Seymour DavidDAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Well thank you Madam Chair. I wasn't planning to take a call but my friend in green gave me some interesting thoughts and I got to thinking about subsidiarity and centralisation.It is true the member who just resumed her seat is correct that New Zealand amongst developed countries has one of the most centralised systems of government of any of them. In fact only the United Kingdom last I checked spends more of its money in its central government vis-à-vis local government than New Zealand. That is an artefact of our history. We once had provinces which interestingly enough roughly resembled the territories of the five Super Rugby teams. I put it to the committee that that was a much better way to do things. It was subsidiarity on steroids. It allowed local people greater control on how their taxes were spent but it also created inter-jurisdictional tax competition which as we see in places such as Switzerland can be a great boon to reducing the overall tax burden placed on any group of taxpayers.I represent the Epsom electorate an electorate which some people tell me—I don't know if this is true or not—pays more in net taxation than every single electorate held by the Labour Party and certainly more than every single electorate held by the Green Party. And why shouldn't an electorate such as the Epsom electorate—Hon David Bennett: And New Zealand First.DAVID SEYMOUR: David Bennett is correct. The Epsom electorate pays more in net taxation than every single electorate held by New Zealand First—he's correct about that too.CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): I hope there is a point to this Mr Seymour.DAVID SEYMOUR: I think as we just debate introducing four well-beings more centralisation more dictate from Wellington about how people should run the communities that they love it is a very good time for this committee to consider the possibility that we got it right in the 1880s that we got it right when we had provinces and had subsidiarity—that we had it right.Hon Damien O'Connor: Next it'll be the Magna Carta.DAVID SEYMOUR: Well Magna Carta as the member points out is a very fine document. We had it right at that time.Let me say another thing: the Prime Minister has also given me a very important thought in her speech that resumed this session of Parliament. She said that we do things collectively that we cannot provide privately. I can tell you that many people in the Epsom electorate and other prosperous aspirational people outside that location would like to see local government in particular get back to providing genuine public goods—goods that are non-rivalrous and goods that are non-excludable that cannot be produced by any private market. We'd like to see them do that. We don't want to see Auckland Council starting to consider education. We don't want to see Auckland Council becoming a social enterprise. We want to see Auckland Council providing the roads the rubbish the rates and the public health infrastructure that does not get produced in private markets.So in conclusion I want to thank the Prime Minister and I want to thank Chlöe Swarbrick for putting forward some excellent ideas for limiting government in this country for returning us—they suggested I'm not sure they meant to but it came out—to subsidiarity federalism and inter-jurisdictional tax competition so that those of us who pay the taxes and fund the country are able to have some more say on which of those goods are produced in our local community.I'd be very keen to see this bill amended in such a way that each electorate has its own taxing power and perhaps its own ruler so it could decide how it used the funds provided by its particular taxpayers. I think that is a superb idea.I've decided that being in agreement with Chlöe Swarbrick is a lot more fun than I could ever have imagined previously. I actually think in all seriousness that central government imposing a template of four well-beings on local government is terrible folly. It does reduce inter-jurisdictional competition about what local government can and can't offer. It does mean that we get frustrated with diminished quality of the real things that we want from local government. It does mean that our rates and our costs of government are higher than they would be if there was more competition amongst government and more flexibility for people to elect local governments they prefer. Thank you Madam Chair.