Fourteen long months Southern Say has waited for then-National leader, now prime minister, Christopher Luxon, to come back south.
So, it seemed safe enough to venture out to the Waitaki electorate; what were the chances he might fetch up in the Dunedin electorate? 100%. Damn.
No, wait, come back. Come back.
The debate is one of the final steps before the Budget process is finally complete. On this occasion it gave two southern MPs a chance to shine.
With his leader absent, Taieri list MP Mark Patterson stood up, which somewhat surprised assistant Speaker Greg O’Connor, who needed to check if Mr Patterson intended to take the full 10 minutes allotted or was going to stick to his more usual five minutes.
"I am taking a 10-minute call with your duress or acquiescence. Hopefully it’s not too much duress," Mr Patterson replied dryly.
Actually, Mr Patterson packed a fair amount into his time. Kicking off with the traditional slanging off of the previous lot, he then ran through the achievements of New Zealand First thus far — claiming credit for tough law and order policies, an extra 500 police, the re-focused Covid-19 inquiry, and addressing "bracket creep" in Treaty of Waitangi issues. One assumes all this was what Mr Peters was going to say.
But he was not going to do what Mr Patterson did, which was to stick to the topic of primary industries for the next few minutes.
Mr Patterson got the bad news out of the way first — the ministry has had its budget cut by 9% — but followed up by claiming a "laser focus on the things that actually matter" rather than "fluffy" things. One assumes that sheep don’t count as fluffy things.
"Even in my own sphere of influence, the wool price is actually the highest performing commodity, I say modestly, but it is coming off such a low base."
So that would be no then. Also not fluffy is red tape, which Mr Patterson took credit for cutting rather a lot of.
"We have taken a lot of the red tape and compliance away from our farmers ... they are the best, most efficient farmers and growers in the world, bar none, and we are setting them free."
All of which was leading to Mr Patterson’s crescendo, the $1.2billion Regional Infrastructure Fund.
"We can co-invest, de-risk, and enable key regional infrastructure to unleash the potential that is out there in our provinces — the wharves, the airports, the renewable energy projects, the water storage, and irrigation. It is those fundamental key pieces of infrastructure that we can help fund, co-invest."
Southland Act list MP Todd Stephenson then got to extol his party’s victories, no easy task as his leader David Seymour had already spent 10 minutes doing exactly that.
He started by telling the House about his weekend, which had been spent in Auckland watching the final of the Smokefree Rockquest, and the feedback he had received from all and sundry about how tough economic conditions are.
"What Act is trying to do is actually bring some policies for some long-term solutions, some really long-term things. And, again, I think that is very much reflected in this Budget," Mr Stephenson said, before also claiming credit for the red tape reduction and tough on crime initiatives Mr Patterson had just done a lap of honour on.
He then touched on the imminent passage of the charter school legislation — a centrepiece Act initiative — before landing on the Resource Management Act.
"If I reflect back to my hometown of Invercargill, there’s a consortium there wanting to build a state of the art data centre to actually do AI calculations, but you can imagine the hoops they have to jump through at the moment to get the land re-zoned, and all of the permits and consents.
"This should be a no-brainer for a country like this. We’ve got a high-tech industry wanting to come and set up in New Zealand; let’s make it faster."
Other no-brainers were boosting Pharmac’s budget and another key Act policy plank, reducing taxes.
"While it might be modest ... but it is important, because this is the first time in many, many, many, many years that New Zealanders have received tax relief, so I want to acknowledge that at least we are on the right path."
Well, a path anyway. As for its rightness or wrongness, the voters will ultimately decide that.
