Hon Anne Tolley
MP for East Coast

Tolley Talks

PM visits Gisborne

Prime Minister John Key and Maori Party leader Te Ururoa Flavell visited Gisborne recently, stopping in to the A&P show, C Company Trust, and visiting Kaiti and Waikirikiri schools.

It’s always a pleasure to host the Prime Minister and my Parliamentary colleagues in the electorate and show them some of the fantastic things we’re doing on the beautiful East Coast.

We’ve been lucky to have plenty of visitors recently – Prime Minister John Key, Finance Minister Bill English, Economic Development Minister Steven Joyce, Trade Minister Tim Grocer, Māori Development Minister Te Ururoa Flavell, and Jonathan Young MP have all visited the East Coast in the past few months.

Prime Minister John Key joins East Coast MP Anne Tolley, and staff Caroline and Carolyn, at the Gisborne A&P show.

Surplus

The Government’s books are back in black with a $414 million surplus recorded in the year to 30 June 2015, making New Zealand one of the first developed countries to get its books back in a strong position following the global financial crisis.

Like looking after a household budget, we want our income to be higher than our costs, so we can pay down debt and have more choice about how we spend our money.

This is a fantastic milestone for the Government and one we can all take pride in.

TPP

The recently completed Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement is going to have a huge impact on the East Coast electorate, meaning significant reductions in tariffs for our exporters:

• $59.8 million saved on annual beef tariffs
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• $15.3 million in kiwifruit annual tariffs eliminated– an average of $6,000 for each grower, a year when fully implemented
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• $10 million annual tariff savings on wine
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• $1.2 million annual tariff saving on apples
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We can expect to see significant growth in these industries as trade opens up between New Zealand and the United States, Japan, Mexico and the other eight countries involved in the agreement. This is great news for our growers, producers and exporters.

Opotiki Harbour Development

Last week Ministers Steven Joyce, Te Ururoa Flavell, and I announced $3 million to test the viability of the Opotiki harbour project. This includes carrying out geotechnical and engineering studies, as well as putting together design options.

The Opotiki harbour project would involve building seawalls to stop sand and rough water coming up the harbour, which will make the harbour significantly more usable for large vessels, and allow for a mussel farm off the Opotiki coast and a mussel processing plant in our region.

Opotiki has some of the best mussel-growing water in the country, and this investment could help to increase mussel exports by 6,500 tonnes in 2025 and could create 220 jobs in our community.

This is a fantastic opportunity and I look forward to the results of the study.

As always, feel free to contact me or my office if you have any questions or would like to share your views.

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