Seymour DavidDAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Thank you Mr Speaker. Each year people try to name the Budget. I suspect that this one will be named in hindsight several years hence as the la-la Budget". The "la-la Budget" because the Government was in la-la land unaware of the circumstances surrounding it when it brought this Budget down. This Government has benefited from a tail wind like no other. We have at this time record low interest rates an official cash rate of 0.25 percent. We have terms of trade export prices a milk price as high as they'll ever be. And yet we are taking on Government debt at a rate of $100 billion to the point where New Zealand's average household will have $95000 in Government debt to their name. That is the background. And all of those things that the Government has taken for granted are things that sooner or later will reverse. Nobody believes we'll have an official cash rate of 0.25 percent cheap Government borrowing funded by the Reserve Bank's money printing programme or mortgage rates at 2 percent for ever. The cost of borrowing will increase and the debt that this Government has taken on will seem very expensive when people look back at this Budget. Nobody believes terms of trade can stay high forever. They always go up and go down and that boost will be gone.But there's another boost this Government's had that they have taken the credit for and banked but they haven't properly allowed for when they've assessed the situation around them and that is COVID-19. So far New Zealand has had the most extraordinary natural advantages when it comes to fighting a pandemic. We are isolated we are young we're spread out we're First World and we have a population that is so civilised that if the Prime Minister asks nicely they'll actually stay home for seven weeks. No other country went into a pandemic with that sort of advantage. I actually asked the Minister for COVID-19 Response if he could name one and he couldn't. But unfortunately for this country and this Government and this Budget those natural advantages will erode as COVID-19 changes. Four mega-trends underlie COVID at this point: new vaccines that are going to change the amount of risk people are prepared to take around the world variants of the virus that may turn out to be vaccine-busters then there's new technologies for testing and tracing that make it easier for countries to open up and finally fatigue with COVID-19 measures. Public balance sheets including ours are fatigued. People in general just don't feel like going home for five weeks and that learning about sourdough would be quite as appealing this time let alone the fact that their private balance sheets are also stressed from last time. Terms of trade interest rates the COVID response—all of it is going to get harder and this Government will have used a golden opportunity to rebuild a New Zealand we could all be proud of. But instead we'll have the same old policies throwing more money at the problems we had and the only change is—the problems are still there—the next generation gets a lot more debt with higher interest rates. That is why this Budget should be described as the "la-la Budget" and the Government's made no acknowledgment of that.They've actually tried to claim the credit saying that somehow it's all them. Well actually even the forecasts that the Treasury have given them are absolutely heroic. You open up the Treasury documents at 2 o'clock today when they're released to the world. You know they're saying that we're going to have 4.4 percent economic growth and 4.4 percent unemployment in 2023. Really? When we consider what the Government is doing to people who are actually trying to grow businesses provide for their customers make a return on their capital employ people—fair pay agreements restrictions on oil and gas exploration restrictions on mining restrictions on farming new public holidays extra sick leave a minimum wage that's increasing at about 6 percent a year faster than any firm's productivity. And this Government thinks that somehow the economy is going to be growing at 4.4 percent in a couple of years' time? I don't think so. Even the forecasts that the Government has are dire—$95000 of debt for every household. But once you consider the direction of travel and the restrictions this Government is placing on people doing business and creating wealth those assumptions—such as the economy growing at 4.4 percent and unemployment also being 4.4 percent in a couple of years' time—are absolutely heroic. The reality is going to be much much worse.So what should the Government have done? Well I'll give you a couple of examples of what it shouldn't have done. I'm always astonished to hear when Marama Davidson is allowed by her party to give a speech and part of me wishes that they'd do it more often. She actually said—I couldn't believe my ears. Marama Davidson said that the problem is too many people are saying Budgets should be balanced. I mean what is the acceptable level of people wanting a balanced Budget in Marama Davidson's world? You have to ask yourself. She seems to believe that somehow the Government can just continue to print money endlessly hand-over-fist borrow. This is a party that's supposed to care about kids. Borrowing money like that is a form of fiscal child abuse because it's the next generation that are going to pay for it.Then I heard Grant Robertson get up. This is the guy—and we'll come to this later. This is the guy whose example