Seymour DavidDAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Thank you Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of the ACT Party in reply to the Governor-General's speech. I think we have seen today the birth of E! channel politics in New Zealand. The Prime Minister's delivery was the best that I have seen in this House before and after I entered it myself. I thought Ron Mark's speech showed the voice of somebody who had been to a speech therapist and said Make me sound like Winston." I think the problem with those speeches is that the substance in this Government lies elsewhere. We've just seen one doddery man whose own electorate voted him out of office win the prize after conducting a bizarre sealed-bid auction with a twist.Mr SPEAKER: Order! The member will resume his seat. I've reflected on the comment that the member had made with regard to another member. He will withdraw it.DAVID SEYMOUR: I withdraw it. The fact of the matter is that in normal auctions the person who makes the bid pays the bill. In this particular sealed-bid auction Winston Peters won the prize the Labour Party and their hard-working Ministers get to carry it home and the Green Party will get to watch while the poor hard-working—but in this case hapless—taxpayer gets to pay and pay the bill. This throne speech contains a major contradiction: this Government is going to spend much much more money while paying down debt and keeping taxes the same. They're not offering to reduce spending on anything—not one mention of reducing spending in the Speech from the Throne—and yet they're going to pay down debt and maintain taxes. How will they do it? Well the answer is very simple: it starts with bracket creep.Last year New Zealanders paid $744 million in extra income tax thanks to bracket creep. The tax rates didn't change just as the Speech from the Throne promises they won't but New Zealanders found themselves forced by inflation into higher and higher tax brackets leaving more of their money for the taxman. Over the next three years New Zealanders will get a surprise $3 billion tax bill if inflation stays about where it is thanks to bracket creep under this Government. That is $1500 of extra tax for the average household in this country and in the Epsom electorate I'm afraid to say we're going to be paying a lot more than that for this Government.But $3 billion in extra tax is nowhere near enough to make up for even one of the areas of promise that this Government has made in health in education in regional development. So how else will they do it? The surplus. This Government is lucky enough—let it not be forgotten—to inherit an $18.5 billion surplus over four years. I can't think of a Government in the world incoming this year or any recent year that would be lucky enough to inherit a surplus of that size. The contradiction in the Speech from the Throne though means they've already spent this too. The problem is it's not going to work because the real power behind the throne has already foretold dark clouds on the economic horizon ahead and he's probably right. How long can a 10-year post-global financial crisis expansion so far continue as quantitative easing eases and inflation returns along with higher interest rates around the world?New Zealanders have got used to—over the last nine years of ACT-National Government—low mortgage rates low unemployment strong growth. The new Government seems to take those things for granted but history tells us we're heading for a crash. And how will Grant Robertson balance a Budget in just seven months' time if the welfare bill is up the Government's cost of borrowing is up and the tax take is down? We are going to experience Australian-style Budget cuts and tax increases which have been—thankfully—foreign to New Zealanders for the last decade because the problem with socialism is that soon enough you run out of other people's money.But that's not half of it—that's not half of it—because New Zealand's economic vulnerability is not actually on the Government's books. In fact coming out of nine years of ACT-National Government we've got one of the best Government balance sheets in the world: about 23 percent of GDP public debt—that's nothing. The real problem that we have is on the private balance sheets of New Zealand households. It's the mortgage debt it's the private debt that leaves us vulnerable. That is why New Zealand cannot afford a profligate Government that is going to stealthily raid the chequebooks of New Zealanders with its stealth tax—$3 billion over the next three years—and a Government that is going to spend every last bit of cushion it had as we head for global economic difficulties that they themselves—that the Deputy Prime Minister himself—have predicted.So who to blame? Well some people will blame Winston Peters for forming a Government with the left. Some people think MMP isn't fair because it allowed a coalition of losers so to speak to form a Government. But those aren't the real problems and I'm sorry to say to my National colleagues that the real tragedy of the last Government was not that it lost power but it didn't use the power enough when it had it.Hon Amy Adams: So it's everyone except your fault. Is that right?DAVID SEYMOUR: That's absolutely right Amy Adams. The truth and the light are here. You had the opportunity to do something about it and you didn't. But the fact of the matter is that we find ourselves with an incoming Government's agenda that is almost entirely in response to one fundamental problem: it's too hard to build homes in New Zealand and we build half as many as we built in the 1970s when we had vastly inferior technology. A Government that had the opportunity Amy Adams to reform the Resource Management Act—had the opportunity didn't do it and that's the problem.Hon Amy Adams: Well you and I both know why that was.DAVID SEYMOUR: The problem Amy Adams is that we find ourselves facing a Government that actually has some better ideas—that actually will do some of the things that we didn't have the gumption to do. And I actually support Phil Twyford when he says he's going to remove the urban growth boundary when he says that he's going to find new ways to fund infrastructure because those will be essential to solving the real underlying problems that New Zealand has not simply trying to paper over the cracks with more spending.The Speech from the Throne says this Government will be one that has children at the centre of everything that it does. I'm very confused as to why they choose to exclude those children who choose to attend a partnership school. I have to say I'm very grateful that my colleagues in the National Party are now coming to the aid of partnership schools. However let's not succumb to historical amnesia the way politicians often do when the boot moves to the other foot. Partnership schools are a core ACT policy that would not exist otherwise. We fought for them every step of the way and when I first arrived in this House we had Hekia Parata saying the Government had no plans to open any more.I have been much more disappointed however with the new Minister of Education who has not been a Minister for a couple of weeks it is true. He is new and perhaps he deserves some forgiveness but he has to understand that being a Minister everything he says has an impact and people assume that his utterances—even casual chat to an old journalist mate—are reported as being Government policy.My challenge to the Minister of Education with respect to partnership schools is to be a professional and come clean. He must release an official statement to clear up the uncertainty around the schools' future. It should tell them what to expect for the 2018 school year and what further discussions with what scope they should expect in the future. He must undertake to visit any school he intends to shut or alter the contract of so he can actually say that he understands what he is dealing with—not just hide here in Wellington like a coward. He must stop spreading misinformation about the schools such as that they are funded to a larger extent than other schools which simply is not true. With that challenge to the Minister of Education I retire and resume my seat. Thank you."