Mooney JosephJOSEPH MOONEY (National—Southland): Thank you very much Mr Speaker. Thank you for the opportunity to speak in this debate. I rise as the member for Southland. Just to quickly put it in a framework Southland is the size—well it's bigger than Belgium. It covers a region which has five district councils covering different parts of it and two regional councils so a huge area that stretches from Queenstown down to Ōwaka Pounawea Papatowai at the bottom and has much of Fiordland National Park in it and a good chunk of Central Otago. With that I have the Queenstown Lakes District—a good chunk of it is in my electorate including the city of Queenstown. The Queenstown Lakes District between 1996 and 2020 had an average annual population growth of 5.3 percent. That's an annual average growth of 5.3 percent. To put that in perspective that means the population doubles in just over 13 years. Not only that in addition to the resident population we have one of the highest numbers of visitors in New Zealand. In fact in January this year the numbers at the airport hit record numbers so more than we had in 2020. hat that means in real terms is that the Queensland Lakes District is growing incredibly rapidly and has a lot of growing challenges that come with that. I was very proud to see the Minister Simeon Brown down in Queenstown last week to announce a $250 million transport package that the coalition Government had agreed to up the funding by $120 million to address some of those needs although I would say that there is a lot more that needs to be done in that region but I appreciate that we are in a challenging fiscal time.With that growth I also have a good chunk of Central Otago. If we look at the combined population of Central Lakes that's a resident population of 79000 which is nearing the size of Palmerston North city. The peak day population—that's resident and visitor—is 177746 which is near equivalent to Hamilton city. So this is a very big population that we have that has rapidly grown and will continue to rapidly grow into the future and with that we need a lot more roading infrastructure we need three waters infrastructure we need a lot more housing and energy.I'm going to in the short time available to me touch on farming. Farming is an incredibly important part of my region. I have sheep and beef farming dairy farming grain and a lot more. I'm just going to touch on sheep and beef farming because I'm hearing repeatedly from very experienced farmers that this is the toughest time they've seen in their sector since the 1980s. That has been confirmed by the latest eef amb report which said the updated forecasts for profits will be down 54 percent to an average of $62600 per farm. That's a 67 percent fall in farm profits from the 2021-22 year to levels not seen since the 1980s except for the global financial crisis.There has been no real recovery from China in terms of our demand for our products and the exports of red meat out of Australia have been bigger than forecast. On top of that the on-farm costs as well as the inflationary impact of interest rates have been significant so this is a very very challenging time.I'm proud to be part of the coalition Government that is working hard to reduce the red tape on farmers that is working hard to develop its relationships around the world for alternative markets that we can sell our goods into.I will also in the time available touch briefly on Southland roads. So Southland has the second biggest roading network in New Zealand. We have a roading network that is a total of 4969 kilometres in length. Just under 2000 kilometres of those are sealed and just under 3000 kilometres are unsealed. We have 1121 bridges and of those at present 68 bridges are either closed or weight restricted and 134 of those bridges will require replacing by 2034. Again recognising that there are big roading challenges across the countryhere have been obviously big weather events but I just want to signal that we do have some significant challenges with our bridges which is also reflected in the Central Otago District Council which has at least 30 bridges—17 percent of the network—that will be near the end of their useful life within the next 10 years and roading costs have increased 10 to 20 percent within those years.he last thing I'll just touch on is Department of Conservation concessions—an incredibly important issue I'm proud to have a conservation Minister who is focusing deeply on and has already been to Milford Sound to address our issues.