Smith StuartSTUART SMITH (National—Kaikōura): Thank you Mr Speaker. Well this morning Chris Hipkins the Minister of Education announced the co-location of Marlborough Boys' and Girls' Colleges on the Bohally McLauchlan Street site which is a very good decision which I applaud. However while the announcement has been welcomed I note through my Official Information Act documents that I requested that in fact the Minister delayed this whole process by going back and revisiting the business case. So we are now 12 months down the track and we have exactly the same position that we did prior to opening that up. So we've lost 12 months; the work is virtually stopped where there was a whole lot of work that could be done before a site was selected—and there were some problems in finding a site I admit that and it was quite difficult to find an appropriate site. However one has been found and Bohally will go over to Marlborough Boys' College. We'll have two colleges located on the same site which will be a massive opportunity for the education prospects in Marlborough because we can now have a wider range of subject choices with the two colleges being co-located.Also there is the opportunity for a major step change with the likes of the New Zealand School of Winegrowing which is operating in Marlborough which is quite an innovative innovation in Marlborough where level 2 students can do their level 2 NCEA with a wine focus. So they get their literacy credits through doing geography for example on wine regions of the world. They can do the chemistry credits through doing wine chemistry and who would not find that interesting to do a practical experiment that they can see the outcomes for. And I see you're smiling there Mr Speaker; I can assure you they're not able to drink the wine while they're at school. But children need to have that link and students do—when we can see a purpose we can see something at the end of it they will engage much more. To keep people engaged in the education system is a great thing and there are more opportunities to tailor our education system in that way to keep young people engaged. So I applaud the decision but I think we have let 12 months go by which perhaps shouldn't have.Now I'd like to turn to Landcorp. We heard the Rt Hon David Carter speak about this earlier in the debate. Landcorp owns 385000 hectares with a book value of about $1.7 billion. The last two years it hasn't returned a dividend to the Crown. I think it is a leading farming organisation—it's leading the low returns stakes. It's a waste of New Zealand's resources to have all that money tied up in Landcorp. Now the reasons Landcorp is there are historical and certainly some of the land that's there has been held aside for Treaty settlements. That's right and proper and we should ring-fence some of that land for future potential Treaty settlements. However we went into the last election with a policy of freeing up that land to sell for lease-to-buy options for young farmers and using the profits from those sales to really get into the bottom of highly efficient and innovative farming methods which is something that Landcorp could do. Having our money—that is the Crown's and the taxpayers' money ultimately—tied up in an investment like that which could and should be in private hands—and I think it should be a fair way of going about it.Incidentally—and I'm sure Mr Speaker you will remember—there were balloted farms back through history through the wars and post-war periods to allow people to get on the land and this is a perfect vehicle to do that. It's not people getting a free ride but it is an opportunity to get the land back into productive individual farmers' hands. They would have to work hard for it at market rates but it'd be a stepping stone for those people to get on that ladder and I think it's high time that happened.I'm absolutely appalled that they went to the Tax Working Group in what we've now heard was a very secret way—where their submission wasn't published they came in with a late submission and then ironically they submitted on a nitrogen tax when they were responsible for the clearance of a massive area of forestry on the central plateau which led to very real concerns about nitrates in the Waikato catchment. And now to turn around and say Well you know we really should have a nitrate tax." it's a bit rich I think. And then when they talk about a capital gains tax which would not actually apply to them I think it's appalling. Thank you."