Seymour David: AdjournmentText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSeymour David: Adjournment[Sitting date: 10 December 2014. Volume:702;Page:1356. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT):I can assure you I cannot beat that waiata. What a year. There are a number of people whom I would like to thank who have been very helpful to me as a new member not least of all yourself and your own office Mr Speaker the Office of the Clerk the security the messengers and the hard-working cleaners. I agree with the Opposition members who say that they deserve a pay rise. The ACT Party proposes that we give it to all workers by cutting taxes.I would like to thank Ministerial Services and the Parliamentary Service. I would particularly like to thank my fabulous staff both in Epsom and in Wellington. I set out with a very simple goal. People said you should never be afraid to hire people smarter than you. Some people might say it was the only option I had but I have certainly managed to discover some very very talented people and I am very proud of the team I have got. I should also add to the list of parliamentary people the Parliamentary Library which has been fantastically helpful to me.I have to thank the Opposition for the very important constitutional role that it plays—in particular my right honourable friend and fellow Northlander from Whananaki Winston Peters who has really inspired me and taught me a few things. I came to the House thinking that if you wanted to come and speak in this House you needed a detailed knowledge of what you were talking about but as it turns out that is optional so thank you very much for the inspirational leadership you have given. I would like to thank the Green Party members with the exception of one who have also shown me that I was wrong about the need to have a detailed knowledge of economics before coming to Parliament. With a little bit of luck some of them will go away and discover that yes indeed the interest rate is proportional to risk. If that seems like a confusion please Google it as a holiday assignment. We would all be much much better off.I would like to thank the press gallery with the possible exception of 3 News who have mostly been quite kind to me. If anyone out there really thinks that my salary is the sum of all of my office budget I am afraid on my behalf that is not true but it does tell you what sort of reporting you can get from that outlet from time to time.I would like to thank my colleagues in the National Party for their immense support particularly as a new member—in particular the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister but also the two Ministers whom I am looking forward to serving as soon as that letter is tabled. With Minister Parata I think we have some very important work to do with the policy for which I am responsible partnerships schools and kura hourua. I want to take the opportunity to acknowledge and thank the role that the Māori Party has played. It has been prepared to put aside ideology and focus on the practicality of a policy that will actually help kids and for that I greatly commend the Māori Party. It is unfortunate that such a quality cannot be found universally across the House.I also want to acknowledge Minister Joyce for whom I will be the Parliamentary Under-Secretary to the Minister for Regulatory Reform. We have heard a lot about housing affordability this year and so we should because it is a fact that the cost of housing relative to incomes is out of control in New Zealand. But as someone who has actually spent considerable time studying this problem you cannot control housing affordability by picking on particular groups of homebuyers. It is ultimately a matter of the supply elasticity of housing and in particular of land upon which you are allowed to build. That is the type of challenge that I believe I can add value to by helping Minister Joyce as the Parliamentary Under-Secretary to the Minister for Regulatory Reform.I think I would reflect more generally that we actually had something of a referendum at this election. Beneath what in student politics we once called the “he-said she-said”—the “s” of politics—there was a simple question. We had the first post-Rogernomics election in this country’s history. By that I mean it was the first time that the Leader of the Opposition had not lived through the 1980s in this House and had not experienced what happened when the Government got involved in serious intervention in the economy. So we saw an Opposition that wanted to go places with monetary policy with the tax system with the role of Government in the housing market and with the electricity market that Helen Clark Phil Goff and their predecessors never would have gone. The people of New Zealand looked into that and they said a resounding no.We also saw a referendum over what sort of society we would like to be and whether we would like to be a free and open society that welcomes people from all over the world. It was a real shame at this election to see Labour and the Green Party join those who know no better in xenophobic pandering against those who would like to come to our country. But none the less the people of New Zealand stepped up to this referendum and they said no.Nowhere in New Zealand did the people more strongly make this statement of no to going backwards in terms of economic policy and social tolerance than in the electorate of Epsom. I have to say as I have already mentioned in this House that it had the lowest party vote for New Zealand First—a tribute to the sophistication of the Epsom electorate and it also had one of the lowest votes for the Opposition parties in the party vote anywhere. And why is that? It is because the people of Epsom are aspirational people. The No. 1 industry in our electorate is education. People come to our electorate because they want to attend our fabulous schools. We are next to two universities and have another one’s campus within our electorate boundary. They are people who want to make a difference in their own lives and the lives of those whom they care about and they know that the Government cannot fundamentally do that in the long term. It can give but only to the extent that it also takes.So I was humbled not only by my fellow Epsom electors—the many thousands who elected me to this House—but also by the hundreds of people who actively came out and helped with my enormous ground campaign. If anybody thinks that that is an easy way to win an electorate well I would hate to see a tough campaign. We delivered 85000 direct mail letters by hand with what I have to say was probably the most highly skilled and most dollars-per-hour mail delivery team that the world has ever seen. We were absolutely humbled by the number of people who were happy to help with that campaign and it was a very humbling thing to be involved in.Rt Hon Winston Peters: $48 a vote.DAVID SEYMOUR: As I was saying maths is not always a strong point across the House. We will leave that there.My proposition to my constituents was that they would help strengthen the centre-right by voting for me and that I would be a very good local electorate MP. Every day I have constituents coming through my door. It is a great pleasure to help you. Please keep coming and I hope that I can help you much more over the following 3 years—because it may be a mystery to some members but that is actually the job of an electorate MP—[Interruption] It is a long time since Tauranga.So in conclusion I am very proud to be here. I am very proud to stand beside National beside the Māori Party beside Peter Dunne for a Government that has profited from this referendum where New Zealanders have said that they want to be a free and open society with a limited role for Government. That is what makes New Zealand great that is what makes Epsom great and I sincerely wish all members of all hues a very happy festive fabulous season over the weeks to come—because you are going to need it before next year. Thank you.