van Velden BrookeBROOKE VAN VELDEN (Deputy Leader—ACT): Thank you Mr Speaker. ACT over the last few weeks has been travelling around New Zealand listening to the concerns of real New Zealanders and we've been hosting old-fashioned town hall meetings to hear from people in person. Over the last few weeks we have met with over 2500 New Zealanders at town halls up and down this country. We've been hearing the real stories about how New Zealanders have been affected by the cost of living crisis. People are finding it harder and harder to get ahead. But not only that they're finding it harder and harder even to stand still whether it's just going and filling up the car to be able to get to work and drop their kids off at school or netball whether it's finding enough money to make sure you have enough food for your kids for their school that week or whether it's making sure you've got enough to put aside for paying the rent and the gas bills paying for your mortgage. It is harder and harder for people to put those cents together.Now ACT says that it's not OK to just survive; it's important that we have communities that thrive. And in a healthy economy people don't find it hard to survive; they should be able to thrive. We don't have a healthy economy and that's why the ACT Party has put forward solutions for the cost of living crisis. And that's because the cost of living crisis is the number one issue that's facing all of New Zealanders at the moment. ACT picked it up first in December last year and one by one every other party has come to the table to accept and acknowledge the crisis that New Zealanders are facing. But of course the Labour Party was the last to the table because it takes a long time to accept that they were the ones that caused this problem in the first place.And now their solutions are ones that will actually make it more inflationary and make it harder for people to scrimp and save and get ahead and that's because their policies add to inflation. You know when you're putting in place policies that will cut excise fuel tax and road-user charges for a very small temporary time it sounds good but when it's being fuelled by borrowing and borrowed money that is not good; it only adds to inflation.And so instead of these inflationary measures the ACT Party has put forward solutions that are real solutions and we've launched our latest policy document on the cost of living outlining nine proposals that we believe would get inflation under control and help these struggling Kiwis. Firstly we need to dump the remaining tariffs. Around $200 million per year is made up of existing tariffs on goods imported to New Zealand. You know the ACT Party believes that if we got rid of these tariffs we've estimated it would drop the cost of a school uniform by $20. That's one very basic measure we could do.Secondly we need to dump the labour market test from the Accredited Employer Work Visa scheme. Currently every employer has to prove that there is a labour shortage. Isn't that remarkable? We're in the middle of a labour shortage and every employer has to prove that they are affected by a labour shortage. Let's get rid of that bureaucracy.Thirdly let's allow foreign supermarkets from OECD countries to bypass the Official Information Act and bring in real competition. It's insane that we're stopping this from happening. Fourthly let's create a materials equivalence register; let's force councils to accept substitutes for materials that are equivalent. That would bring down the cost of materials for new builds.Number five: let's incentivise councils to build by sharing GST on buildings in their areas. That would incentivise more homes to be built. Six: let's cut taxes. Let's give every person the average person over $2000 back in their own pockets. Let's replace the Resource Management Act with a fit for purpose law where only those who are directly physically affected can object to a development. Let's also give the Reserve Bank Governor real targets. Let's get them back to basics.Number nine: cut wasteful spending—so so important. The ACT Party has found $6.8 billion of wasteful spending that we would cut. These are the policies that the ACT Party is putting forward to help Kiwis struggling to put food on the table and petrol in their cars. These are the ideas that will help New Zealanders. Thank you Mr Speaker.