Seymour DavidGENERAL DEBATEDAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Thank you Mr Speaker. I move That the House take note of miscellaneous business. We go into Budget 2021 with an extraordinary tailwind as a country: record low interest rates worldwide terms of trade with the milk price higher than it's been in a long long time and we are an island nation on a pandemic planet. These are enormous advantages for any country to go into a Budget with and yet we face enormous difficulties. We see rising asset prices that have dramatically increased inequality under a Labour Government. We see a country where interest rates won't be low for ever and that's a real problem when the Government has rising public debt because its response to COVID-19 has been based on public debt and borrowing to stimulate the economy. And then there's the COVID situation which risks becoming dramatically more complex for four reasons: there is going to be vaccination that will change the parameters of the virus—its infectiousness and virulence; there'll be variants of that virus that may well make it a vaccine buster; there are new technologies like finger-prick testing for immunity; and then there is public fatigue—public balance sheets and just people being a bit over it. All of that means the world is going to move on from COVID and is New Zealand ready?So far it's been simple to stay back behind in our walled garden isolated from the world protected by the Pacific and the Tasman but the COVID situation will become more complex as the world opens up. And what has this Government done to prepare for that eventuality and facing New Zealand's long-term challenges in general? Well we are starting to see that our COVID response hasn't been special; our country's positioning in the world has been special. I even asked the Minister for COVID-19 Response Did any country have more natural advantages going into COVID?" He couldn't name one but that advantage is slowly evaporating as we find we're second to last in the OECD for vaccination.Then we start to ask: what of the longer-term problems? What about productivity? What is this Government doing to make it easier for people to invest in their firms and their farms to provide for their friends and their families? Well this Government bans just about everything taxes more and more each year and then increasingly and onerously regulates the property that it hasn't taxed off productive New Zealanders. That's why we have tradies flocking to Australia because the Government makes it so hard to be productive with all of its taxes and regulations. They've no initiative to make business easier. The Minister of Finance gave a pre-Budget speech; 3000 words mentioned business twice. That's why we have a productivity problem.And what about making it easier to build homes? A problem that both National and Labour Governments have failed to solve: too many people chasing too few homes. But what did this Government do? Well surprise surprise! A tax. That's right. Their housing policy was actually a tax policy disguised as a housing policy. That's before we talk about getting kids to be at school learning equipped with the skills for the 21st century. They prop up the system that's failed generations especially of poorer kids especially of Māori kids. They won't do innovative things like charter schools to make sure they learn.So we go into Budget week on the crest of a slump with huge tailwinds massive advantages of terms of trade low interest rates massive public borrowing—it's all there—isolation in a pandemic all of those advantages eroding and a Government that's done nothing for business for productivity for skills for making it easier to build homes leaving New Zealand with a whole lot more debt and all of the same problems that this Government found. That is what we face on Budget day. There's got to be a better way than this Government."