of economic development is to have a Government-sponsored train factory in Dunedin. I mean what's the theme song for this Budget? Something from the 1970s is it going to be Led Zeppelin—Mr Speaker you might know did they do Dazed and Confused? He said they did. That should be the theme song for this Government's Budget because they want to take us back to the 1970s. Their idea of economic growth is a train factory sponsored by the Government and Dunedin. Even in Pyongyang they are not taking on policies like that.Then Grant Robertson came along and he said "We're raising Budgets because it's the right thing to do. It's morally the right thing to do. We're going to reverse what Ruth Richardson's Budget did in 1991." And I thought "I wonder if Grant Robertson has ever met Helen Clark." because I seem to remember—I was a bit younger I was at school at the time but I'm pretty sure she was the Prime Minister for nine years with the same level of benefits. Then the National Government a few years ago—I was a bit older by now I'd graduated to Parliament at this point—raised benefits from Helen Clark's levels. And Grant Robertson comes along and says he's doing it because it's the right thing to do. I'm pretty sure he was advising Helen Clark. Clearly she didn't listen to him and I wish these Treasury officials wouldn't either. Then Grant Robertson said he's got to reverse what happened in 1991. Does he know any history? The reason there were Budget cuts in 1991 is because the country was broke and that's where this Budget is taking us back to.The Treasury forecasts the optimistic forecasts say that spending on jobseeker support and emergency benefits is going to go up from $1.8 billion a year pre-COVID to $3.8 billion every year post-COVID. Let's just think about that for a moment. This is when we have heroic assumptions that unemployment is going to be less than 5 percent or thereabouts every year. We're going to be spending $3.8 billion on jobseeker support and emergency benefits each and every year. Now is it really believable that you're not going to have a few more work-shy people where $55 in a remote part of New Zealand is actually a lot of money and it's going to be harder for employers to get people to come to work and use their skills. That's how we got into trouble under Holyoake and Kirk and Muldoon. That's the unsustainable model that necessitated the 1991 Budget and this Government myopically is taking us back to it because they don't know their own history they don't remember Helen Clark's Government they don't remember what she knew. We now have a much more radical Government than we had under Helen Clark.But let's talk a little bit about what we could have done—actually let's talk about a few more things we shouldn't have done. I think there's one part of this Budget that is an absolute disgrace and that is the $200 million for Pharmac—for two reasons. Number one I suspect when people drill down into the detail they're going to find a lot of it is repurposed money because Pharmac doesn't have a budget; the DHBs decide what they will put into Pharmac. And actually I suspect the amount of money that Pharmac has in the pharmaceutical budget won't increase by that much. But even if the Government is correct why on earth would we put $200 million in a Budget for Pharmac? The right thing to do the mature thing to do that a Government that truly cared about those people suffering and in need of pharmaceuticals would have done is they would have actually put funding in the Pharmac review.So here's the situation with pharmaceuticals. This Government won't put funding in the Pharmac review. And what does that mean? It means that when we've got a kid with Crohn's and colitis the Government will fund them to have operation after operation slowly removing their intestines making them live the rest of the life with a colostomy bag but they won't consider whether it might have been better to fund Ustekinumab. Pharmac is not allowed to consider those sorts of opportunity costs under the current model and they've kept Pharmac funding out of the Pharmac review so that we can wait "a few more sleeps" as the finance Minister loves to gleefully say before people find out if their medicines are funded in the political theatre of this Government's Budget. That is an absolute disgrace.Let's say they're spending $200 million on pharmaceuticals they're spending $486 million on restructuring the healthcare system—nothing that's going to affect the quality of care that patients get—on changing the plumbing and wiring of the healthcare funding. Now in every other sane world restructuring saves money. Only under this Government does a restructure cost half a billion dollars. That's what we're dealing with.And it's no better in education. We had a report two years ago from a guy called Bali Haque called Our Schooling Futures and it said we are going to take the control away from parent-elected boards of trustees and put new entities called "hubs" in charge of your child's education—"Parents stay at the gate." And people up and down this country came out and protested and were outraged. Gary Hawke Emeritus Professor of Economics from Victoria pointed out that they were awfully like education service centres that had existed before and failed in the early 1990s. I was astonished to read the Government's proposal that they they're bringing back the hubs and they're going to be called Education Service Agencies. What an extraordinary thing. This Government is