Collins JudithHon JUDITH COLLINS (National—Papakura): Thank you Mr Speaker. The National Party will be supporting this bill to select committee and we would like to hope that the spirit of cooperation that the Minister has shown towards us in this matter will continue so that we can in fact have good input into it not only in select committee but further on.I think most people who have had any ministerial roles around infrastructure whether it's myself in energy and resources or whether it's the Minister and many others those of transport and others will understand how infrastructure is something that this country needs and it needs a lot of it. National's 2017 election policy was to create a new national infrastructure commission to lead more public-private partnership projects and to utilise National's infrastructure investment. The commission would also have ensured that New Zealanders get faster access to new schools hospitals and roading.I have been astonished at the amount of infrastructure that we have in New Zealand today that was actually built in the 1960s and the 1970s. A lot of it has been referred to in a negative way as Think Big but actually if we look at our hydro dams that supply the vast majority about 63 percent of our renewable energy or energy in our electricity supply most of those are part of Think Big projects. I well remember as a child—obviously merely a tot at the time; not really but let's just keep the fiction going!SPEAKER: The member is far too young to remember that.Hon JUDITH COLLINS: Far too young. Thank so much Mr Speaker.Hon Ruth Dyson: Your grandmother told you about it.Hon JUDITH COLLINS: Yes well if she had been alive she would have. There was the Damn the Dam" song—there was all of that—and actually those projects some of them have turned out to have been the greatest thing that any Government could have done in terms of securing our renewable energy supply. There were also projects like the Marsden Point Oil Refinery. There were the gas projects of Methanex. All these projects were big infrastructure spends that a Government was required to come into to do because we are a big country physically—greater in size than the whole United Kingdom and smaller in population than Melbourne—but we do not have enough people who can invest in some of these big projects without having to have a Government to help.We also believe on this side of the House that we should look more to public-private partnerships. We certainly used that in the big infrastructure spend on the prison at Wiri in South Auckland and that has so far in my opinion been a successful project. We see that there is this need to look ahead and to plan. We think it is a good idea to have people who are independent from the Government and from Parliament to look at these issues and to give us views that we may be challenged by. I think it's a good thing to have people to challenge us on our views and to give us views that we may not have even heard of and I think that's something that this commission will want to do.I welcome the fact that the Minister has involved us quite early on in the process too and also to discuss appointments to the commission which I think is a smart thing to do. We believe that this is a commission that would need to have experts but also people who are good at looking to the whole of New Zealand and to what is needed rather than to individual projects that may only help a very few people. I would have thought that if we had had this sort of commission put in place by the Government if we had got it in place ourselves it would have possibly prevented some of the rather foolish campaigning on things like stopping the East-West Link in Auckland which is a major thoroughfare with the largest number of trucks and lorries travelling down that. That project also included cycleways—entire refurbishment essentially of the waterfront—and one of the things that we have seen is nothing happening on that.These are the sorts of things that a commission that is free of interference from politics should be able to deal with. I think also we need to have a commission that can look without the—somewhat occasionally—slightly jaundiced view of us in politics around what is best for New Zealanders rather than pushing a particular bandwagon. I am sure that many people would suggest that today if we didn't have the motorway system we would be a much less productive country than we are now and I believe fully that if we had a better motorway system—more thorough—we would have a far more productive country.When I think about some of the big infrastructure projects that we have been involved in around the Waterview Tunnel—and I know that the previous Labour Government also had input into that—these are projects that are game-changers for our cities and therefore for New Zealand. I think also too of an infrastructure project that people often just take for granted now and that is the infrastructure project of the ultra-fast broadband roll-out very successfully—very successfully—done in New Zealand still continuing today but it's all within plan and it's within budget. That's something that many other countries have not been able to do. So it was a very well-thought-out project properly planned and actually had a lot of expert advice in there which was listened to. That's the sort of infrastructure project that I'm sure a commission will want to look at what else is needed.I'm heartened by the views of the Minister for Infrastructure that infrastructure also includes things like water the fact that we have a country with a lot of water on one side of it—on the western side; not so much on the eastern side. I understand that we have so much water but the problem is not all of it is to the standard that we would like it to be. I think it is important that we look at these issues and that's why we believe that this is something that we should support and certainly to the select committee. We would like to hope that the select committee process and the bill do not end up giving any dictate to how funding is to be arranged for infrastructure projects. Although we now know a lot more about public-private partnerships and we've certainly used those very successfully there will be other forms of funding that we have not yet thought about or used.I think it is also very important to understand that we should be available and open to looking to every other form of funding that might help New Zealand and making sure it's in the best interests of New Zealanders. New Zealand doesn't have enough capital for what we need to do. As well we do not have enough people skilled in these areas—of construction—that we need. So the best way to start getting that going is to have a plan and the best way to end up with a plan—a national plan that can follow through from Government to Government and is not just at the whim of a Minister or a Prime Minister—is to have this sort of commission. We hope that this commission will be exactly what the Minister has said he believes it will be. We hope it will not become so completely taken over by whoever is the Minister at any stage in the future and that the commission will be one which can give robust advice to a Minister and sometimes—actually often—advice the Minister doesn't want to hear. That is the role of a commission that really wants to add value and to be independent from a Government and on that basis we will support this bill to select committee."