Shanks Katrina: General Debate 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Shanks Katrina: General Debate 
[Sitting date: 27 February 2013. Volume:687;Page:8257. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
KATRINA SHANKS (National) 
: 
 I would like to start my contribution to the general debate today by acknowledging the contribution of Charles Chauvel who will be leaving this Parliament at the end of the week. I would particularly like to acknowledge his contribution to the Regulations Review Committee which he has been chair of for a number of years. It is a very technical committee and he has been very competent in that role. I would also like to acknowledge the contribution that he has made to the Justice and Electoral Committee which he sits on as well and which I am also a member of. In his role there he has been very hard-working always diligent in his work and he has made great contributions to the bills that come into this House. I believe there will be a hole left in the Labour caucus that they will miss his law and commercial background and that they will be very hard shoes to fill. I want to wish him all the best in New York at the United Nations for his career coming up. 
This Government has a strong plan and a busy agenda to encourage investment strengthen our economy and boost jobs for Kiwis. We will continue to build on our strong foundations of the last 4 years. Not only that I would also like to talk today about what we are doing in terms of our agenda and where we want to go. We have got a clear and consistent plan about what our programme is and how we are going to deliver it. In fact we are managing our finances so that we are going to get back to surpluses and we are going to start paying off some of our debt. We are going to press ahead with a wide range of our measures to be a more productive and competitive economy. 
One of the measures I want to talk about today is the launch of Callaghan Innovation or the new Advanced Technology Institute. This is going to focus on industries that have got significant potential in growth. It is going to seek to motivate and connect innovators and entrepreneurs and it is going to deliver equipment facilities and expertise to business. This is a real initiative that is going to help real people and it is going to be a useful tool in the future for our young coming through who are innovative and creative. Just last week I went to a school and I was privileged to judge the Young Enterprise Trust BP Business Challenge. This is a challenge that schools can do with their year 11 students. What they do is over 3 days they have to form a virtual company they have to devise a product that solves a problem or fills a need they have to have researched the product they have to develop a business plan and then they have to prepare a 10-minute presentation to judges. 
The school I went to was Onslow College and I have got to say that the year 11 students were so impressive. They were innovative they were creative and they had passion for the products that they were putting forward. The winner of the year 11 students was a team that had a product called e-can. E-can which is a truly innovative product I thought is like a wheelie bin. They get the wheelie bin it sends itself to the curb it gets collected and emptied and then it sends itself back on to its docking station. And they power this by solar energy. This product was innovative. This product was thinking outside the square. It is green and it is clean. If this is what the future looks like for us in New Zealand if this is what our year 11 students look like who are doing economics who are getting this experience of entrepreneurship and innovation I think we have got a great future ahead of us in New Zealand. 
But also it is a great example of how business how NGOs and how the Government can all work together to enrich the education of our children. These year 11 students are going to go on to the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) in economics and they have to produce a product they have to take it to market and they have to sell it. This Young Enterprise Trust BP Business Challenge has allowed them already to have a feel for what it is like to do that so when they do this module later on in the year they have already got a heads-up and they are already thinking in the right space. They are innovative they are creative and they will do well in year 11 NCEA economics. 
What I want to talk about now is our economic growth agenda work programme and I want to talk about this because I do not think there has been any other Government ever in New Zealand that has stated such clear initiatives about how we are going to grow our economy. So the six areas when you think—