so myopic it's bringing back a failed policy of the 1990s and telling the parents of this country "Don't bother getting elected to your board of trustees and take an interest in your kids' education. Stay at the gate."The biggest beneficiaries of this policy are going to be the private school operators of New Zealand because those who have money will get out and those that don't will be left with schools run by diktat by the neo Education Service Agencies that are a failed model from before. That is the standards that we're faced with—nothing about improving the quality of principals and teachers and teaching and ensuring that teachers are experts in their subject matter passing real information on to the next generation of students so that they can succeed in the 21st century. No this Government is focused in health and education on restructuring the bureaucracy.Now let's talk a little bit about the trains. This is a 1970s union fantasy that men—and it will be men; I can guarantee it—will be working away with hot steel and sledgehammers banging together locomotives and wagons in a big warehouse in Dunedin. This is this Government's idea of innovation! And it might be OK if people were actually going to use the trains but has anyone heard of that initiative where thousands of people go up and down and commute between Hamilton and Auckland every year every day? Actually every year is about how often. Thousands of people a day are on the train between Hamilton and Auckland commuting to the future! Has anyone heard about those thousands of people? No I haven't either. Even John Campbell's not taking that train any more.Here is what the Government could have done and should have done because the ACT Party is not only leading the Opposition we are leading the proposition. We are the party that has put forward an alternative budget showing what a responsible Government could do to look into our future and confront our challenges solving the problems that New Zealand faces. And under this budget people whose main way of getting money is a concept called working unbeknownst to anybody on the Labour Government—30 percent of Labour MPs used to be union organisers by the way. People whose main way of getting money is working those people working—yes Barbara Kuriger is making eyes at me; yes Barbara working—get no relief. Under the ACT Party's alternative budget middle New Zealand those who are being squeezed with rising electricity prices rising rents rising food prices the people who know when they see reports of no inflation that that's absolute BS the people that need some relief will get a 17.5 percent tax rate all the way up to $70000. We're going to cut that middle income tax rate from 30 percent down to 17.5 percent. And for middle income families who work for a living that means you get $1200 to $2100 a year more in your pocket through working. That is the ACT Party idea of an alternative budget.But we're also going to reduce wasteful expenditure stop handing out money to groups of voters that the Government thought it could curry favour with and actually do something—here's radical—for the next generation the silent people the ones that can't vote in this election or for this Budget but the ones that are going to be lumbered with the debt as interest rates rise and borrowing $100 billion retrospectively didn't seem so smart. We can show how you balance the Budget by 2025 not never-never land or la-la land where this Government made its Budget.Then there is a whole lot of initiatives to make it easier to do business. No fair-pay agreements. We allow oil and gas exploration. We allow mining. We allow people to develop their property. We fund infrastructure with comprehensive partnerships over 30 years between the central government and every city or region so that infrastructure actually gets built and people can afford a place of their own that's connected to opportunity by which I mean jobs and education. Those are the initiatives that a responsible Government would take and then we'd implement our COVID 2.0 plan so that we can intelligently get out of this mess. The ACT Party would follow Taiwan establish a central epidemic command centre augment our COVID response with actual technology so we can test and trace like the best and safely reconnect with this increasingly complex COVID world in a way that is sustainable not just locking up locking down and hoping.That would be a budget for the battlers a budget for those people who wake up make the kids' lunches go to work pick them up from school take them to practice put them down to do their homework and get up and do it again the next day—the people that pay the bills and actually make this country a great place to live. That is what this Budget is for but sadly we do not have a Government at the moment that is this connected with reality. We have a Government dominated by former union organisers that is pursuing an agenda that is alien and unknown to the overwhelming majority of New Zealand. But unfortunately the tailwinds they've taken for granted are going to run out and eventually turn against them and at that time with rising interest rates and terms of trade not being as good as they have been a whole lot of debt and no real preparation for COVID or raising productivity or skills or getting infrastructure and homes built people will look back and ask "What was this Government up to?" They'll say "This Government was in la-la land. We wish we'd had ACT earlier." Thank you Mr Speaker."