Kuriger BarbaraBARBARA KURIGER (National—Taranaki - King Country): Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker. In my first opportunity to speak in the House this year I would like to wish you and all the members of Parliament the best for 2019.I just want to pick up on a point that the last speaker made about how people are most vulnerable with their eyes closed. How I would like to respond to that is Yes that's fine on a personal level but actually our country is most vulnerable when we have a Government that has its eyes closed."Everyone's been up there banging on about giving people this and giving people that and giving people something else; actually if we had just let our taxpayers keep that $1000 of their hard-earned money which they earned themselves because they take personal responsibility seriously then they would still be much better off.According to the Prime Minister's statement she says that this is the year of delivery—2019 is the year of delivery. Now we've seen very little delivered in 2018 or at the end of 2017 to the point where I was at a meeting recently and the minutes of the last meeting from the previous year were having a look at what the Government had done in its first hundred days which was virtually zero—and it was noted that actually the meeting was at the 130-day point. Actually when we went through all of the issues—like housing like law and order and like safety; all of those things—if we looked at it a year later 495 days people are saying "This Government still has done nothing." So it's all very well to have rhetoric have ideology talking about intentions because intentions are not reality.This week has been quite a special week for me because of two of my grandchildren. One of my grandsons Max is turning eight today and my little granddaughter Aislinn turned eight yesterday. She saw something flash up on the news recently about how this Government's going to build 100000 houses and she said to my son "Dad did the Prime Minister just say that this Government was going to build 100000 houses?" He said "Yes that's what she said." And she said "So how many have they built Dad?" and he said "Oh about 47." She said "Dad how long will it take for them to build 100000 houses if they only go that fast?" If you round that off to 50 even be generous and round that off to 50 that's 2000 years. My eight-year-old granddaughter said to my son "So why does the Prime Minister keep saying that she's going to do this?" I think you know it doesn't take much for an eight-year-old to work out that actually if you divide the years by the number of houses she can actually see right through. So the Government's got their eyes shut but my granddaughter doesn't.Now another thing that I wanted to talk about was well-being and in particular mental health and that's come up a few times in the discussion. Iain Lees-Galloway stood up before and he talked about the importance of friends and none of us on this side of the House would deny the importance of friends. But we talk about friendship we talk about communities and I don't know why this Government and the Ministers—Dr David Clark and Minister Damien O'Connor—actually refused to give $600000 to the Rural Health Alliance which was $1 for every person man woman and child that lives in rural New Zealand. So we're hearing about "We're going to fund well-being—we're going to be the Budget of well-being" but actually there was no well-being done there and there's a lot of distance between people in rural communities. You know it's been extremely important with the Mycoplasma bovis going on and there is one thing that I do commend. It does seem like the Mycoplasma bovis programme is working in terms of what it's doing for the cow population. But there have been a lot of reports back out there from people about what it's doing to the mental well-being of people in our communities. I commend the rural support trust for the time that they've spent in our rural communities looking after those people who have been through those devastating times. So yes the M. bovis thing is working but we got a lot more work to do in rural communities and if we haven't got those data points to measure I don't know how anyone other than the rural support trust is going to do it.The other thing was that really at the time when the whole bovis thing was going on and we got all these conversations about 70 percent of farmers not keeping their records and things from the Minister we know that National Animal Identification and Tracing (NAIT) wasn't perfect and we know that not everyone in society has—you know there are some faults with the records. However when we go to select committee on the whole front of Mycoplasma bovis and we go "How many surprises did you find with tracking and tracing?" because they keep telling us they were tracing these animals according to the Ministry for Primary Industries it hasn't gone over fences. They have had no surprises—they have had no surprises. So the finger was pointing at farmers—who can improve and NAIT can improve and we all accept that sort of stuff—but they made it sound like farmers were a pack of bad people when actually they're not.So every day I go out there—business confidence is down—[Interruption] OK? It's the most worrying time for farmer confidence and it's at its lowest level since 2009. And 2008 and 2009 were worrying years because we were getting through the global financial crisis. So this is actually the lowest confidence since the global financial crisis.There's a whole lot of blind positivity on the state of the economy. The economy was left in a really good state; thanks Sir Bill English. The previous Government left the economy in a good state but let this Government open its eyes because economies must be stimulated and you have to have just transitions when you're wildly changing things. I'm going to refer to the oil and gas decision which is the most ridiculous decision when this Government claims it's going to make any difference at all to global emissions and climate change because all the reports actually said that it was going to have the opposite effect. And when we're going to start seeing shiploads of coals come in and all of that sort of stuff we know that gas is one of the most efficient things we have. We know that hydrogen might be for the future. We know that we will be finding other things for the future but right now—and the Minister of Energy and Resources is here today—we don't have those new technologies ready and in place to replace the old technologies. So when the gas prices go up or when people go to turn their lights on in the winter and the lights don't come on we are going to have some really really big problems.I'm going to state in my speech this afternoon that the provincial champions for New Zealand are over this side of the House. There's a whole group of us over here. Some of them are sitting next to me in the House. We've got Nicola Willis and we've got Tim van de Molen. Under the previous Government led by Sir John Key and Sir Bill English we were getting our roads we were getting our connectivity we were getting our safer communities and safer roads thing—Mt Messenger which is in the lower end of my electorate was actually budgeted for in Budget 2016. It was actually appropriated. It was delivered—well the road's not delivered but the money was delivered in Budget 2016 appropriated in 2016. So I've got a community going "We're not getting our safer roads. We no longer seem to be getting anything in our rural communities thanks to this Government who are no longer out there who don't understand."Kieran McAnulty: What a load of rot.BARBARA KURIGER: Not many people—Kieran McAnulty I'll make an exception for you because I do know that you go out into rural New Zealand but generally—Kieran McAnulty: You're talking rubbish Barbara Kuriger. BARBARA KURIGER: —I sent in—listen to this Kieran McAnulty. I sent in a huge amount of questions to the Ministers about rural communities and I asked what was happening in their ministry to measure and manage rural communities—all of the Ministers—and I've never seen such a big cut and paste exercise of standardised answers. I am going to commend Minister Jackson. I will commend the Māori Ministers who actually put far more effort into it because they do get out into the rural communities and they do understand.Look if this is going to be a year of delivery I say to this Government that it's about time to start because we haven't seen any delivery since your Government's been in power. Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker."