An exacerbated Simon Bridges has today accused NZ First's Shane Jones of laziness, and a need to "get himself off the couch", to generate funds and provide information on his $1 billion Regional Development Fund.
The fund, which Mr Jones is in charge of as Minister for Regional Economic Development, is responsible for covering the cost of the government's pledge to plant 100 million trees a year, and invest in regional rail.
National's Simon Bridges today in Parliamentary question time pressed Mr Jones over the lack of detail provided in last week's government mini-budget on the "content, structure and character" of the fund.
National's shadow Regional Economic Development spokesperson, Mr Bridges, also released a scathing statement today on the lack of detail Mr Jones has provided on how the fund is progressing - accusing the government of being 15 million trees behind this year's planting target.
"It's now obvious he hasn’t done any work and he's missed all his own deadlines," Mr Bridges said in a statement.
"On 9 November he told us that the full content, structure and character of the fund will be dealt with conclusively in the Budget Policy Statement. Yet when that came out there was nothing substantive in it at all.
"It's clear the work simply hasn’t been done and now Minister Jones will be heading into his long Christmas break.
"In the meantime the Provincial Growth Fund sits idle, and he’s already nearly 15 million trees behind his first year’s tree planting target.
"He's also spent a lot of time talking about getting his nephews off the couch. Perhaps he should lead by example and get himself off the couch first."
In Parliament, Mr Jones referred Mr Bridges to page 13 of the governments budget policy statement, which he said adequately outlined the "character" of the fund and how it would work.
"Given that the meaning of the word 'character' refers to the nature of the thing, yes I do," Mr Jones said.
Mr Jones also confirmed that the $1 billion needed for the fund would be newly generated money.
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