O'Connor GregGREG O'CONNOR (Labour—Ōhāriu): It was just through my sheer West Coast politeness that I sat down when the previous speaker David Seymour rose to his feet. But I'm so pleased I did because he gave me such good context for what I want to speak about now. That member and his party—when we want to see how his policies work we have no problem doing that. Look at history. Look at Victorian England that place where so many of our ancestors came from: the wealthiest country ever was full of poor people. That's actually what the context of this bill is about. We all come to this House and it doesn't matter what hue you are; we all come to make this country a better place. But when we get here so often we find that the parameters of Government the parameters of the party system and the parameters of the machinery of Government really do mean that the opportunities to make a major difference are limited. I've been on some very busy select committees this year. Most of the bills have gone through the hands of the Justice Committee and the Social Services and Community Committee but none of them come near the importance of this bill. We talk about a reforming Government. This is the type of reform that I believe every politician comes in and wants to be proud of because what is the difference with this?Go back to the Budget day. Budget day's the day where everyone's out there with their templates everyone's out there with their calculator their abacus their fingers or whatever it is that they balance money in and money out with. It's so often now in the modern world and it has been—it certainly was in Victorian England which I've referred to—that success was measured on money in and money out. Now think about Budget day because now as a result of this reform we are actually going to be considering how well-off our people are as a country and particularly our children. Now there's an old saying from Aristotle or Ignatius of Loyola—no one really knows where it came from—but it basically says Give me a child until it is seven and I'll give you the adult." I have desexed that for the modern time. But really if we can turn that into how we should operate as a country then as a country if we focus on those under seven if we focus on our children it means that in the future those people will have the opportunity. Various speakers have talked about wealth—how we measure that success. Is it about wealth? Really it's about participation. It's about the ability to participate because the very society that ACT would have us return to means that anyone's ability to participate in society is completely limited. So that's what this bill does: it ensures that we are giving those who are coming those under seven those that we are ensuring are able to go into adulthood—we're giving them the ability to participate. I remember seeing a very well-heeled lawyer from a very shall we say privileged background. We were talking about poverty. Her definition of poverty was no musical instrument and crooked teeth. That lawyer had come from her relatively sheltered background to work in the court and that was her idea of what poverty looked like. It was probably a reasonable one and certainly that's what she considered. Coming back to the bill what's really important about this is that we're going to require the Minister of Finance—whatever hue he or she may be—to look at more than just the balance sheet and more than just the top and bottom line. They will still be important to ensure we can achieve those things we want to but what we'll be doing is making sure that we actually look at the results and that we're actually measuring the success of our society in a different way. I've seen what's happened. We've had talk today from the Opposition about Better Public Services. I believe they were just simply cheaper public services that believed that if we counted the paper clips then everything would be fine; that wasn't going to be fine. It never worked and it was a failed system. What this does is it makes sure that those things that we are going to be looking at those things that we are going to be counting and those measures of success are going to be measures that are going to ensure that the society—the New Zealand that we are here to make better—can be better. Because as I went back to it isn't going to be necessarily about the wealth the money in their hands; it's going to be about the ability of the next generation to participate fully in the society we leave them. For that reason I'm proud to commend this legislation to the House."