Smith StuartSTUART SMITH (National—Kaikōura): Thank you Mr Speaker. I realise my name is quite difficult to pronounce but well done.SPEAKER: Such an unusual surname.STUART SMITH: I would like to start by acknowledging my colleague Nicola Grigg who's doing a fantastic job supporting the people in mid-Canterbury and in particular during that very difficult flood. I know from experience with the Kaikōura earthquake actually being there means a lot and it's hard work but good on you for doing what you're doing because it's really important. So thank you.North Canterbury and South Marlborough were suffering from a drought—second year in a row actually—and staring down the barrel of a pretty ugly spring. But that's all changed since that rain event has gone through. The other day I was down in Okuku which is in the south western corner of my electorate which was pretty badly affected by the drought there as well. I know from my experience in farming previously in mid-Canterbury how important it is to keep the fairways of the rivers clear. Quite clearly that is not happening—no pun intended. It is not happening at the moment. Environment Canterbury (ECan) are not spending the time and the money. It seems to be they are using consents and so on as an excuse to not clear out the river. And it's so important to do that because willow trees start growing in the middle of the riverbed. Eventually when a flood comes it redirects the river straight towards the bank and it changes its course. And unfortunately as my colleague mentioned before every rainfall event now until those rivers can be repaired will cement in that new course and it becomes very difficult to reverse. Canterbury has been formed by rivers; that's how the Canterbury Plains were formed millions of years ago. But we have tried to control them and now the die is cast we have to get in there. It's just simple work that ECan should be undertaking on a regular basis.I'd like to acknowledge the vineyards and wineries in Marlborough who have offered to repurpose posts to send down to Canterbury. Albeit there are some issues to work through with that but it's a significantly generous offer. I'd also like to acknowledge KiwiRail. I approached KiwiRail to see if they would assist in getting those posts from Marlborough—we're talking about a significant number—down to mid-Canterbury and they've kindly offered to help and they didn't even hesitate. So I'd like to acknowledge that; that's very community-spirited of them.I'd like to turn now to the $500000 support package. When I was down there being driven around by one of my constituents who is a very practical sort of a guy he rattled off a whole lot of numbers and he said What would $500000 actually do?" And I said "Can you put that in an email?" so he did. I'd like to refer to that now. He said "$500000 would purchase 4166 bales of baleage." which is helpful but that's not going to go very far. He said "Or you could get 5000 bales of meadow hay." Again helpful but not going to get very far. And he said "Well 38 kilometres of sheep netting." And that's helpful but there'd be 38 kilometres of it gone missing. I was in paddocks beside a riverbed where a person had been out there shifting sheep to high ground parked his ute no water turned around a few minutes later and saw his ute floating past and they had to drag it out of a tree—written off because of the flood damage. And there are metres—many metres hundreds of metres—of deer netting and sheep netting just all over the place ripped out useless. So 38 kilometres of sheep netting is not going to go a long way. Or diggers are needed; we know that—4166 hours of 12-ton digger hire. I would say you could soon get rid of that digger hire let alone the work required in the river beds with a large bulldozer.So $500000 is a good start. It's not enough. These people need our support and they need to know that we actually care. Actually the best thing we can do is get them some money so that these sorts of things can be actioned very quickly because if we don't there'll be more flood damage the next time we get rain—and we're heading into winter we'll definitely get a few more rains—and we'll have those rivers going back outside their banks and creating more damage and more heartache for people which they do not deserve. We need to back them and I urge them to do it now."