Seymour David: Budget Statement —Text is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSeymour David: Budget Statement —[Sitting date: 21 May 2015. Volume:705;Page:3531. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): What a debate. Could I also pay tribute to the fabulous speakers who went before me. I reiterate what Peter Dunne said. I greatly enjoy working with the other support parties. Kia ora and thank you. I also would like to pay tribute to the Minister of Finance following on from what Peter Dunne said. He is a man with a heart and with a vision and he is changing the way the Government operates from handing money out here there and everywhere to having the Government as an organisation focused on outcomes.This Budget is an example of stable centre-right Government. In the Epsom electorate that is what we vote for. In the Epsom electorate we are quite comfortable with choosing the Government. The fact is that that is what we have done for two out of the last three elections. But that is also why Andrew Little’s speech was so negative and so barren. You would think he was speaking in the Parliament of a sub-Saharan country. He had no policy because he has waged a scorched earth policy on nearly every policy that his party had at the last election. Some of the members opposite should check—there are so many of them away they may well be having a spill as we speak.I remember once upon a time when the Greens were a party focused on the environment. I think we saw very very clearly today that that is no longer the case. It was not mentioned once in that speech. I always enjoy the speeches from the leader of New Zealand First. How fitting that he should be back with Split Enz in the 1980s—a time when he himself showed great promise. Today he sits with a group of people who probably up until today thought that “Budget” was a brand at Countdown. Too bad; so sad.But there is one positive I would like to really emphasise—Denis O’Rourke: He won his seat. He doesn’t need to be gifted one.DAVID SEYMOUR: Oh we have got him going now. There is one positive that I would really like to emphasise and that is the announcement in this Budget that there will be funding for two new partnership schools kura hourua as early as next year. This policy has been a litmus test for one of the darkest elements of our otherwise green and pleasant land: how we treat people who make tremendous sacrifices to go out alone to swim upstream to do something different to help the next generation of children.The sad thing is that the Opposition some members of the educational sector and some members of the press have shown us the darkest underbelly of our tall poppy culture. They have had a litany of false claims to try to knock down these heroic and innovative New Zealanders opening up new schools. They said the model failed overseas until they were overwhelmed by evidence to the contrary everywhere else that this model has been tried. They said that the schools would skim the most able students. What we have discovered is that they have taken some of the students who were not even attending a school the previous year. I opened my maiden speech with a quote from one such student who said to me: “I never thought I was smart until I came here.” Last I heard she was well on track for a university scholarship. That is what these educational innovators are doing.But then the critics said that they would be under-resourced and then they said they would be over-resourced. Once again we presented the evidence to comprehensively demonstrate that that was not the fact. What the facts are is that we are taking some of the most vulnerable New Zealand children and putting them into environments where they are engaged where they learn they get skills which lead to qualifications those qualifications lead to jobs which will turn into careers and ultimately allow those New Zealanders to feel good about themselves. That is what it is about. That is one of the ACT Party’s answers to the difficulty of child poverty. Would not it be nice if from time to time some of those opponents instead of showing us the darkest underbelly of the tall poppy syndrome could actually be a little bit supportive. But I digress. I will take the time to salute some of those heroic New Zealanders in this movement—Alwyn Poole Nick Hyde Sita Selupe Raewyn Tīpene Catherine Isaac Michael Jones and even Willie Jackson. They have joined the movement for more choice in education for the most vulnerable New Zealanders.The Opposition goes on—Meka Whaitiri: How’s the roll going?DAVID SEYMOUR: There we go again. There we go again—nit-picking the negatives. The fact is that all of the schools that have been open for more than 1 year are above their guaranteed minimum roll except one which is a primary school where children start throughout the year. Opposition members cannot handle the facts but their negativity is bottomless. You should be ashamed. You should be supporting this initiative instead of giving us bottomless nit-picking and negativity. Shame on you.We had many complaints in the lead-up to this Budget about whether or not the Government would make surplus. What an approach of short-termism—an approach that unfortunately I have to say the Government has bought into somewhat as well. How many people remember whether the Government was in surplus 15 years ago? Well I will tell you what people will remember about this Budget 15 years hence and that is what superannuation is looking like. As people live longer about 1 extra year per decade; as we go from five workers per retiree in 2006 down to two by 2060; when Government debt is forecast to approach 198 percent of GDP by the time current university students retire people will be looking back at this Budget and asking whether we were prepared to look into the future and confront our challenges or whether we kicked the can down the road for 1 more year. The solution which some members around this House are keen to support is to put it to the public to put up some options and let the public vote on the future of superannuation. If we can afford $26 million to do this for the flag then we can afford to have a public referendum on fiscal sustainability and intergenerational fairness. If only the Green Party would also support that.We could have sent a message to business about the future of capital investment and productivity instead of continuing to issue corporate welfare which fundamentally assumes that people in Wellington know best how to allocate resources and deal in complex ventures. We could have reduced new spending allowances by 10 percent a year and that would have allowed us to send a message to business in a country where we have one of the highest effective tax rates on capital so that every year for the next 8 years we will drop company tax rates one point until we get to 20 percent and become competitive with where other countries such as Scandinavian countries are now in terms of company tax.What about income tax? We have heard so much about people in poverty and people bringing up children in poverty. How about sparing just a moment for the hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders who have saved sacrificed waited delayed and had children much later in life? What about relief for them? What we could have done at a time when the Minister of Finance is complaining that there is so little extra revenue from fiscal drag is we could have gone and indexed tax thresholds for income to inflation. What that would have done is it would have had a very small impact in the years to come but as inflation resumes it would have reduced the tax burden on working families in the higher tax bracket and it would have made taxation more honest. Instead of stealthily taking $1036 out of the average household in the last 4 years the Government would have to be open and honest about its tax changes. None the less we have not had that initiative today. We will have to hope for it in the future.But most fundamental is the Resource Management Act. The fact is that “inappropriate subdivision” is a phrase that appears 156 times in the 900-page document that governs land use in New Zealand. It is good to discover that the Government is the largest land speculator in Auckland. It is good that the Government is releasing 430 hectares. But what about the other 270 million hectares of New Zealand 0.7 percent of which have actually been built on and are deemed inappropriate subdivisions? What about unleashing some of that land? Unfortunately I have to disagree with my friend and colleague Peter Dunne. That phrase appears three times in the principles sections 6 and 7. It is a small wonder that there is a shortage of land on which to build and that the housing affordability problem is real.I would like to finish by thanking my National Party colleagues particularly the Prime Minister the Deputy Prime Minister and the wonderful Minister of Education with whom it is a pleasure to work. Thank you very much.