Questions For Oral Answer - Thursday, 17 April 2008

Questions to Ministers

1. Hon BILL ENGLISH to the Minister of Finance: Does he stand by his statement regarding Government spending and this year's Budget that "We'll be trying to keep ... that very much under control because otherwise it starts to squeeze the capacity to do anything that is at all significant around the tax side."; if not, why not?

2. CHARLES CHAUVEL to the Minister of Finance: How much funding did Budget 2007 allocate to education, and how does this compare to funding allocated in Budget 1999?

3. Hon TONY RYALL to the Minister of Health: When will hospitals begin advising individual patients that their specialist appointments or elective surgery will have to be rescheduled because of disruption by next week's junior doctors' strike?

4. Hon TARIANA TURIA to the Minister of Fisheries: Will he name the Māori commercial fishers who are plundering the fish stocks; if not, why not?

5. Hon BILL ENGLISH to the Minister of Justice: Does she stand by the statement to the House given on her behalf, "Matters that are properly authorised as being for parliamentary purposes do not count as election advertising for the returns of expenses."; if so, why?

6. MARTIN GALLAGHER to the Minister of Police: What do the latest statistics show regarding the rates of resolution of crimes by the New Zealand Police?

7. CHRIS TREMAIN to the Minister for Economic Development: Is he confident that all current grant programmes offered by the Ministry of Economic Development are good value for the taxpayers' dollar; if not, why not?

8. GORDON COPELAND to the Minister of Immigration: Does he have confidence in the ability of the Refugee Status Appeals Authority to make accurate judgments concerning the genuineness or otherwise of an applicant's conversion to Christianity; if so, why?

9. Hon Dr NICK SMITH to the Minister of Energy: Why is the Government proceeding with a mandatory biofuels obligation in fuels from 1 July 2008, when the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment said that importing biofuels risks damaging our clean green image and that the Biofuel Bill should not proceed?

10. SUE KEDGLEY to the Minister of Civil Defence: Can he confirm that the only food security strategy the Government has is to ensure that the National Crisis Management Centre, set up under the Beehive, has a cafeteria that can cater for up to 100 people at a time, and carries basic emergency food supplies?

11. TIM GROSER to the Minister of Trade: Does he agree that the Doha Round negotiations are likely to enter a decisive phase in the next month or two, and that all serious participants are likely to be asked to confirm or improve market access offers, or "concessions", that are currently on the table?

12. DAVE HEREORA to the Minister of Commerce: What action has she taken to assist people who have been affected by the Blue Chip liquidations?

ENDS

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