother to talk to that MP Damien O’Connor because in the area that Damien O’Connor represents on the West Coast there was a growth of population by 2.6 percent. So I guarantee you that Damien O’Connor not only was not asked but also is one in the majority in the party opposite who did not vote for its new leader.Up and down the country National MPs are working hard. Let us have a look at this. In Northland where we hear Shane Jones going on about the doom and gloom—Northland’s MP is the hard-working Mike Sabin—real after-tax income wages over the last 6 years went up by 18 percent. The population went up by 2.2 percent. Well that is not evidence of the great exodus that David Cunliffe said we would see in the census.Let us come a little bit further south from there to the Waikato because with the exception of a few seats in Auckland National has all of the rural and provincial seats in between Northland and the Waikato. It is very clear that in the Waikato—including Louise Upston the hard-working member of Parliament inTaupō—we had an increase in after-tax wages of 7 percent and in population of 6 percent. In the Bay of Plenty where we have Simon Bridges Anne Tolley Tony Ryall and the hard-working member of Parliament for Rotorua we hold every single seat in the Bay of Plenty. Of course it had a 14 percent increase in income and a 4 percent increase in population. In Taranaki and New Plymouth where we have Chester Borrows and Jonathan Young the area we actually heard would be the worst in the country because of everything that is going on there around oil exploration we had a 14 percent increase in after-tax wages and a 5.3 percent increase in population.Up and down this country the provinces have been growing and we are doing well. Why is this? It is because we have National MPs every day out working hard and representing—