Bridges SimonGENERAL DEBATEHon SIMON BRIDGES (Leader—National): I move That the House take note of miscellaneous business. Mr Speaker—[Interruption]SPEAKER: Order! Order! No we are going to start again and members who are on their feet and leaving the Chamber or members who are on their feet are not going to interject.Hon SIMON BRIDGES: It has been amazing to get around the length and breadth of this country over the last couple of months from Gore in the South to Kerikeri in the North to talk with thousands and thousands and thousands of New Zealanders from all walks of life. The poor man's Donald Trump over there—I can tell him that they never raised changing the Australian flag with me. That was weird by even his standards. They never raised the tweets from Donald Trump with me and whether it was him or someone else that did them. But I tell you what they did raise. They did raise the economy; they were worried about it. They did raise the environment; they were worried about what's happening. They did raise health. They did raise education. They did raise welfare. They raised all of these issues and they were worried about the direction that this Government is taking them in—absolutely worried.Rt Hon Winston Peters: And the polls?Hon SIMON BRIDGES: Mr 2 Percent" wants to know about the polls—"Mr 2 Percent" over there. Actually I think his personal ratings are lower than that. I was talking about his party rating. He wants to know about public meetings. Well we both had one about the same time in Invercargill. Mine got 500 I think he scraped in about 90—and he's the Prime Minister.People were worried about the economy. They see what's happening to business confidence and they listen to Iain Lees-Galloway who says that the business groups are scaremongering about that. They hear all that but are they scaremongering when services are down when construction figures are down when GDP per capita is down when the only things that we see going up are beneficiary numbers under Carmel Sepuloni and New Zealanders—young New Zealanders—leaving for Australia up 2000 already under this Government.You can't slash oil and gas. You can't muck around with industrial law and take it back to the 1970s when only Winston Peters was in our Parliament. You can't have incoherent immigration policies. You can't do those things. You can't talk down the farmers each and every day of this week. You can't try and ban all of the mining and then say that you've got a strong economy where New Zealanders have jobs and options in this country.They're also talking about law and order and they think what Andrew Little is doing in law and order is a naive disgrace. That's what they think. They think it's entirely naive. Everyone knows—no one wants to build more prison beds but to have no plan to reduce offending and to simply soften up our bail laws our sentencing laws and our parole laws—that'll make Kiwis less safe. That came through at every single meeting of the 70 amongst the many many thousands I talked to Andrew Little all around New Zealand.Welfare came up and I was able to tell New Zealanders what a tragedy it is to see 4000 more people on the jobseeker benefits at the moment—4000 more. While on the other side of it Carmel Sepuloni and Jacinda Ardern are saying "Don't worry about the sanctions; don't worry about the penalties." Well I know that New Zealanders are a fair-minded people Winston Peters and they say "Fair go."—fair go to the taxpayers who get up every morning and do the work and fair go to the beneficiaries actually who will do better if they're not languishing on the dole queues who are out there going for a job in terms of their esteem their purpose and their life outcomes. That's the way we'll go. On this side we stand for a fair go not a free ride Winston Peters. We stand for a fair go and not a free ride on this side and that's what we want to see. I will ensure—National will ensure on this side—reasonable obligations for Kiwis all around this country. That's the right thing to do.Finally can I say on medicinal cannabis how proud I am of the National Party. When this side wouldn't do the work we did the work of Government. I want to say what an amazing job Shane Reti Michael Woodhouse and Chris Bishop did on that. They have provided positive solutions because we listen to New Zealanders even if that Government is incoherent incompetent and doesn't know what it's doing on this side of the House we're ready to govern in the interests of New Zealanders."