Southlanders know what works best for them

019 has started off quite the rollercoaster ride down here in the south.

There’s nothing quite like getting stuck in right from the start, which is exactly how it’s gone for me with Telford, the Lumsden Maternity Centre and my KiwiSaver Private Member’s Bill.

We’ve had a small win, with Telford’s future for the 12 months of 2019 secure.

Working with the Southern Institute of Technology and other stakeholders to develop a solution, I’m glad the gates of this fine institute will remain open.

What is incredibly disappointing, though, is the Government turned down the long-term proposal the week before, and asked us to go back with a plan to keep it open for one year.

This one-year agreement to keep Telford open is a starting point, but we now know the reason the long-term proposal was turned down as the Government announced its proposal to centralise polytechs.

While it may work in urban centres, it is another blow to rural and regional New Zealand.

Southlanders know what works best for them and the people who live and study here, not bureaucrats sitting in Wellington.

If this proposal goes ahead jobs will be taken out of places like Telford and moved to Wellington.

The recurring pattern is becoming more evident as rural New Zealand continues to suffer.

It’s why I am continuing to fight for the Lumsden Maternity Centre, with my petition before the Health Select Committee.

I’ll hopefully be giving my oral submission next month in a last-ditch effort to save the centre.

This is about equality for rural mothers and babies, who do not deserve to be treated like second-class citizens.

While National has already listened to the community concerns, announcing we will reinstate full services if elected in 2020, it would be great if it did not need to come to that.

My KiwiSaver (Foster Parents Opting in for Children in their Care) Amendment Bill is also being reported back on to the Social Services and Community Committee.

My bill will make it possible for any foster parent to open a KiwiSaver account for a foster child in their care.

Foster children are among some of the most vulnerable children in New Zealand and giving them the ability to have a KiwiSaver account helps gives them an identity.

It also allows them the same rights as any other child to have their own KiwiSaver account.

It’s going to be a busy year working hard for you – the people of Clutha-Southland.

Coming up, National’s Spokesperson for Agriculture, Nathan Guy, will be joining me for a couple of woolshed meetings in the electorate on March 4.

We want to hear from you about the challenges you face.

There will be meetings in both Central Southland and South Otago.

Study a map of the Nelson region, and you could swear someone flitted across the landscape in the 19th century, scattering pretty names like fairy dust.

Hamish Walker is the MP for Clutha-Southland

If the recent Nelson fires hadn’t caused such massive disruption and economic pain, they would have been a public relations masterstroke. What other part of New Zealand is endowed with such evocative place names as Teapot Valley, Appleby and Pigeon Valley? Thanks to the fires, the world now knows of these magicalsounding locations.

And that’s just the start. People familiar with the region could also rattle off Orinoco, Dovedale, Foxhill, Ruby Bay and Spring Grove, for example. Or how about Aniseed Valley, Woodstock, Dun Mountain, Brightwater, Fringe Hill, Neudorf, Golden Downs and Haulashore Island?

Tolkien himself could hardly have done better. Who wouldn’t want to check out such localities and see first-hand the qualities that inspired the early European settlers to take poetic flight?

Nelson stands in stark contrast to the utilitarian place names otherwise bequeathed to us by our stolid, unimaginative forebears. Northland, Southland and Westland speak of a colonial society that valued dull functionality over euphony.

But study a map of the Nelson region, and you could swear someone flitted across the landscape in the 19th century, scattering pretty names like fairy dust.

And the marvel is that many Nelson localities live up to the scenic promise of their names, as TV viewers would have realised during the Tasman fires as they saw journalists reporting against an idyllic backdrop of gentle, wooded hills.

It wouldn’t surprise me, then, if one incongruous consequence of the Tasman fires is an increase in tourism – because once the last embers are extinguished, New Zealanders who have never previously thought to visit Nelson might well be motivated to remedy that deficit.

And so they should, because it’s a matter of shame that Nelson seems to attract more overseas visitors than domestic ones.