Seymour DavidDAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Thank you Madam Assistant Speaker. I rise on behalf of the ACT Party as the sole member of this House opposing this bill—something that seems to have become a bit of a trend recently after the National Party voted to stipulate country-of-origin labelling on all food something that I'll never understand. But in any case this particular bill is ostensibly directed at a very real problem.The problem that we have in New Zealand one of the wealthiest societies ever to exist is children who are having surgery because their teeth are so rotten from their parents putting Coca-Cola in their sipper bottles. We have in this country children showing up at school almost impossible to teach either because their parents took P when they were in utero or because they haven't fed them since because they're still taking P. We have children in this country growing up in housing that is so substandard that their health will be irrevocably damaged before they reach adulthood and we've got about one in six kids coming out of the education system without anything like the skills required to succeed in the 21st century which will be one of the most skills-based centuries in human history.This bill despite all of the hand-wringing intentions of the Prime Minister and despite its title will do nothing to solve those problems. If income was all that was lacking to solve child poverty then productivity and GDP per capita quadrupling over the last 80 years would have eradicated poverty. If more money was the solution then the Government spending tens of billions of dollars a year in benefits and Working for Families and accommodation supplements would have solved poverty by now. All this bill is going to do is tell us how many households are within 60 percent or 40 percent or 50 percent of the median income. It is not a measure of child poverty. It's not even a measure of the incomes that houses have. It is a measure of how many households have incomes similar to how many other households. That's the first problem with this bill—that it doesn't actually solve the problem of child neglect.But the second problem and the much greater sin of this bill is that not only does it fail to solve the problem it promises to solve but it distracts from it because what this bill does is it makes it very clear to any future Government—or this one for that matter—what has to be done to make poverty go away. Under this definition all that Governments have to do is tax off one group of people and bring their incomes down and give to another group of people and bring their incomes up. That's how you make sure that there are fewer households with less than 40 or 50 or 60 percent of income.I think it's a real disappointment that my friends in the National Party have decided to jump on this bandwagon simply because of the addition of clause 36A. And here's what clause 36A says—well we don't need to find it it's pretty simple. Clause 36A says that if one measure of child poverty—if the Minister adds one measure which can be any measure could be income could be housing could be anything—is added to the bill then the National Party are suddenly happy with Jacinda Ardern's initiative.We in this House have an obligation to give New Zealanders a better tomorrow through better public policy. We had the opportunity to measure the real outcomes the real hardship the real neglect that children in New Zealand face and instead we have put in place legislation whose only conclusion is that we should do more of what's already failed: taxing and spending and ignoring the role of personal responsibility completely. It's a sad day for this Parliament but I'm proud to stand in opposition to this legislation. Thank you Madam Assistant Speaker.