Seymour DavidDAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Thank you Mr Speaker. There's been a lot of commentary about my good friend the Hon Ruth Richardson and her Budget of 1991 and I have to say given her venerated status—one of New Zealand's most decisive and effective finance Ministers; first and still our only female finance Minister but unable to speak in the House now—that she's made a few replies which I thought the House might like to hear. She says that Grant Robertson's comments were a predictable cheap shot further reinforcing my point that the budget expenditure choices are driven more by politics than economics." She goes on to say "My Budget was driven by a desire to lift economic growth and to make employment attractive. Grant Robertson's Budget is overtly driven by politics and the desire to pay off Labour supporters."—and ain't that the truth.The ACT Party opposes this bill for the fundamental reason that we oppose the underlying changes that make it necessary. We understand perfectly that the rationale is to ensure that more people receive the minimum family tax credit in order to maintain the difference between working and receiving a benefit. This legislation has been made necessary by a Government Budget that has nothing in it for people whose main way of getting money is actually working. It is a Budget of handouts; as Ruth Richardson would say driven more by politics than economics and this Government's desire to pay off its political supporters.The Government has increased benefits with no grasp of the economic problems that some of the poorest people in New Zealand face. If they were prepared to look at the data then they would be able to figure out that the reason people are impoverished is not a reduction in incomes but an increase in the proportion of their income that goes to housing. For the same reason mainly the inelasticity the weak supply of housing and accommodation these increases in money to people on benefits will mostly go to people who actually rent houses to them.If people doubt that if people would like a recent model—if you know basic economic theory is not enough for you—then you only need to look at what occurred recently when this Government increased the accommodation allowance for students. In a tight rental market where students were lining up around the corner to try and get a flat guess what happened when each of them had an extra 50 bucks put in their pocket! Rents went up. It's not difficult—you don't even need to be an economist; you just have to ask yourself: if you've still got too many people chasing too few bedrooms what is going to happen when they get more money? They're going to bid the price up. There's not going to be any more people accommodated because you've still got the same amount of accommodation. You've just got people using more money in order to get that limited supply of accommodation. The only people that benefit in a supply inelastic market are the suppliers—in this case the landlord.That fundamental misunderstanding of what economics drive the lives of poorer people in New Zealand is why this Government is making changes that won't have any serious beneficial effect for them. But what it will do is affect their children—actually all children who grow up in this country and pay tax and are going to find that when it seems so easy to borrow cheap money printed by Adrian in his printing press actually all of a sudden with interest rates rising—and they will rise—that debt becomes costly.So we are going from a pre-COVID expenditure level of $1.8 billion each year on jobseeker support and emergency benefits—$1.8 billion a year pre-COVID; after COVID; the forecasts are every year $3.8 billion. That's an extra 2 billion bucks a year from a Government that is borrowing every extra dollar to be paid back by the next generation. And it's worse than that. That extra $2 billion that's on assumptions made by Treasury—heroic assumptions in my view—that unemployment is going to be 4.4 percent in a couple of years' time it's going to be below 5 percent. Really?So we have a Government that is as far as I can tell conducting an enormous experiment to see how much of a beating business can take before it stops. You know it's basically doing everything it can. They're like "If we just keep bashing private enterprise maybe they'll stop employing people. Have they done it yet? No. Let's put in another dumb policy." That seems to be their basic approach. You know we've had increases in minimum wages at 6 percent—faster than any business can raise productivity—fair pay agreements. It's like That '70s Show in here. We should have Led Zeppelin playing in the House because that's the tenor of this Government's policies.Actually it's worse than that. You know these fair pay agreements they call them—it's like going back to compulsory arbitration—DEPUTY SPEAKER: And in the last four minutes of the member's speech he needs to come to the bill.DAVID SEYMOUR: If you follow this is very tightly linked to the bill because it's about the cost.DEPUTY SPEAKER: Well you need to express that.DAVID SEYMOUR: Well how much simpler do I need to make it because it actually is a pretty direct link Mr Speaker between—DEPUTY SPEAKER: Yep and I'm ruling that the statements you've made for the last three minutes have—you have not linked them to the bill and I want you to. You're experienced in the House—won't take much for you to do that.DAVID SEYMOUR: Well Mr Speaker I'd argue it wasn't taking me very much but let me spell it out: this bill is put in place to accommodate an increase in benefits. That increase in benefits has a fiscal cost: $1.8 billion before COVID; benefits will now cost $3.8 billion and that assumes that we're going to have 4.4 percent unemployment in two years' time. The connection between the unemployment level and the forecast and the reality is that this Government is putting in place so many policies that I believe will make those forecasts unrealistic. That's where we got to.Now I was just talking about Led Zeppelin and fair pay agreements in the 1970s but that was inappropriate because actually these fair pay agreements are better compared with the compulsory arbitration Act of 1896. I don't even know what sort of music they had then but actually—Ricardo Menéndez March: Point of order. Mr Speaker to my understanding—and I understand you have mentioned it—the bill has nothing to do with fair pay agreements and it has to do with minimum family tax credits. I also know that the member is basically perpetuating a tax on low-income whānau instead of sticking to the bill.DEPUTY SPEAKER: Yeah—Chris Bishop: Speaking to the point of order—speaking to the point of order.DEPUTY SPEAKER: No I don't need any help. That's a debating point. The member is actually linking it to the bill. I asked him to do so and he has done that.DAVID SEYMOUR: Well thank you Mr Speaker and I asked how much simpler would I have to make it—I don't think I'm capable of making a point simple enough for Ricardo Menéndez March. In fact I defy anyone to make a concept simple enough for Ricardo Menéndez March especially when it involves economics because that guy wouldn't have a clue—wouldn't have a clue. Not only does he not understand economics; he doesn't understand the Standing Orders. How long's he been in Parliament? Six months? Has he even opened the Standing Orders yet? I doubt it. Nice try sunshine—try again later.DEPUTY SPEAKER: And back to the bill.DAVID SEYMOUR: And we're here—yeah yeah yeah—to talk about a serious issue and that is that this Government's economic forecasts are unrealistic because they haven't allowed for the effects of their policies like fair pay agreements. They can't be factored in by Treasury so it's forecast. But I predict that unemployment is going to be higher after the damage that this Government is doing to business and when unemployment's higher the fiscal cost of these benefit increases is not going to be an extra $2 billion a year; it's going to be a lot more than that. It's actually going to be billions and billions and billions and it's going to be paid for by who? By the kids.So the policy that's put in place to try and help kids well that policy is actually going to harm them. That's why I use another phrase—just to sew this together—that was first used in this House by Ruth Richardson and that is that borrowing today and putting the debt on to kids tomorrow is a form of fiscal child abuse. It might be OK if it was going to alleviate child policy but as we have argued actually the money's going to end up in the pockets of the landlords because until you fix housing there's no point in raising benefits to alleviate policy. That is the basic economics and you can't have real compassion unless you actually grasp economics—a point I might add that was well understood by our first female and I would argue one of our best ever finance Ministers the Hon Ruth Richardson. Thank you Mr Speaker."