Seymour David; Rurawhe AdrianDAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Thank you Madam Deputy Speaker. I rise on behalf of the ACT Party. It's a great pleasure to speak in this Budget debate—a little bit later than I would have liked having spent the time that the Budget was initially read circling in Cook Strait looking at all the clouds and wishing I was here. ACT and I have great powers; unfortunately controlling flight schedules and weather is not among them but it did give me time to think about what exactly it is that defines New Zealand. What else would you think about while circling in Cook Strait? It occurred to me that this is quite an unusual country in its national DNA. It's not particularly old. It's not ethnocentric; it's one of the most diverse. It's not a theocracy; we are a country that practises a great deal of religious tolerance. We don't have an all-powerful State; we are a free and prosperous democracy. Yet something holds together our country as coherent and prosperous and I'd put it to you that it's this: if you look at a map of the world New Zealanders are people who are children of pioneers. Either we or our ancestors have travelled further for a better tomorrow than anyone else on the planet. That pioneering spirit is a nice starting point to review the events of Budget week because I have to say that those of us and our ancestors who came so far for a better tomorrow could only be disappointed first of all at Gabs Makhlouf Treasury's secretary. Now he's been a disappointment for a long time for the gradual erosion of standards at Treasury the place where people seriously do exercises talking about their moon feelings where the top economic graduates no longer seek employment—in fact where they don't even employ economics graduates anymore. But Treasury in the last week under Gabs Makhlouf's leadership has gone from being academically mediocre and lacking rigour to downright dirty. Gabs Makhlouf's act talking about a bolt being attacked could only be a deliberate attempt to throw the public off the trail and fudge the definition of a hack when he could only have known that the access was perhaps not strictly authorised but nothing like the hack or the concerted attack that he made it out to be. I think it should be put on record that that is a real disappointment. But I have to say it wasn't a whole lot better from the National Party. To spend the whole week attacking a website betrays a lack of alternative vision and we'll come to that later. But I think that's a real problem for New Zealand. Hon Shane Jones: No vision.DAVID SEYMOUR: I think that if Shane Jones thinks he's going to get off the hook then he should know that the Government has been an enormous disappointment. We were promised to be world leading promised that we would have a wellbeing Budget like no other and the truth is that there is nothing substantial that anyone in the Government can point to that makes this Budget different from any other. There was revenue—Hon Shane Jones: Rail.DAVID SEYMOUR: Oh Shane Jones says rail was different. Shane Jones needs to learn some history. Governments in New Zealand have been investing in rail since the 1880s. That might make it new by New Zealand First standards but rail is not new.Hon Shane Jones: Legacy! Legacy!DAVID SEYMOUR: This is a legacy of Winston Peters perhaps but not much else. Shane Jones is chirping in about a legacy. That's the only legacy in this Budget.The fact is that the Government cannot point to things that are distinctly different in this Budget. This Budget had revenue and expenditure spending money on things the Government thought would be politically popular and attempting to raise revenue in a way it thought it could easily get away with—hugely disappointing. And disappointing because the real problems that this country needs to face up to and solve the kinds of problems that deny many New Zealanders the kinds of lives that we and our ancestors travelled further for for a better life than anyone else on the planet the kinds of problems that need to be solved well those are things such as productivity. Productivity growth in New Zealand is in the tank. It has been 0.3 percent on average for the last decade. It is a shocker.It's things like our education system. We've got two-fifths—nearly half—of students coming to the level of NCEA level 2 without the basic literacy and numeracy standards that are demanded by international examinations or international benchmarks such as PISA. That's a real problem. We have a housing market where housing in our largest city is 10 times income. Those are real problems: productivity growth a long tale of educational underachievement and a housing market that is out of control. Those are problems that we could have solved in this Budget but which the Government has failed to do anything meaningful about whatsoever.What do they have in education? The big idea is a handout to certain types of school—or not to the school actually but to the parents. It is a cash transfer to people the Government thinks might vote for them—$150 each—but it is dressed up as education policy. That's all this Government can do in education: shovel some money at people it thinks might vote for them. It has no other ideas in education. We need a revolution in education. We saw in charter schools what can happen when we give communities the power and the ability to write their own scripts to create schools that relate to and engage their own children. We need a lot more of that. This Government could have brought back charter schools. It could have given parents and students a lot more choice in education. It could have actually had more children like Hope coming through the ranks—Hope being the girl who said to me at a charter school I never knew I was smart until I came here." That's the kind of thing that the Government could have been doing—actually unleashing the dynamism and the creativity of private sector educators to engage New Zealand's most disengaged kids—but there's nothing of the sort just a cash transfer.What about the housing market? It's one of the most extraordinary things: over the last 25 years you were almost better off buying a section in Auckland behind the regulatory cordon that prevents people from building on all the land that is out there—you were almost better off buying that land—than Apple stocks. Only the Government could push the price of a section in Auckland up 900 percent in 25 years simply by regulating that you can't build anywhere else. Well the solution is simple: we need to change our planning laws and we need to change the way we fund infrastructure. That's how you free up land and help people develop sections and build homes that they can afford but there's nothing like that in this Budget. All you're seeing is tinkering—a little bit more Government intervention and Government home building—when the real problem is not going to be solved by KiwiBuild which builds houses but by reforms to infrastructure and land-use planning that provide more sections.Then we come to productivity. People on $48000 with Working for Families face a 30c tax rate and 25c of Working for Families abatement. How are we going to be an aspirational and achieving society when so many people lose 55c out of their next dollar? What's this Government done? It has increased the amount of tax and transfer. The ideas I've alluded to are the ones that this country needs; the ones in this Budget from this Government will take us nowhere.In the very short time that I have remaining for something a little bit lighter I think we should all wish good luck to Manu—he's done well; to Laura—she's very funny; to Randell actually—New Zealand can't handle anymore Randell. Sorry mate! But if you really want to see justice done in this season then you've got to text "WILLIAM" to 3333 because William and Amelia deserve to win this season. Thank you.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): I understand this is a split call. I call Greg O'Connor—five minutes."