Dowie Sarah: Estimates Debate — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeDowie Sarah: Estimates Debate — In Committee[Sitting date: 11 August 2015. Volume:707;Page:5616. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]SARAH DOWIE (National—Invercargill): It is a pleasure to rise and take this call in this debate with such wide-ranging topics. As we have heard they include Vote Arts Culture and Heritage Vote Internal Affairs Vote Māori Development Vote Pacific Peoples Vote Sport and Recreation and Vote Women. I think it is really important and it is a pleasure to say as the lead National member for the Government Administration Committee—as I acknowledge Nuk Korako the lead National member for the Māori Affairs Committee—that these disciplines require attention. They do encompass a richness that is New Zealand and it is wonderful to rise and speak about it.I am actually going to focus on sport and recreation and change tack here. I will talk about some of the wonderful things that sport and recreation does. Of course sport is in our blood as New Zealanders and we usually use sport to signal our prowess on the world stage but it is more than that. Sport and being active means having a healthy lifestyle and it is through Sport New Zealand that $7 million is taken from Vote Health and put into Kiwisport which is a fantastic programme. It recognises the importance of getting children involved in sports. It designs games for little people. It educates them about the needs of health and sport as part of that. Obviously sport helps them with their cooperation and teamwork builds their self-esteem and adds to an all-round healthy lifestyle. So I want to acknowledge that that is a great programme that Sport New Zealand is involved in and certainly it adds to the healthy lifestyle that we need in New Zealand to tackle some of those problems that we see in our community.I had the pleasure on 7 July of actually stepping in for the Hon Dr Coleman and launching the Healthy Families New Zealand initiative in Invercargill. That is an initiative that is based on the Victorian model that has seen significant improvements in health and it creates a platform for getting people involved in an active lifestyle. Invercargill was one of the 10 communities that were selected. It was selected on a range of different factors but mainly because unfortunately in Invercargill there is a prevalence of some diseases that can be prevented through having a healthy lifestyle.Hon Member: It’s cold.SARAH DOWIE: It is not just cold but sport plays a really big part in Invercargill. So it is important to get that initiative going and to start auditing the community and looking at the wins that we can create by getting people involved in sport and understanding the drivers of what creates a healthy lifestyle along with eating plans and just getting people active.That involves stakeholders coming together all within the health field and they audit basically the community and look at the different health organisations that are out there. The sporting organisations come together and they look at what they are doing already so that they can look for easy wins to educate those people who are at risk of different diseases that can be prevented like diabetes. They come together and look at establishing programmes.One of those programmes is through Volleyball Southland. It was my pleasure to meet some of the people who play volleyball through Sport Southland. It has community teams school teams ethnic teams and teams through the Southern Institute of Technology. Again it is a great way to meet people to engage in your community to make friends and to build self-esteem but obviously it is also about getting active and learning about being healthy. So through that initiative we are encouraging families to live healthy lives and obviously Sport New Zealand is part of that.I want to touch on Vote Women and one of the wonderful initiatives that is the brainchild of the Hon Louise Upston. That is the research into family violence and violence against Māori women. I had the pleasure of going—Vote Arts Culture and Heritage Vote Internal Affairs Vote Māori Development Vote Pacific Peoples Vote Sport and Recreation Vote Statistics Vote Treaty Negotiations and Vote Women agreed to.