Seymour DavidDAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): I rise on behalf of ACT in opposition to the motion that the House take note of the Finance and Expenditure Committee's report on this Budget Policy Statement. I would much rather that the House took ACT's minority view which I have to say is an excellent view of the Budget Policy Statement and if we were to take that then this whole country would be on a much better trajectory. Why is that? Well the first thing it points out is that taxation under this Labour Government has increased. How much exactly? Well for every person in this country adjusted for inflation—which is considerable and we'll get to that—taxation has increased by $2138. That's from the middle of 2017 when this Government was elected to the middle of last year the last financial year that we had. It will have gone up more since last June. Every person from every six-month-old baby to every retiree—if you take the amount of tax the Government's taken and divide it by the number of people it's taking $2138 more than it was four years ago adjusted for inflation. A lot of people say Well I don't mind paying tax so long as we get some quality of service out of it." A lot of this Budget Policy Statement—well the Minister says and the chair of the select committee says it's about a Wellbeing Budget. "We're improving people's wellbeing." Where oh where is the evidence for that? We've got Kelvin Davis here in the House. He's the Associate Minister of Education allegedly. We have to ask ourselves what has been the performance of the education system? What have we got from the 1300 extra bureaucrats that have been hired by—Hon Kelvin Davis: You obviously don't understand kura kaupapa or kōhanga reo. DAVID SEYMOUR: And I want to say to Kelvin Davis—he's taking off his mask to heckle me. Now he should talk to the Minister of Health and ask what are the rules for taking one's mask off. Naughty boy Kelvin Davis. He should follow the health rules and at least if he was doing that it would make up for his performance as the alleged Associate Minister of Education. What's been happening on his watch especially in Te Tai Tokerau in the electorate he represents is fewer kids are showing up to school fewer of them are passing fewer kids are prepared and that's before the COVID response required them to take all that time off school. So there we go. Hon Kelvin Davis: What do you know about kura kaupapa? What do you know about Māori-medium schools?DAVID SEYMOUR: And here he goes again. So what have we got in education for 1300 extra Ministry of Education bureaucrats all paid more than a teacher at the top of the scale? Nothing; $2138 extra and education is going backwards. We're going backwards in the Programme for International Student Assessment. We're going backwards in the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study. We're going backwards in the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study. Every one of the measures of how well our kids are prepared to navigate the 21st century is going backwards including whether they even show up to school in Te Tai Tokerau where the alleged Associate Minister of Education lives and purports to represent.Then we come to healthcare. What's going on in healthcare? Morale is at an all-time low; $2138 and can we deliver even a couple of dozen more ICU beds in the middle of a pandemic? No we can't. Then we ask: what's going to happen next? Well the facts are that New Zealanders face a crisis in the cost of living—a cost of living crisis as we've been saying since December. It's become so popular to say it that I've heard other people start to say it lately. There is a crisis in the cost of living and the solution is simple. If the Government can't control the price of oil and if inflation is all coming from offshore as they say—well that's not quite true but at least the Government could stop profiting off it because what happens right now is the price of a litre of petrol goes up and people pay at the pump but you know what else they pay? The Government doesn't mind because they're getting their 15c in extra GST. So when people say that the cost of living has gone up $5000 in their household for their groceries and their petrol and the Prime Minister—she's a bit like that Supertramp album Crisis? What Crisis? Well actually there is a crisis for those people because they can't make ends meet. Of that $5000 extra that people are paying at the pump and at the checkout how much of it is being taken by the Government? Well the Government's happy when prices go up because they're getting 15 percent in GST. The Government's happy when the price goes up because if people do get a pay rise they go into a higher tax bracket. The ACT Party says the solution to that is simple—not to give a few dollars more to quote that old Western movie. The question is whether we're going to cut taxes by $2000 on the average earner—take that 30 percent tax rate right down to 17.5 and give the average worker back a bit over $2000. You know what's interesting about that number is that that's what the increase in taxation has been on the average New Zealander. It doesn't seem too bad. Then the Prime Minister gets up—and there's Kelvin Davis. He's taken his mask off again. I hope he's not going to say anything because it hasn't worked well for him before when he's opened his mouth. Then they ask "Oh but if we don't spend all this money we won't have any health or education." That's simply rubbish. Every single household in this family is having to reduce their spending as the prices rise. They have to tighten their belts. They have to make economies. They have to save money. They have to sometimes choose if they put one thing in the supermarket trolley or the other. Some people are taking things out when they get to the supermarket. They have to decide if they can fill their car right up or maybe just put 50 bucks in this week and drive really carefully. Everyone else is facing those realities. Do you buy extra clothes for the kids this week or put it off to next payday? Everyone is facing those realities but not this Government. They say if we spent one dollar less oh there'd be no more hospitals. Yeah right! It is simply not plausible. So let me tell you what needs to happen in this Budget and future Budgets. This Government is going to have to start coming down to earth and facing reality like everyday Kiwis already are. If they're having to tighten their belts if they're having to make savings guess what! The Government's going to have to too. It's going to have to stop standing up in the House and saying "Oh we're so so tight. Tax revenue only went up $14 billion last year. We're only taking an extra $2138 for every New Zealander since we got into power. We couldn't possibly find any kind of savings. You guys will have to do that. There's no crisis. You guys save. You guys deal with the rising prices at the petrol pump and at the checkout and this Government will just keep taking the tax because we couldn't save anything." Well I say to this Government that they're going to have to find that actually they are wasting money. They're wasting it by the billion. They need to stop wasting New Zealanders' money on things like Kāinga Ora which has a $2 billion fund of money that they're borrowing at the taxpayers' expense to go out and bid for land and bid for builders and project managers and materials—anyone seen any GIB board lately? Kāinga Ora are going out buying it all up with taxpayer money and they're actually bidding up the price of housing. That's how insane this Government is. What about the bike bridge? No one wanted it except for old Michael Wood over there. He wanted it but then he got some polling and he discovered he was all alone so he cancelled it. You know what? The sad thing is for the New Zealanders that have to pay 50 million bucks so he could design the fantasy. It's a very extensive fantasy but nothing compared with this train set down Dominion Road that no one even knows why it's there. He knows politically he's got to build something but he doesn't know if it's to get to the airport or to intensify Mt Roskill. He doesn't know if it's actually being put there in order to go through Mt Albert or Dominion Road or above the ground or under the ground. He doesn't really care as long as he builds something. It's the most purposeless directionless infrastructure project in the history of New Zealand. It's going to cost $15 billion and that's before the price escalations occur. There's no shortage of activity that is pointless and wasteful and that could be reduced just as New Zealanders are having to save their money with the cost of living crisis it's facing every day. The Government's going to have to make some economies too. We're very happy to show them in this Budget how they could save money—how they could cut that middle income tax rate of 30 percent that you pay from $48000 drop it all the way down to 17.5 percent and give $2000-plus back to the average earner to make up for the $2000 extra that this Government is taking off every single New Zealander. Thank you Madam Speaker."